Last week was shopping time. And it really surprised me how much time it took!
Electronic components:
This was the major time consumer. It seems like an easy task to just add all the components on the BOMs to a cart and checkout, but first you must find a suitable component for each one. I also tried to avoid items shipped from Newark, as they had a supplement of 18€ for shipping. Finally there was a resistor value only available from Newark, so I had to pay for the extra shipping. Farnell’s method of quickly importing a list of reference codes and quantities also proved itself as very useful and saved time.
At the end, I ended paying 39 € for shipping and VAT.
This is the box full of smd components worth 200€.
PCB:
I ordered my PCBs through OSHpark. As I wanted them to reach me as soon as possible I also selected express Shipping. The boards were sent to fab the last 29th of April.
Quantity | Description | Price |
3x | Wireless Power Transmitter | $18.85 |
3x | Wireless Power Receiver | $4.45 |
Shipping | $25.00 | |
Total: | $ 48.3 | |
Stencils
Both my receiver board and specially the transmitter have quite a lot of pretty small components. There are several methods of placing the solder paste on the boards. You can place it by hand, with a small vacuum pump or with a stencil. Good stencils are very expensive, but there also are stencils made of Kapton tape. I ordered one for each of my boards at OSHStencils
Quantity | Description | Price |
3x | Wireless Power Transmitter Stencil |
|
3x | Wireless Power Receiver Stencil |
|
Shipping |
| |
Total: | $ 23.87 | |
Coils:
Würth Electronics was very nice and offered to supply additional coils on request. I contacted Christian and asked for three emitter and three receiver coils. I was very pleased to find out that he answered in less than 10 minutes, and my coils have already arrived at home.
I also noticed that the datasheet for the evaluation receiver board has the wrong reference number for the receiver coil (760308201 instead of 760308202, which I checked lifting the coil from the plastic support.
Quantity | Description | Farnell Ref. | Price |
3x | Transmitter Coil |
| |
3x | Receiver Coil |
| |
Shipping | $0.00 | ||
Total: | $ 0.00 | ||
ICs:
I ordered the ICs samples on TI website. Delivery was very fast.
Now I’m waiting for the boards to arrive and then the hard work will begin. I’m starting to get nervous by looking at the size of the components, and really have my finger crossed hoping it all turns out well.
