thanks, I posted your reply on the thread over there.
I've certainly learned a lot this morning about MCPCB and FR4 substrates :)
I think a lot of people, both here and on mtbr would be very interested in a complete assembled board. Heck, even I would start thinking seriously about it and I already have a stupidly bright set of DIY lights. The thought of soldering the bits on myself would give me the heebyjeebies though, even soldering AMC7135 chips onto a board isn't my idea of fun!
Yeah, i'm getting that vibe from a lot of people - looks like I WILL be offering this as an assembled module. The kit will still be available (and available first) for those who want to do it themselves, but I'll go ahead and plan on having these machine assembled..
For assembled modules, I'm going to have to pick a max of two or three different XM-L Tints/Bins.. What's everyone's preference? If you had to pick two XM-L tints/bins to be available - what would they be?
The kit will be fun! I do this all the time, and I still get a great deal of satisfaction from hand soldering something like this and having it work.
I think I might make a short video showing the techniques that I use to solder these small components. That should help with a lot of people who are on the edge wondering if they have the skill to do it.
I took a quick look at the thread going on over there, and I saw one question that I thought deserved an answer - unfortunately, I just don't have time to maintain conversations on two different forums. If you'd like to cross-post my answer, however, please feel free.
The question was:2) I can get a quote from my PCB manufacturer for FR4 and MCPCB substrates but I think that the impact on total cost is negligible. (my PCB fab is the same as lux-rc, so quality is good). So why use FR4 ?
The answer is: He's forgetting or not realizing that this isn't a simple single layer "star" board. It has all of the electronics on it, and pretty much demands at least two layers of copper. Not only are multi-layer MCPCB's EXPENSIVE, but they're actually quite bad at thermal conduction. The board I'm using is very thin (half the thickness of the thinnest in the CREE document) meaning that it will outperform a standard thickness single layer MCPCB and FAR outperform a multi-layer MCPCB. COULD I route this in a single layer? Yeah, I could - but the module would have to get a bit larger, and I didn't really want to make it bigger in diameter than the CUTE-3 Optic. That was the design goal - keep the PCB equal to or smaller than the diameter of the lens.
I can see that - it's like building your own bicycle wheels. The trouble with me is getting over that confidence hump without screwing up something really expensive :) The funny thing is that I work with worms that are <1mm long without trouble, so scale isn't an issue, although cutting one in half or flicking it into the ether isn't all that worrying.
One of the other contributors to the mtbr thread has already cross posted your reply and several of them are following this thread too. I think that there will always be a degree of conservatism in how people view new tech, until enough people adopt it and it becomes old tech and common. No different really to the 20mm triples Lux-RC make or the feature rich but tricky to program Taskled drivers.