It was amazing to wake up and see so many of you stepping up and pledging to the campaign. I want to thank you for putting your trust in this project and helping to bring it to life!

From here on, this update, and the ones that follow, will focus on the development and production status of the Sword. Each post will give a glimpse into the process of taking an idea and turning it into a finished product. The posts won’t necessarily be in chronological order, but they’ll cover different aspects of ideation, development, and production.

This update is about manufacturing: the story of how I finalized the manufacturer, what that takes, and the decisions that led up to production.

Oddly enough, most of the manufacturers reached out to me after the campaign pre-launch was announced, so I didn’t have to go hunting for them. Convenient, sure, but I imagine I would have contacted them all eventually anyway.

JLCPCB

Ordering through JLCPCB is a breeze. Their online auto-quote process is simple and seamless, especially with KiCad add-ons like Fabrication Toolkit. Costs do start to creep up as you go, though. For example:

Processing fees are expected, but I didn’t anticipate a reverse-mounted LED being treated as a special component. It’s not exactly rare. Otherwise, the order went smoothly and payment was made in full.

A few days later, I got this message from JLCPCB:

To backtrack: The Sword of Secrets has a small tab at the bottom, meant to be broken off and used as a shim for the USB port:

It’s just a tiny piece of FR4 with no copper, no routing, and no planes. Still, JLCPCB decided to treat it as a completely separate design. That meant an extra charge for a very small piece of PCB - which I paid.

Aside from that, there were no other surprises. The boards arrived paneled as requested a few weeks later, with an okay-ish finish and fully functional PCBs.

Elecrow

Elecrow approached me directly and assigned a representative to handle the entire process. They made sure the order was quoted, confirmed, and processed correctly.

Their PCB order form felt clunky, though. I wasn’t entirely sure I’d filled it out correctly and parts of it looked suspiciously familiar.

The order process was slower than I prefer, a few days for file inspection and approval before production. I prefer an instant-feedback system like JLC, but that’s just personal preference.

The boards arrived after a few weeks and were excellent. The production quality was high, the silkscreen was crisp, and the boards worked perfectly. If their order interface was better, I might use them full-time. The service was great, the product was excellent, though the price was a bit higher.

PCBWay

PCBWay also reached out to me early on. After weighing multiple factors, I chose them as my main manufacturer for the campaign, though I gave all the others a fair test.

From day one, someone was assigned to my order and guided me through the process. I did have to make some changes to the board for manufacturability.

Originally, I used the MSOP-10 version of the USB-to-Serial CH340 IC, which required very fine traces. PCBWay could only do those traces on green PCBs. A green Sword of Secrets wasn’t an option (unless it’s a future special edition), so I switched to the SOIC-12 version and adjusted the layout to fit. This change turned out to be a good one: the new IC is easier to source and more standard.

PCBWay also asked me to move vias off pads to avoid manufacturing complications. The PCB was basically finalized at that point, but I made the adjustments, double-checked everything, and submitted for production.

The boards arrived a few weeks later, well-paneled, great-looking, and fully functional.

Final Thoughts

All three manufacturers delivered great boards, each with their own strengths. JLCPCB is fast and straightforward, Elecrow impressed me with outstanding quality, and PCBWay combined strong communication with solid results.

For this campaign, PCBWay is handling production, but the journey with all three gave me valuable insights and confidence in the final choice. The Sword of Secrets is now in capable hands for manufacturing and I can focus on bringing the rest of the project to life.

Onward! Next update, I’ll dive into the next stage of turning the Sword from design files into something you can hold, plug in, and start hacking. Or… it’ll reveal some secret challenge! Stay tuned.