Seeed brings you Open Parts Library
Do you remember the last time you designed a board? Was it a hassle sourcing your components from multiple vendors? Were you frustrated paying multiple shipping costs?
We’re familiar with those issues and other PCB design headaches, so we created OPL v1, an Open Parts Library that includes more than 100 commonly used components. Besides being an economical master toolbox filled with all of your essential building blocks, there are several other compelling reasons to use the Open Parts Library for your next design
- Accelerated Design Time
Ø Not only are the components offered at a great price, but when combined with our express PCB printing service, your design time is greatly accelerated. We accept small batch PCB orders of 2-10 pieces. And we offer to help you solder those OPL components to your board. We charge $0.05 per pin for SMD and $0.04 per pin for DIP.
Ø We also created the OPL Eagle library, making it easy to include these items in your design. In addition, datasheets and 3-D modules will be available for each of the components.
Ø Another goal of OPL is to shorten the lead time to bring your product to market. In other words, we will always have the components adequately stocked, so that no matter what stage you are in the design process, like prototyping or bulk production, the components will always be available and manufacturing can begin at any moment.
- DFM (Design for Manufacturability) Ready
Your costs will be negatively impacted if your design is difficult to manufacture, but this won’t be an issue when using OPL. All of the components in OPL were selected with manufacturability in mind. In the early stages, your design can easily be prototyped as the components are large enough to be hand-placed and hand-soldered. And later when you are ready for volume manufacturing, OPL components are easily assembled as they don’t require precision equipment to manufacture.
- High Quality
We’ve selected OPL components from established, long-term partners that we at Seeed have used ourselves in our own designs countless times.
Please send us your comments via email, we value your input.
Enjoy!
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Hello!
First of all, congratulations for this great idea!
The assembly cost and limitations are very clearly stated at your website.
I can not however find nowhere how much you charge for each specific part. Is there a price-list ? For example, if I want 5 SMD resistors assembled, it will cost me PCB cost + 10$(basic cost) + 0.05(SMD)x 5 + OPL component cost, correct ? where is the component cost stated on your website ?
Thank you!
Hi Nick,
Thank you so much for your feedback!:D
i have written down all your suggestions on my notebook and they have become tasks for me to follow~~
For what it’s worth, my criticism is intended as friendly – I think it’s a great idea that could be even better. One other item of feedback – the parts list could use a short english description of each part (eg, ‘3.3v LDO’, ‘USB Micro socket’, etc).
For USB, what would make me prefer 3400030P1 over 3400020P1? They have slightly different footprints, but I can’t think of a secnario that would make me choose one over the other.
Oops on the RJ45. Maybe include a magjack, too?
The LDOs seem to have two main axes – high power vs low power, and 3.3v vs 5v. As it is, though, you have a 0.15A 3.3v, 1A 3.3v, 0.5A 5v, a 250mA 3.3v (the XC6206P332MR, which isn’t notated as such in the table), a second 1A 3.3v (CJA1117B-3.3), and a 1A 5V. It seems to me that they could be thinned down to perhaps three – low-noise LDO low-power 3.3v, high power 3.3v, and high power 5v.
For the crystal, I was thinking of the SMD HC49 type, but on reflection there’s probably no more point providing both that and the compact one than there is providing two variants of USB micro socket.
A couple of comments on the caps: The xtal is 8pF, but you don’t include 8pF ceramic caps. Also, I’m sure I’m not the only person who avoids tantalums; I’d personally rather see a few more ceramics and maybe some SMT electrolytics.
– Why so many variants of some parts like USB Mini connectors? There’s a lot of nearly-identical LDOs, too.
– Why include an ethernet transformer in the inductors section, but no RJ45 socket in the connectors section?
– Wouldn’t it make sense to include a ‘standard’ size crystal as well as the miniature one?