1. Home
  2. Electronics Design
  3. Advanced Circuits 4PCB

Advanced Circuits 4PCB

Ok, I know I've asked these questions a thousand times but heres the final one(as I'm ready to send off for fab).

I have an approximately 20x2.5 pcb(actually 19.5x2.3). It is non-rectanular(sorta tapers) and consists of 2 layers with about 350

10mil(hole) vias. It has a total of 222 components. About 20 IC's in 32-pin QFN's and 1 28-pin TQFP. The rest are 402's and a few 603's and 805's. (might add a few larger bypass caps before I send). Traces are all around 10mil's with a few larger and I think none are smaller. I think all spacing is > 10mils.

4pcb quotes me around 20-25$(depending on how I select a few variables such as copper thickness and "extra room", etc...) for 30-42.

This seems like a rather good deal from what I've seen. Most others won't even go up past about 14" to 15" so I'm kinda SOOL there anyways.

In any case, everything seems to look good from the quote. Anyone have any experience with this site as far as reputation and quality? I'm a bit worried because they kinda spammed my email when I registered and there site looks a little low quality.

Or anyone know of another fab that can do the size I need at around 20$ @ about 30-40? I was thinking that I could split the board in 2 halves but this is far from ideal. The biggest problem is that I would have to connect them back in a seemless way with some mechanical strength(with no significant change in the profile). While this isn't difficult the real challenge is being able to do this in the gerber files. (if I could simply cut them and drag the other half around then it wouldn't be an issue and I might go down that route)

Reply to
Jon Slaughter
Loading thread data ...

Pcbcart.com quote is ~7$ + $65 tooling, +shipping.I use them for all my boards. Excellent service all round, especially their front end design rule checking.

Reply to
TTman

I got a total cost of about 450$ for 30 boards. If this is approximately the cost with no hidden charges(a forced test) then it seems like a much better deal. They don't mention the maximum board size though.

It seems cheaper... I hope without a loss of quality.

One thing. Do you think it is an issue to get them v-scored properly long the pcb as it is not-rectangular(in fact I would like to get them to cut it exactly out... it needs to be done by a machine and not by hand and I don't really want to do it myself).

Strange though,

When I do 30 20x2.5 boards I get a quote of 450$ yet when I do 5 20x15 it costs 200$ more in tooling. Hence doing individual boards is much cheaper which seems counter intutitive because I imagine they are going to panelize them anyways?

Anyways, I'll give them a call today or tomorrow and see what they say.

Reply to
Jon Slaughter

They can do panneling with V scoring. There seems to be a small bug in their panneling tooling. I think they assume panneling to them ( as far as quoting goes) means different circuits on one panel. I just did a 5x5 total size 7.6" x 4.6" tooling cost was 'correct'. I usually do the step ups myself and treat it as one board.Then I get the 'right' tooling costs. redo the quote as 20x15, 6 off.

Reply to
TTman

l

in

ng

ch

y

ite

ct

y
I

Hi Jon, We get most of our PCB's from advanced circuits. There were one or two times in the past where a board was 'bad'. (Some fly spec of copper shorting out a trace to ground...) I think we now pay the one time charge to have an electrical test run on all PCB's and have not had any further problems.

George H.

Reply to
George Herold

(snip)

We/ve ordered heaps from pcbcart and never had a quality issue.

From pcbcart I've had straight-line (i.e. rectangular board) V-scoring but usually get the boards completely router separated.

Reply to
who where

I have had a few runs fab'd there. Good quality, can't complain.

There I can't help you much. My recent projects went turn-key where they take care of board fab, purchasing the parts and assembly. The last one was done here:

formatting link 

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

"gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam.
Use another domain or send PM.
Reply to
Joerg

SNIP

In the UK..... I had the recent pleasure of a tour of the facilities at sti-limited.com. Amazing place, esp. the 127K components p/hr pick &place.Can do down to 1-005 parts- so long as you can see them to load the machine lol. Ultra impressive bga rework area ( fixing track errors under the BGA.) with a 'sandwich' pcb.Not cheap tho, as most of their work is to Mil/aerospace specs, so they have leaded as well as ROHS/lead free lines.

Reply to
TTman

Thanks for the hint. I will have a super-tiny placement project coming up a little over a year from now so I bookmarked them in case we can't find a provider in the US. Not sure how the situation is now but last time (late 90's) we could not find anyone who'd offer placement accuracy to with a few micrometers. So we had to build our own stuff and do it. Don't really want to do that again.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

"gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam.
Use another domain or send PM.
Reply to
Joerg

ElectronDepot website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.