BatchPCB doubled my order

Forum 2005-2010 (read only) Hardware Development
1

I finally got my first PCB, a photo gate shield. I paid for one board and received two exacts. I was charged for one. Anyone with a similar experience? At first I thought they may have printed my top layer on one board and bottom layer on the other but both look complete. ;D
There's got be a catch, yeah?

2

There's got be a catch, yeah?

Yeah now you have to send that second one to meeeee! ;D

3

I've had the same thing happen. I don't remember where, but I have seen two explanations. First, if there's extra space on a panel, they may do multiples of smaller boards to use it up, and those people get the free copies. Secondly, if a panel comes back to them with a bad board, they run the whole panel again. If your PCB was the one that was bad, you only get the good PCB from the second run. If your PCB was not bad, you get the good parts from both runs.

4

First, if there's extra space on a panel, they may do multiples of smaller boards to use it up, and those people get the free copies. Secondly, if a panel comes back to them with a bad board, they run the whole panel again. If your PCB was the one that was bad, you only get the good PCB from the second run. If your PCB was not bad, you get the good parts from both runs.

Sounds highly plausible to me. Also, that's pretty nice of them :).

5

You gotta figure they have a relationship with their manufacturer that if a panel comes in with manufacturing defects, they're not paying (at least not full price) for the second run. . .

6

Same thing happened to me with my led matrix shield pcb.

So I have an extra, could be useful!
BTW does anyone know if the medium RG sparkfun led matrices have the same pinout as the small ones?

7

Haha! I didn't know if they both worked. First thing I did when I got up today was to solder everything together and snap pictures as I did. Still very excited now. Here is the photo album:
http://picasaweb.google.com/101109833558680146619/PhotogatePCBProject?feat=directlink

Final picture:

768×576 65.5 KB

8

I will do a continuity test on my second board. Is there any way to add text boxes on picasa like those on youtube? When you hover your mouse inside a rectangle text shows up with explanations.

Thanks to everyone that helped on this forum and good luck to first-time PCBers!