I'm Artem. I assembled Softpad with six Kailh Choc Brown keys, a shared 1.3-inch OLED and a printed PETG case and stand. I sell it assembled under Nuvko.

The labels sit above the keys rather than on them. They're names set by the user in a browser configurator, not commands discovered from applications. For a six-key layout, what would you want to see in the photo to judge whether each label clearly matches its key?

Saved shortcuts work without the companion running; automatic app-profile switching needs the Mac or Windows companion. I used AI help with the code, and this post is AI-assisted too.

Setup and test notes (https://nuvko.works/#setup): configuration uses desktop Chrome or Edge with the companion paused or closed. The Windows companion is unsigned; the Mac companion is ad-hoc signed and not notarized. Fresh-computer installation checks remain unfinished. The page gives OS requirements and version-specific test limits.

Hi everyone! Thanks to the mods for approving this post.

A friend of mine is launching Aximelo, a custom CNC manufacturing service for hardware startups and engineers who need prototypes or small-batch production (1–50 parts).

They're looking for early customers ahead of their November launch.

Early Customer Offer:

Join a 20-minute research call (no sales pitch, no recording) and choose one of two rewards:

• 3 free CNC-machined parts — up to $500 per part, all costs included. Subject to machining capabilities; valid for 6 months.
• Free lifetime VIP membership — 10% off every order.

Interested? Email [contact@aximelo.com](mailto:contact@aximelo.com) or visit https://www.aximelo.com.

What's your biggest frustration with CNC prototyping — pricing, lead times, or quality?

I’m hearing about real companies running fully agentic AI software factories and I want to know what the current state of the art AI business architecture is for hardware engineering.

I’m the CTO and cofounder of an AgTech company in the UK. We’ve taken 4 products to market across the globe, raised a good chunk of VC and are seeing good revenue growth. Not profitable yet, but we are on our way.

But we started the business in 2015, way before AI, and I’ve been so busy building the whole company ‘the old way’ (Real FEA, CAD, Electronics prototyping and design) I fear I’m behind the curve and stuck in my ways. I want to explore how people are doing it now.

In particular I’ve got some friends working in software startups with a fully agentic infrastructure. From app features, to marketing. I thought I would ask you likeminded people, what’s the best equivalent you have seen in hardware engineering and physical product development?

Thanks in advance

As a founder or co-founder, what strategies do you use to minimize the risk to your personal assets when doing a hardware startup?

I understand the right business structure, insurance, etc helps. But the thing with hardware is that anything you sell might still be used by people long after you shut down the business. I'm trying to think through how to minimize my personal liability in case the business doesn't succeed and I shut it down in the future. (Obviously I don't want to buy insurance forever)

Would having an engineering firm do the design help? Getting necessary certifications? It's not a dangerous product nor is it electronics, but I want to think thru the risks before I launch anything.

I would appreciate any insights.

Thanks

A 2 × 2 mm BGA, fully fanned out on a single layer, with 50 µm traces running between the pads. PCB fabrication took about 15 minutes, right on my desk. I then assembled it by hand.

Our guaranteed specs are 75 µm traces and 75 µm clearances. This board uses 50 µm traces and clearances down to about 70 µm—a little demonstration of the headroom beyond those specs.

The board also has 1 × 1 mm addressable LEDs with four pads each. PewCB One made the solder-paste stencil too, cutting the openings directly over the PCB pads.

Let me know what you’d like to see tested next.

For more experiments like this and to chat with our team, join our Discord.

More about PewCB One.

Hey Everyone,

I know there are a huge number of ATS optimisation tools for Job Seekers. But I found gap where tab switching is required to optimise a resume for every job profile. Specifically for technical people. Where candidates apply with simple wording, without any specialist verification. AI is the specialist for them. But AI adds too must text that is not necessary, and the main highlights fade off.

1. Another pain point is tab switching, where candidates need to switch tabs and use resume optimisation platforms in the free plan and add AI content there.

2. Job Application tracking: this feature is available in paid plans only, but I am giving this free to all of you.

3. Expert review option for candidates where your CV gets evaluated by an industry expert. I have hired people in the backend who will verify and give you a report for this.

4. Skill gap analysis:- actually specific job description is needed to apply, or not; my tool will suggest it to you.

Check out my tool; let me know your suggestions in the comments

Hello all,

I’m a new grad electrical engineer. I have a bunch of plans for myself and am trying and planning towards getting there. I currently have two designs for products I want to use as a start for trying out business. I also do some freelancing. They are on pause right now because I am building up my home lab, money limited so I’m just trying my best to get it up and running and save. Anyways, let’s say it’s running February next year, now I can order the PCBs, start testing, troubleshooting, reiterating etc then getting to a final revision that I’m ready to send for compliance.

