I'd be in for 20 & 20, IF I can be reasonably confident they won't send us the rejects and save the decent ones for themselves. :~
Hi comfychair,
I think that is a reasonable expectation.
I can only speak from my own experience but I have found sinkpads QC to be very good. I have purchased around 3000 pc from them so far. Each piece is tested and the rejects are clearly marked out with black ink, and none of those are ever counted toward the purchase total. I reflow and test around 50 or so emitters per month and very rarely have I ever got a board that was "bad" that had not been marked. Maybe 1 out of a hundred.
Thanks for sending me that info about the 7135 driver hack by the way. 
Did you notice a skewing of the silkscreen on the 16mm parts? It's almost like the ones from the top left of the sheet were perfect, but going down towards the bottom right they just got progressively worse. Don't even think about using the 14mm & 10mm cut lines and expect the LED to end up in the center. The really bad ones aren't on center even without being cut down, on some I have had to file the OD smaller than the pill just to get the LED centered, the original OD isn't even right.
The good ones are really good, but some are pretty awful. The 20mm parts didn't show any f those problems, though I've only seen a handful of those.
Cutting down a 16 to 10 or 11, the circle marking 10mm was off. I like to re-flow the emitter first, use the dome to center the turning star. ( I JB Weld the star to a 1/2” aluminum rod, mount that in my cordless drill) By spinning the star with the emitter on it, it’s easy to see that the emitter is perfectly centered.
I haven’t done but a few, but noticed it on the ones I did.
PCB fabs accept silkscreen that is off by quite a bit. Thats normally ok tho since silkscreen is only meant for markings that don’t need exact alignment.
I believe I recall the original BLF 16mm design had the 10mm cutting guide in soldermask or copper even. Perhaps sinkpad nixed it?
It's not just the silkscreen, the LED is not in the center of the board on the ones that are 'off'. All the layers are off.
It's as if the file for the cut lines was resized to 800x600, and all the other layers were resized to 798x598, and aligned at the upper left corner.
An exaggeration, but like this:
I get what your saying now. I suppose I never examined them closely enough to notice the print was off. I was thinking more along the lines of if the board electrical connections were functional.
It seems to me like since there wont be any of the lines, rings, drawings etec on the 10mm boards we stand a pretty good shot of not having to worry too much about that, but others may be more sensitive to the issue ( like color tint for some of us).
I just cant really say there will be any guarantee like that. In the rare case of a bad non working board I could probly warranty it out of my personal boards, but for something like that they just sort of are what they are.
Comfychair I'd love to have you on board with us, but I fully understand if you are not comfortable with it. I have not put you on the list yet, but I'd be more than happy to if you say the word :)
LED is off center…?
Wow, good job sinkpad! S)
Your link just goes to the top of the page for me. :~ What is the comment#?
edit
I missed this part until now.
i would do 10 of each to start out with
Its asking for a password to sign in.
Those aren’t links to email attachments, are they?
Signed up with microsoft :Sp just to try the links.
If those are indeed links to email attachments then no one else will be able to view them. You can download the files and upload them to a file host.
How about now?
I tried loading the pictures to image shack so I could just post the image here, but image shack made it very grainy and much of the color was lost ( probly I just dont know what I'm doing) If anyone knows how I can get a quality picture from those PDF I'd be grateful.
Photoshop can take the picture from the pdf file. I’ll gladly do that for you if you don’t have Photoshop.
Shoot it to me in an email.
Nevermind, That works fine! 100 boards a sheet huh? Wow!
Probably best is to have direct access to the PDF file. Some sort of free file sharing site could be used to host it, like Helios is suggesting too -- I used to recommend sharefile.com, but they are now a paid site, guess since Citrix took them over. Could try dropbox.com, maybe?
Ooops, see them now in google docs - wow, those XML's are tight, but they are 10mm... No spill over pads, but guess no room.
None on the xpg either. Sinkpad also seems to have something against wide traces.
Not sure I understand the need for wide traces. The brass leads on the emitter themselves are miniscule, so how does it matter how wide a trace is? They’re many times larger than the end run anyway.
To reduce resistance wherever we can. Does it hurt the manufacturer to do it? 
See noctigon.
If we’re upgrading to Copper mcpcb, why wouldn’t we get upgraded traces? When it costs nothing? 
VoB: Were you looking for an image of just a sample (1066x688) or the whole board (2163x2085)?
I prefer the xml, cause they couldn’t squeeze on their name. :bigsmile:
Closer to actual size? 
Either of those pictures is fine Helios, I just wanted there to be a picture in the thread rather than just the link. Thanks man.
WE HAVE LIFT OFF! NOW ACCEPTING PAYMENTS AT PRE ORDER SALE PRICE!
PP is vesture_of_blood(@)hotmail.com
Please be certain you include your BLF handle and quantity of each board you want in PP notes in addition to making your claim here :) Thanks
The price per board is $1.25 per piece. Shipping to the US is $4 and World wide is $7. Boards can be mixed both XML and XPG.