Hello, I’m planning to produce the BeagleBoard Black. Does anybody have experience doing it?
I need around 500 units a year (I don’t really know yet) and I will be happy if I could just imitate the one that is shipped thought the BBB distributors. I was emailing Gerald Coley and he told me that at this point they can’t fulfil bulk orders of BBB but apparently in the future they will but as I want to gain more freedom and control the supply I need to deal directly with a PCB manufacturer.
Currently my small company produces simple Arduino PCBs and the producing process is just to send the Gerber file with the BOM and we are ready to go. After I saw Gerald Coley speaking saying this:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZ0OPT5s9aQ I’m wondering what else I need to know in order to have a 500 units order working. Is the trick in the evaluation quality test? or is it that I have to flash some of the EEPROM, eMMC,uSD in a special way?
Why do you need BBB cloned? The manufacture cost will be around 100usd because of so little volume. You can purchase BBB clone manufactured by Embest - a Chinese company. It is almost the same with BBB
Currently my small company produces simple Arduino PCBs and the
producing process is just to send the Gerber file with the BOM and we
are ready to go. After I saw Gerald Coley speaking saying
this:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZ0OPT5s9aQ I'm wondering what
else I need to know in order to have a 500 units order working. Is
the trick in the evaluation quality test? or is it that I have to
flash some of the EEPROM, eMMC,uSD in a special way?
You should contact your PCB maker. Send them the Gerber and the BOM.
Then sit down when they send you the quote, or at least hold on to
something. I think the BBB is a 6-layer board and some cannot do
them.
The biggest problem is the 2.9mil spacing between traces and pads of the
eMMC part. This will make the board very expansive.
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>> Currently my small company produces simple Arduino PCBs and the
>> producing process is just to send the Gerber file with the BOM and
>> we are ready to go. After I saw Gerald Coley speaking saying
>> this:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZ0OPT5s9aQ I'm wondering what
>> else I need to know in order to have a 500 units order working. Is
>> the trick in the evaluation quality test? or is it that I have to
>> flash some of the EEPROM, eMMC,uSD in a special way?
>
>You should contact your PCB maker. Send them the Gerber and the BOM.
>Then sit down when they send you the quote, or at least hold on to
>something. I think the BBB is a 6-layer board and some cannot do
>them.
The biggest problem is the 2.9mil spacing between traces and pads of
the eMMC part. This will make the board very expansive.
So seems like a list is in order. Things that make it hard to make your
own BBB
1) 2.9mil spacing between traces and pads for the eMMC part
2) BBB is 6-layer board and some PCB makers cannot do 6-layer boards
3)
That is what is so amazing about what Gerald has achieved. Manufacturing a
high tech board and not charging high tech prices. High tech is generally
considered trace and spacing less than 5mils. From what I recall, there is
a way to fix the pcb to achieve 3.2mil trace and space and I think that
you can get back to 5mil trace and space if you remove the eMMC. Don¹t
hold me to this as I worked on this almost a year ago. BTW, 6 layer is no
big deal for most companies.
That is what is so amazing about what Gerald has achieved.
I think you misunderstand. The current price is and was too low.
But he had/has a goal. Get the boards into people's hands. How?
Make it cheap! As in low cost to the consumer. But that comes at
a price on his end. Now that BBB has momentum it could easily
sell for $55-60 or more. The current pricing makes life too hard for
producing the BBB. The price has got to go up. So phase 1 is
achieved I agree. Now phase 2 starts.
Manufacturing a high tech board and not charging high tech prices.
High tech is generally considered trace and spacing less than 5mils.
From what I recall, there is a way to fix the pcb to achieve 3.2mil
trace and space and I think that you can get back to 5mil trace and
space if you remove the eMMC. Don¹t hold me to this as I worked on
this almost a year ago. BTW, 6 layer is no big deal for most
companies.
Many of the cheap PCB makers don't offer more than 4 layers.
There is no way to make this type of board in 4 layers. You need two
layers for power and gnd and that leaves you with 4 routing layers. Given
the trace impedance (50, 90 & 100Ohm) requirements and length matching for
DDR3, you are hard pushed to make this work in 4 routing layers. If a fab
does not offer more than 4 layers, they probably won’t have the quality to
make traces less than 6 mil. Need to find a better fab. I don’t use these
guys, but here is an example of an inexpensive prototype fab:
I think you will be hard pressed to find a fab that give you better
pricing than Circuitco.
Regards,
John
1) 2.9mil spacing between traces and pads for the eMMC part
(going without eMMC could remove this requirement)
2) BBB is 6-layer board and some PCB makers cannot do 6-layer boards
3) The files for the board are hard for some to use due to
a propietary format
If you are doing serious PCB design, you cannot avoid this. I use Altium
and I could not imaging trying layout pcbs a product that isn’t
proprietary.
4) All the above are solvable, just pointing out impediments for
the hobbyist considering rolling their own version of the BBB.
It's expensive. Making PCB is a complex and exacting process.
Don’t forget the assembly. BBB uses several fine pitch components and
Circuitco has learned how to manufacture BBB with very low failure rate.
Their quality is extremely high.
Well I am integrating the BBB into my comercial product, that’s why I need a clone. 100USD may be an affordable price for the industry I work in, is it an estimation you made or 100USD is an accurate price?
I emailed to circuitco, special computing y embest, we’ll see…
My PCB manufacturer made a budget for 10$ each PCB (without assembly) still waiting for the budget with the components and assembly included.