Current plans are to start an online master’s fall 2027 since I work full time. But I was thinking about it last night and I’m worried about the time commitment. As it is now, just working, nothing else really tho I will soon start studying for something but that will be done before next fall, I barely do anything after work on weekdays, just resting, eat dinner then go to bed. Weekends I’m recovering from the week then it’s Monday again. I was planning to do 2 classes a semester so ik summer will be a nice reprieve to focus on my products more but I also worry about speed and efficiency to go to market.

So for the product side, current plan is starting social media content once I have my lab and trying to build community, interest and audience then when I’m at my final version, hopefully, with enough crowd, I can put it on kickstarter to get some funds for first production bath and certifications especially (FCC and CE, unintentional radiators for both but there’s I2C and SPI lines and it still needs these certs even when there’s no RF or anything). By fall 2027, I’m def hoping at least to be at the point where I’m ready for certs. But ik when it’s fully live, I need to be able to regularly respond to customers, check reviews (probably going to scope out creators I can communicate with and see if I can send some boards out), and just keep testing new PCBAs I get.

Sorry this is long. So for the master’s, I was planning two classes a semester to finish in 2.5 years. My employer is paying but I need to stay 2 years after I graduate or I will have to pay back some money. So doing 1 class a semester means 5 years plus extra 2.

What do yall think? I’m open to advice or just hearing others that may have more experience.

Video from our Yuyao (China) factory SMT floor. First-person walkthrough, ~33 seconds.

The line in order:

• Loader conveyor, PCB rides on green belts straight into the line
• High-speed chip shooter doing the bulk passives (screen on it was showing ~24k placements/hour class numbers)
• Adjacent multi-function mounter for the higher-precision parts, vision-aligned
• Unloader, then boards roll straight into the reflow oven entrance

No operators on the line itself — it runs auto load/unload the whole way. Workshop is kept clean, boards stay traceable from loading through reflow.

I am joining the CIIF (Chinese International Industry Affair) , Any body here?
Want to find a company.

I'm in the process of getting my Android app approved for the Play store, but I need more testers. Please help me out if you can and feel free to check out the project.

https://intellikeep.net/app-testers

I’ve never found a satisfactory way to organize and archive hardware projects, and I’m curious what everyone else uses. At an old job, I worked at a job shop doing device design. We’d have ~10-20 projects a year in various stages of completion. We’d finish a machine or prototype, move on, and then inevitably have to revisit it six months or a year later.

It was always the same song and dance: find all the old hardware, set the system back up, reconnect the I/O, USB hubs, programmers, power supplies, etc., figure out how everything was wired, and hope we hadn’t borrowed some important piece for another project.

Sometimes we’d mount things to DIN rail or 3D print fixtures, but there was never really a good way to store a project as a complete “thing” that you could put on a shelf and come back to later.

I’ve run into basically the same problem with personal projects. My bench ends up covered in PCBs, breadboards, USB hubs, power supplies and jumper wires. Everything feels temporary and fragile, and tearing down a project means knowing I’ll have to rebuild the whole setup if I want to work on it again.

So I’ve been thinking about making something specifically for this.

Basically, a cheap ~12” × 12” “optical breadboard” style plate with a 1” grid of threaded holes. Instead of optics, you’d 3D print little mounts for whatever you’re using PCBs, breadboards, DIN rail, USB hubs, displays, power supplies, motors, sensors, etc and bolt everything down.

The plate would sit on top of a shallow parts-storage box, so the project-specific cables, adapters, spare PCBs, hardware, etc. could live underneath it. Ideally the whole thing would stack, so when you’re done with a project you unplug the external power/network connections, put it on a shelf, and six months later pull it out basically as you left it. Of course there's things you're gonna take away like a scope probe or expensive equipment but i'm trying to minimize setup cost.

I’m looking into having the plates made in quantity, and I think I could realistically get the whole thing into the ~$30–50 range rather than the hundreds of dollars that actual optical breadboards cost.

Before I go too far down this rabbit hole do you guys have any better solution or would something similar be of use to anyone else.

我是来自Vibay的Hetty，这是一家加速硬件产品创新的原型初创公司。 当第一个伴随者设备准备好成为实体产品时，我们可以负责电子和机械开发，交付一个功能齐全、外观良好、可编程的原型，即使还需要氛围编码，也能不断完善。 我们的快速开发服务起价为4000美元，交付时间最短可达45天，视具体范围而定。 当您的下一个创意准备好时，欢迎随时提醒我们：https://vibay.ai/

hey all - where are you guys buying mechanical components (screws, nuts, standoffs and brackets) in small QTY for prototyping? :)

Couldn't find a real numbers anywhere so here's ours. Small consumer electronics accessory, two custom injection molds plus one silicone gasket mold. Three Shenzhen factories quoted $3,400 to $5,400 total. One things I didn't know was that the molds stays at the factory and moving it is complicated. So the factory you pick for tooling is basically who you're locked into

Hey, I’m working on an open source remote control. I can manage the PCB design and manufacturing. But for the enclosure ergonomics I’m wondering what the best route would be.

Getting new molds is expensive, remotes are a commodity basically. Would be nice for assembly to be handled as well but could manage that elsewhere.

