Ordering From JLCPCB
WORK IN PROGRESS!
Topics:
Short-ish discussion of project philosophy
WHY build your own boards at all??? This sounds hard to me, and I'm writing a guide on it! In the words of Damien, "the number one goal has and is to help YOU build YOUR car on YOUR budget." So whether you purchase a kit from one of the webshops (see end of this doc for links,) which directly financially supports the projects (and the main contributors ability to keep contributing,) or manufacture your own boards from scratch in your bathtub or something in between, it's OK. You DO have to support yourself via this wiki and the openinverter forums, as well as some YouTube content. Like any community, folks get tired of answering the same questions repeatedly, so please dig THEN ask. Please find a way to share what you've learned either with the community or someone else. Both Damien (aka evbmw) and Johannes (aka openinverter) have Patreon accounts where you can also contribute financially. As an immediate return on your support, you can gain access to designs that are otherwise only available from the webshops if you still want to do this JLC thing. Think hard about what you really need, because particularly if it's just one board, you're not going to save much/any money by the time you buy and ship everything that's collected in the webshop kits. Some parts are VERY difficult to find and shipping will cost far more than the part you're ordering. That said...
Can I even do this?
With enough time, effort, frustration tolerance and a modest amount of money, this is within anyone's grasp. There's some fiddly soldering involved, and with the current level of documentation, usually some research, some guessing, some finger crossing. Damien has done YouTube videos showing how to assemble some things with BASIC tools such as a soldering iron, solder, some de-solder braid, and flux. Unless your eyes are GREAT, you probably also want some magnification. Will you learn a lot from building your own boards? Not a ton, honestly, but there are basic concepts and skills involved that are good to know and serve as a foundation for other things. But it's good to just show yourself every now and then that you have hidden depths, right?
What else do I need to order?
<insert and comment on additional component BOM and needed programmers. mention on out-of-stock components>
Getting the files to send to JLCPCB
<insert step-by-step for downloading or cloning repos for public designs and whatever is needed to grab the patreon-only design files. insert links to examples>
For boards that have design files that have been made public, they will be available via github. Here is the Gen3 Toyota Prius repositorywhich contains schematics for several different boards, but only certain ones contain design files you can send to JLC.
If you're an experienced git user, feel free to clone the repository, but others may wish to select "Download ZIP" in the dropdown menu that appears when you press the friendly green "Code" button on the main page of the repository.
When the zip is downloaded, extract the contents to your computer or device in a location you can find again.
Navigate to the files you either cloned or extracted and look in the V1c folder. You may notice some files with "JLC" in the name. One of them should also contain "BOM", which stand for Bill of Materials, and another should contain the letters "CPL", which stands for Component Placement List. If those files are missing from the folder you open (V1d does not have public design files currently, for example, or a design may not been released at all) you will not be able to order a board for that design from JLC.
There should also be a zip file whose name may or may not contain the word "plots" and will have about the same timestamp as the BOM and CPL files. If all of your files have the same timestamp, refer back to your repository history or the github page where you can see the commit time for each file.
Now that you have your zip, BOM and CPL, proceed to the next section.
Placing your JLC order
<insert link to videos>
Open jlcpcb.com and get started on creating an account.
Once that's done, click "Order Now" and be taken to a quote/order page.
There's a lot going on here, but just start with clicking "Add gerber file". The page should now be prompting you for a file to upload. You want the .zip we found in the last section, probably called plots something. If you get it really wrong and try to upload something that isn't a gerber, JLC will tell you. They won't have any way to know if you sent them an old version, though, so be careful! If things went well, you should see images of the top and bottom of the board.
There are a lot of options you could choose now, but don't touch anything except maybe quantity. Minimum is 5 boards, but that is also the maximum that you can have assembled. This means that unless you're planning on placing ALL the components, including the truly tiny legs on the micros, there's no reason to get anything other than 5.
Stack-up
The next section to make changes is for specifying the "Layer stackup", aka layer order. This section is normally collapsed, so you'll have to click "Fill in your layer sequence" to see the layers L1-L4. The correct order for any known 4-layer designs we're concerned with is:
- Top Copper*
- VCC/5V
- GND (ground)
- Bottom Copper*
*Is this right? JLC only seems to get confused about the inner layers.
The next change to make is to enable the SMT assembly option which will reveal more options.
Select "Assemble top side".
Choose to have either 5 or 2 boards assembled.
For Tooling Holes, select "Added by customer".
On the right hand side of the screen under the running total, select "Next". You'll proceed to another screen where you upload the BOM and CPL files we found earlier.
Click "Add BOM File" and select the BOM to upload it.
Click "Add CPL File" and select the CPL file to upload that also. Click "Next".
Finally...
After uploading the CPL file, JLC will do some processing and give you a long-ish list of components that they do and do not have in stock, as well as some that might say "not selected", which are parts you need but JLC doesn't stock. Some you may already know about and have prepared for, like the "not selected"s. Others will feel like a cruel blow to your quest to build a really cheap invertery-related thing! It's far from the end of the road, just a new part of the adventure. JLC will let you know that anything not on that list will not be assembled onto your board, which is fair and reasonable. Take note of all the missing components, their manufacturer's part #s, and maybe also their component label (like D1) so you don't have to guess later. Once you've done that it's up to you whether to proceed with your order. Either way, skip ahead to the next section for a moment. If you come back, you basically just keep clicking things like "Next" and "Save to Cart" until they take your money.
Wait, what? I need to order more stuff now???
Components can and do go out-of-stock at JLC, or sometimes no component has been selected at all for some reason. As should be mentioned above, JLC shows you which components they do not stock or are out of stock and which have not been selected. You have three options. First, don't order boards until the component(s) with the shortage is in stock. You should verify that the component is actually going to be restocked! Second,
<create link to known and/or proposed component substitutions>
if there is stocked component that can be substituted (at your own risk, see link above) you need only change the component during the order process in the previous step before leaving the "Select Parts" page.
Finally, if for your own reasons you still want to keep going, you have a shot at finding the missing part by just plain old googling it and handing over money to digikey, mouser, or whomever. Assuming the processors are in stock and you don't have to do those, there's nothing on the board that will be harder to solder than, for example, the Gen3 Toyota board's 50-way connector to its IGBT driver board. <insert brief guide on how to search for components by manufacturer part#
Notes and useful links regarding assembly.
<step-by-step assemble--of what board tho?>
<insert links to damien (and...?) assembly videos, refer to "What else do I need to order" for useful extras like the techspray solder wick)>
Oh yeah...programming :)
<insert programming step-by-step including the wifi board>
Oh yeah...testing :/
<insert testing step-by-step --same q as above, testing of what board? better to link to board specific pages?>
Um, I guess I'll just buy a kit then?
That's great too! See openinverter webshop and evbmw webshop