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Cheap stencils for you DIY guys, c/o Parallax — Parallax Forums

Cheap stencils for you DIY guys, c/o Parallax

OSHStencilsOSHStencils Posts: 8
edited 2013-10-10 15:06 in General Discussion
We recently attended the OH Summit and came home with a Parallax board that we've been tinkering with. At the summit someone suggested we pop by here and inform the Parallax community about our service.

We're a low cost Polyimide stencil cutting service that is priced by the square inch. Those of you who have used a service like OSH Park before to make your boards, we're essentially the same model but for stencils. What used to cost all of us DIY guys $25-35 for a film stencil now costs $5-9.

www.oshstencils.com

We've made some great friends over the last couple of months since launching the service, and we've got a lot of great new features and product offerings coming by the end of the year that many of you have been asking for.

Check it out, and as a token of thanks feel free to use discount code: thxparallax10 for 10% off your orders through the month of October.

Thanks for allowing us to be part of the Parallax community!

-Brent
OSH Stencils

Comments

  • RaymanRayman Posts: 14,665
    edited 2013-10-03 15:18
    Sounds like a good deal. If you don't have super fine pitch parts, polyimide should be fine.
  • OSHStencilsOSHStencils Posts: 8
    edited 2013-10-03 23:26
    Actually, you'd be surprised at just how fine pitch we can do. We're building a customer gallery for our new website launching soon, but even if you look at the samples on our current site, you'll see some 10x zoomed images of .35mm diameter BGAs, some 0201 components, .5mm pitch ICs and those are just samples.

    We do use .003" spot size laser equipment, and we've got some announcements in the works very soon about even higher resolution optics and product offerings. Stay tuned!

    -B
  • SRLMSRLM Posts: 5,045
    edited 2013-10-04 00:28
    Interesting, but right now some of the technical details seem to be a bit lacking. I suppose that will be reminded on the new website. I've done some work with 0.4mm pitch components and had trouble with the Mylar stencils from Pololu. My current solution is to use stainless steel step stencils, but they're pretty expensive. I'm interested to see what your new website offers.
  • tonyp12tonyp12 Posts: 1,951
    edited 2013-10-04 07:07
    I used OSHstencils a week ago, everything was OK. Showed up fast.
    If now just Park and Stencil got together for a OSH-all-in-one place.
  • Bill HenningBill Henning Posts: 6,445
    edited 2013-10-04 09:00
    I'd like to see a tqfp 128 0.4mm pitch example... when you have one, you might want to post a pic to the "Propeller 2" forum here - the guys (including myself) who are going to be making Prop2 boards hang out there...
    OSHStencils wrote: »
    Actually, you'd be surprised at just how fine pitch we can do. We're building a customer gallery for our new website launching soon, but even if you look at the samples on our current site, you'll see some 10x zoomed images of .35mm diameter BGAs, some 0201 components, .5mm pitch ICs and those are just samples.

    We do use .003" spot size laser equipment, and we've got some announcements in the works very soon about even higher resolution optics and product offerings. Stay tuned!

    -B
  • OSHStencilsOSHStencils Posts: 8
    edited 2013-10-04 09:05
    tonyp12 wrote: »
    I used OSHstencils a week ago, everything was OK. Showed up fast.
    If now just Park and Stencil got together for a OSH-all-in-one place.

    That was the plan from day 1. Laen is very busy, so I decided to launch and start making the community aware of the service while we work together on a cross-platform solution. I'm not sure when/if it will happen, but we both are very interested in doing it. We'll see what the future holds :)

    -B
  • OSHStencilsOSHStencils Posts: 8
    edited 2013-10-04 09:07
    Bill Henning wrote: »
    I'd like to see a tqfp 128 0.4mm pitch example... when you have one, you might want to post a pic to the "Propeller 2" forum here - the guys (including myself) who are going to be making Prop2 boards hang out there...

    If you like Bill, upload a design with what you'd like to see, and let me know what you named the project. I'll cut it and post that exact sample for you.
  • Bill HenningBill Henning Posts: 6,445
    edited 2013-10-09 09:03
    Thank you, will upload and let you know (I added it to my TODO list for this weekend coming up).
    OSHStencils wrote: »
    If you like Bill, upload a design with what you'd like to see, and let me know what you named the project. I'll cut it and post that exact sample for you.
  • vanmunchvanmunch Posts: 568
    edited 2013-10-09 16:09
    tonyp12 wrote: »
    I used OSHstencils a week ago, everything was OK. Showed up fast.
    If now just Park and Stencil got together for a OSH-all-in-one place.

    I second this. They are my go to place and I've used them both several times over the past couple of years. Gadget Gangster put me onto them.
    I'm really excited that you guys are going to a flexible pricing system.

    Dave
  • OSHStencilsOSHStencils Posts: 8
    edited 2013-10-10 15:06
    vanmunch wrote: »
    I second this. They are my go to place and I've used them both several times over the past couple of years. Gadget Gangster put me onto them.
    I'm really excited that you guys are going to a flexible pricing system.

    Dave

    Just to be clear Dave, OSH Stencils is separate from OSH Park. We work together on things, and often share files between customers (ie: a board customer wants a stencil and vice versa so we ship files to each other on their behalf), but we are independent services currently. OSH Stencils uses a linear pricing model, only pay for what you use and it discounts the more you buy, OSH Park is a static price model.

    We have discussed cross-integrating into an all-in-one-OSH stop, but we haven't finalized that yet. It's something we are both very interested in doing :)
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