White label sorts or similar?

Hey, we’re currently looking into how to improve the DfM-to-production pipeline (designing, finding manufacturers, etc.) for hardware start-ups. We’re mainly trying to learn where the process breaks down for people.

If you’ve been through this (especially at medtech or robotics start-ups), DM us with your experiences and any tools you’ve used.

If you’re going through it right now, please DM too. We’d love to hear how you’re approaching it.

Twelve of us and we ship a first real production run in March. Right now the BOM lives in a spreadsheet and the revision history lives in whoever last touched the file. Both of the tools in the title come up constantly for teams our size and the pricing is close enough that it is not the deciding factor. What I care about is change orders and giving a contract manufacturer access that does not need a full seat. Which one did you regret less a year in?

Hi all,

I've been the founder of a hardware startup for the last 6 years, and exited a few months ago.

We were a VC backed company, raising double digits $. Sold around $700k on Kickstarter and then moved onto our own website and got to about $2.5m in revenue.

Our product was fully manufactured in Shenzhen (5 factories total) but shipped globally - supply chain was a nightmare.

We went through some failures, massive spikes in BOM out of nowhere (we manufactured during the COVID semiconductor crisis), but ultimately managed to figure it out and got to a stable supply chain.

Happy to chat and answer any questions :)

Just a tentative reach out to see what’s there!

I'm very interested in building a product, and will build it no matter what. AI decomps of video games, the PS5 emulation scene - these advancements have got me wondering where the defensibility of hw will be in the future.

JLC already makes simple boxes around a PCB. This is not that.

Validating an idea. Blunt feedback wanted.

Workflow I'm testing: 1. Start from the whole device, not just a board: internals, keep-outs, ports, and the look you want 2. AI helps you iterate the outer form until you actually like it 3. Once the shape is locked, we turn it into a developable surface: an unfoldable shell that can be made as the equipment enclosure, not a pretty mesh 4. You get a prototype manufacturing quote from us, meant to land below typical US bureau prices 5. Preview is free. Downloading the STEP costs money. If you order the prototype from us, the STEP is included.

Price anchors I'm testing: - STEP export: about $29 - Prototype enclosure (print or simple formed/CNC shell): often $149-399 depending on size and process

Three questions: 1. Is "AI for the look, then a real developable shell for the whole device, plus a cheaper prototype quote" something you'd pay for? 2. Would you pay for the STEP alone, or only if we also make the part? 3. What makes you close the tab: the AI shape not being good enough, uploading the design, China manufacturing trust, or the price?

If this is the wrong sub, say where it belongs.

Hi everyone! We're developing PewCB, a PCB prototyping machine. The project grew out of our own need to prototype electronics quickly. As soon as we had an early prototype that could make PCBs, we started using it to develop the machine itself.

Here is a story on how we developed one interesting function of PewCB. The machine has a sliding tray on the front, which is used to load PCB blanks. It is actuated by a stepper motor and a lead screw. When the tray is fully closed, we need to apply a specific force to lock it against its stops. We use a spring-loaded nut for this. Once the tray reaches the fully closed position, the motor makes a few extra revolutions, compressing the springs and providing the force needed to hold it against the stops.

To measure deflection, we devised a position sensor made up of a digital magnetometer and three magnets with alternating polarity. When we move the sensor along the magnets, the magnetic vector rotates almost proportionally to the displacement. The sensor picks up even small changes in position with very low latency, so the system can respond quickly to changes in force.

This force sensor also has another use: detecting obstructions. If something gets in the way as the tray is opening or closing, the controller detects it immediately and stops the tray or reverses the movement. Also the entire tray acts as one big button. Instead of aiming at the eject icon on the screen, you can simply push the tray to close it.

By the time we had started developing this subsystem, the key parts of the machine were already working, and we could make boards with it. We prototyped the assembly using 3D printing for the mechanical parts and PewCB for the electronics. We needed to check whether we'd chosen the correct magnetometer sensitivity and magnet size, what signal-to-noise ratio we'd get from the sensor, and whether external interference would have a noticeable effect on the measurements.

The whole process took a few days, but it allowed us to build a production version of the assembly, with an aluminum tray frame and a brass nut, in a single iteration. We got to experience the pure joy of engineering and we wish you feel the same way about your own prototyping endeavors!

For more info about the machine join our Discord or visit our website pewcb.com

2 years ago I began working on my side project and we were able to sell more than 260 units to 240+ customers in our first month! We received our FCC certification yesterday. Deliveries begin in December.

Campaign page for anyone that wants to take a look!

Very exciting times ahead, can't wait for the next chapter.

we make a modular bike light and the campaign goes live mid november. all 3 of us are engineers and our instagram has 9 posts. we need a content calendar for the 6 weeks before launch plus someone answering comments during the campaign. the names that keep coming up are vista social, metricool and loomly. what does a sane prelaunch social plan look like for a team like ours??