eChucK Board House

Inventor

Hi everyone,

The first eChucK boards were made by a company called e-teknet at the following website:

http://www.e-teknet.com/

I was very pleased with the excellent customer service at e-teknet. The person I worked with took the time to explain to me how to generate the gerber files even though I wasn't a big customer. The sales team seems quite friendly and helpful also. There were two problems that occurred once all was said and done, and they handled the problems with admirable professionalism. Here are what the problems were:

1. Their new employee accidentally double charged me! It took a few days but they credited my account without any troubles and all was well. We've all made mistakes like that and she was new, so hey.

2. They gave me an excellent price of only $30 additional to do a whole bunch of routing which would chop up each board into about 15 tiny little postage-stamp sized boards. That's a deal because we all know how routing eats up router bits plus the labor to handle all the little boards. Problem: they didn't do the routing, i just got four boards instead of a bunch of little boards.

Well, long story short a salesperson called a few weeks ago to see if I needed any more boards made. I told him no, not yet as the project is moving along slowly, and I told him about the problems. He immediately replied that he had spoken with the president of e-teknet recently who said that anyone who had any troubles at all would be given a half-price discount on their next order!

So I'm very pleased with that and I think I'll go with e-teknet next time around. The reason I posted all this is partly to just share what's going on in the little eChucK world, and partly to ask if I'm doing the right thing here. So what do you think?

Inventor · Posted: Fri Nov 13, 2009 12:55 am Post subject:

I just had E-TekNet make the second batch of eChucK boards, which are little breakout boards that simplify Lunetta construction and also enable eChucK Lunetta sculptures to be built. This time there was just one board design, not 15 crammed onto a larger board as I mistakenly chose to do the first time around.

E-TekNet did an excellent job and gave me a great deal: 100 boards for just $225. Their sales engineer guided me through the process of generating the Gerbers patiently even though I made a quick design change so I had to do it twice. The boards arrived on time and properly packaged in a little brick - it's amazing how fun it was to get *100* boards all shrink-wrapped up in a package.

So yeah, I'm happy with E-TekNet. I didn't get my half-off, but I did get a good fair deal and I'll be going back to them for the next batch of boards. I'm sure you can find cheaper board houses, but what is good customer service worth to you?

Les

electri-fire · Posted: Fri Nov 13, 2009 10:27 am Post subject:

LulaNord · Joined: Mar 13, 2017 Posts: 1 Location: Virginia,USA

Hi...i am a new user here. I'm beginning to realize that having
these first four boards made was primarily an exercise in learning
Eagle CAD and working with a board house as a hobbyist, plus more
importantly it has provided sort of a focal point for getting the ball
rolling on the eChucK project, even if we never use these first boards
in practice. It helped make people realize that the project is
tangible and real and ever so slowly gaining momentum, etc. The cost
at the board house I used was $100 for four boards, 3" x 4" in size.
That's double sided with solder mask and screen printing, but not
chopped up into little boards. So that works out to about $30 each
including shipping. Not cheap, but acceptable I suppose. I hope you
enjoy your perusal of the eChucK forum and please feel free to post a
message if you like, the more people who chime in, the more excited
other people will become.

pcb assembly service

Inventor · Posted: Tue Mar 21, 2017 10:25 pm Post subject:

Hello LulaNord, I see this was your first post and I am pleased to know you have made this effort. e-ChucK originated some time ago and since then there have arisen a number of commercial mini-circuit products. Also there were others before e-ChucK but really I don't know too much about what is out there.

If you would like to develop e-ChucK I can only say that I wish you continued success on the project and I can TRY to help in any way I can. I am uncertain of my future because of health, disabilities, and situation so I cannot really say that I can help much. If you post here, I will see your posts when I stop by from time to time and help out.

Best wishes,
Les