Nicholas Ficara built 1750 event badges for Canada's Hack The North hackathon. It was his first badge production run. The gap between soldering a one-off prototype and delivering nearly two thousand working units on day one is the entire story.
Ficara used a structured series of prototype and release candidate stages, which proved necessary. Wrong footprints, misplaced components, power supply failures, and rotated parts all surfaced and were corrected before final delivery. The original writeup details exactly which errors appeared at which stage, making it a practical reference, not just a retrospective.
If you are planning any volume badge production, read the full post at va3ndf.com before you place your first order. The process decisions, not the final working badge, are what make this worth your time.
[READ ORIGINAL →]