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Old 03-22-2009, 07:53 PM   #616 (permalink)
MPaulHolmes
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Join Date: Feb 2008
Location: Maricopa, AZ (sort of. Actually outside of town)
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Michael's Electric Beetle - '71 Volkswagen Superbeetle 500000
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My loose plan was to do up a super careful set of directions, and it would be nice if there could be at least 10 kits so that the prices at Digikey would be like 20% cheaper (because 10 is often the magic number for volume discounts). Then people would make their own. The directions will be simple enough that it would just be tedious and not very technical. People might have to outsource for their power board etching. I could do it, but it takes a few hours on the mill. I heard that china does it in bulk for like $40 or $45 per board, but there's also shipping. I might charge something like $35 or $40, since it's really tedious, but better than working at Taco Bell, which I might have to do this summer. Grr...!

Other than etching the power board, I think there are no other special tools other than drills and screw drivers and a soldering iron and high wattage soldering gun (for the power section). The gun can be bought for $30. I could do the soldering too. Maybe there could be different categories of assembly. Partially assembled, no assembly, etc... If it takes none of my time, then it won't cost anything (all the directions will be free of course)!

I'm hoping to maybe also sell the occasional controller on Ebay to supplement the cost of improvements like Sync-Rect and much higher power versions. Maybe even an IGBT version and an AC controller, and charger. All open source of course!
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