The first batch of ANAVI Macro Pad 2 gold-plated printed circuit boards (PCBs) is ready!

The fabrication includes a procedure called panelization which groups together a number of PCBs on a larger board called a "panel". Each panel for ANAVI Macro Pad 2 contains nine boards. All the boards on the panel are gold plated using an electrolytic nickel-gold process. Although gold is expensive and significantly increases the overall cost of the product, it is totally worth it. The benefits of gold-plated PCBs are excellent quality with high hardness, and wear and oxidation resistance.

In the above photo, you can see a panel after surface mount technology (SMT) assembly was done at a local factory in my hometown of Plovdiv, Bulgaria. This the most difficult and important stage of the manufacturing, but there are still plenty of follow-up tasks. THese include manual soldering of switches and the 3mm LEDs to the developer kits, flashing the micronucleus bootloader and the QMK firmware, testing, and finally packaging.

Thank you again for supporting ANAVI Macro Pad 2! If you haven’t placed an order yet, please do to make sure you will be among the very first owners of this tiny, open source mechanical keyboard.

Thanks, Leon