For the last few days, Ive found myself with part of an IDE cable in my hand and an Xact-o knife slicing off the insulation. Not the safest, but not the best job to do either. I wonderred if it would be better to just use the IDE cable and make 3 custom boards that would split it into terminal strips! I had already bought about 200 strips of 3's and thought it would be great!
You would put one board on each control panel you have, and wire all the controls to the board. When youre ready to change panels, you unplug the IDE cable, slide your panel out, and hook the new one up! Seems simple at a small cost!
But then, if I print them myself, I need to buy etchant and special paper. If I go to a small company, they charge around 2 bucks for the board (not soldermasked or silkscreened...) and a 15 dollar setup fee... hardly worth it unless you run in quantities!
===========================================================================
So, the question is, who would be interested in a 2.5 x .5" circuit board that would connect their minipac to terminal strips? Im not sure of the price, but Im guessing it'll be around 10 dollars because terminal blocks are like 60 cents a shot! If I can find some on eBay again, Ill do that, but otherwise... it really depends on interest.
Who's with me?