Not really. I just had some PCBs made. The cost for one-off prototype assembly has plummeted to the point where it is reasonable to make five at a time. You don't need to sell 1,000 to get a good price.
If this were a business the big cost is engineering. You could sink $50K into the design in just a couple months if you have to had to pay for engineering time. But for Open Source the biggest cost is gone. Companys have to charge $1K per board for small runs becuse they divide the engineering cost over the number sold. But if the engineering is "DIY" then you pay only for manufacturing and those Chinese robots work 24x7 and all they ask for is electricity. I had some boards made recently and they send updates after every process step. It seems the company I dealt with gets about 80,000 orders per day (no typo, most of their customers are also in China and China is huge) So they batch the orders up and send meter-square sheets of material through a big machine and the last step is to cut it apart and pack the parts into express mail packages. It is all automated and driven by design files that I give them. They were drilling holes and etching copper two hours after I paid and clicked "OK and four hours after the parts were done I had a tracking number for the shipment. I paid less than $1 per board. Yes, it used to cost a lot to have one or two made but now they have learned how to batch together tens of thousands of customers and process them all at once on the same machine. That said. I don't understand why anyone wants to run LinuxCNC on a tiny processor board. Why not use a "standard" Intel-based PC Motherboard? Any low-end cheap PC will run circles around a Raspberry Pi or similar computer. What is the motivation of the small computer? Is it cost?, Are you trying to save power? None of that makes sense if you connect this to a milling machine On Thu, Jun 13, 2019 at 10:01 AM John Dammeyer <jo...@autoartisans.com> wrote: > > Yes but... you have to make a few 100 thousand at least to bring the > production costs down. And that requires a sizable investment. That won't > happen for a LinuxCNC port. > > So you have to have the marketing infrastructure to sell it to more than just > the LinuxCNC community. > > John > > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: bari [mailto:bari00...@gmail.com] > > Sent: June-13-19 9:33 AM > > To: emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net > > Subject: Re: [Emc-users] LinuxCNC Processor > > > > https://beagleboard.org/ai > > > > ~$100 > > > > And once again, no open 3d accel drivers. Come on TI, use mali or > > Vivante or open the drivers. The world will not end (sky fall, pigs fly, > > etc) if you do. > > > > Depending on my profit motives I can make a board now for less using a > > $6 4-8 core ARM SOC with mali gpu (Allwinner, Rockchip) and a few > > STM32's for stepping or a <$25 FPGA. > > > > -Bari > > > > On 6/13/19 11:15 AM, John Dammeyer wrote: > > > We've been discussing various kinds of modules to make a dedicated > > LinuxCNC processor. This may just be it. > > > https://beagleboard.org/blog/2019-05-16-beaglebone-ai-preview > > > > > > https://beagleboard.org/ai > > > > > > With 4 PRUs to deal with the hardware the biggest issue might be access to > > enough pins to do everything one needs. > > > > > > John > > > > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > > Emc-users mailing list > > > Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net > > > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Emc-users mailing list > > Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net > > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users > > > > _______________________________________________ > Emc-users mailing list > Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users -- Chris Albertson Redondo Beach, California _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
