Some things are just better together: chocolate and peanut butter, apple-pie and ice-cream, and Royal Circuits & Ponoko (the cloud-to-robot laser cutting service).
For the month of March, Royal Circuit Solutions and Ponoko (www.ponoko.com) will partner to offer a deal that’s too good to pass up. Ponoko customers will receive 20% off of new-customer orders placed at Royal Circuit Solutions, and Royal Circuit customers will receive 20% off of new-customer orders placed at Ponoko. You must be a new customer and use coupon codes PONOKO20 and ROYAL20 when ordering.
What can you do with the savings? The only limit is your imagination. And just in case your imagination is limited, here are a few ideas from my limited imagination (I basically stole every one of these from the Ponoko blog and am going to pretend they are all mine. It’s a solid strategy and I highly recommend it.)
Spring-Loaded Test-Pin Test Fixture
Use Ponokos acrylic cutting service to create a test fixture jig that you can use to test and program your PCB. Spring-loaded test pins are available from all major electronics retailers, as well as some guy on Craigslist named “Bob.” But Bob seems to be a bit sketchy, if you buy from Bob, I’d be sure to meet in a public place and maybe pack some heat.
Create a Project Case
A project isn’t a project unless it has a case to hide the shame of your poor soldering skills from the casual observer. Ponoko’s laser-cut plastic cases give your projects an air of professionalism they likely don’t deserve. I mean it’s either make a case or cover the PCB in liquid electrical tape, and the case allows you to make changes later. Besides, liquid electrical tape is really, really hard to get out of cat-hair, or so I’ve heard. I mean, who hasn’t heard that, right?
Make LED Edge-Lit Displays
Nothing engraves quite as beautifully as cast acrylic. By layering a variety of cast acrylic sheets and illuminating them individually from the edges with LEDs, you can create changing displays, changing clocks, or changing smiley faces with various amounts of smile to reflect your quixotic moods.
Make a Nixie Tube Clock Case
If you’re like me, you don’t have your Nixie Tube clock on display in your office because you can’t remember where you put it. I mean, you know it’s somewhere safe because you put it there after you made it so that nothing would happen to it. But now it’s still in that safe spot, wherever that safe spot might be, and you don’t quite know where the safe spot is. Why not make a custom laser-cut wooden case for your Nixie-tube clock? Then, when you find it again, you can put it in the case, and then put them both somewhere safe, together.
Custom Metal Control Panel
Ponoko’s lasers can cut through more than just paper, plastic, and wood. They can cut through metals. Thick metals, thin metals, little bitty wee-metals, they can even turn them up to 11 and cut through chonky metals. And what’s more, they can write on metals too. I mean, I don’t know about you — but having a laser-engraved and laser-cut display case would surely be a step up from my current control panels that I make out of popsicle sticks and macaroni.
Make a Solder-Paste Stencil
Only idiots spend their Saturday nights sitting in front of a dying fire, eating cold pizza and drinking warm coke, applying solder paste with a micro-syringe and wondering why their daddy never loved them. Order a stencil from Ponoko and be the man I never was — or woman. I mean, you do you. But you’ll be a better you with a laser-cut stencil.
Act Now or Later
I mean act when you want to act. I’m not trying to tell you how to live your life. But if you act during the month of March, you’ll get 20% off. That’s 20% less than you will pay in April. That’s 20% less money you have to pay, or 25% more stuff you can order for the same price! Seriously, check the math, it all adds up! But it only works during the month of March. In April, you’re out of luck since Royal Circuits and Ponoko will probably want to start turning a profit again.
How To Get A 20% Rebate From Ponoko
1) Place your order on their website.
2) Message Ponoko this special rebate code: ROYAL20
3) Ponoko will immediately refund you 20% off your laser cutting fee.
Please note: This offer is for 20% off your laser cutting fee, from $1 to $1,000, during March 2020. It is not for setup, materials or shipping fees. May not be used in conjunction with any other promotion.
