Another PCB Fab Thread

Den onsdag den 6. april 2016 kl. 17.39.40 UTC+2 skrev rickman:

-Lasse

The ones I use the most

pcbcart.com - china

I use advanced assembly - great results so far.

I occasionally use Sunstone. The're more expensive than OshPark for short runs, but much faster.

OshPark claims to use on-shore PCB houses -- you could ask him and see if he's willing to share.

I used Sunstone once for an important order. They lost my credit card number and rather than telling me they just put the order on hold pending payment. I found out about it when the boards didn't arrive! I called them several times but they just insisted the problem was mine and the proceeded to lose my credit card number *again*!!! My schedule was wrecked and my customer pissed!

To add insult to injury, the boards had a high drop out rate with some panels x'ing out half the boards. Of the ones that supposedly passed electrical test about 20% would never work. Good thing they were prototypes. I never ordered another thing from Sunstone. I still have the 1 GB flash stick they sent the panelized Gerbers back on. I fondly think of them every time I use it.

I bookmarked this a while back:

I just came across it while looking for something else.

Wow! 10 each, 10x10 cm, 4 layer boards for $50 in 8 days plus shipping if you aren't happy with the sometimes very slow Hong Kong post. That is amazingly cheap.

There are a few others with similar pricing, e.g. Elecrow. I have used both with good results. DirtyPCB will also do larger boards if asked. Not for quite such ridiculously low prices but still very good.

Also see if you have not already.

I looked at the Elecrow web site and it basically didn't work. The page for 4 layer boards only had 1 and 2 layers as options and other problems.

PCBshopper is interesting.

We've just had some back from there - simple 2 layer, HASL, for 10 pounds including shipping. Quality looked nice. (HASL gives a slight non-planarity in the solder dip, but that's fine for many applications)

Theo

Seeed Studio also has some cheap pcb fab:

Yes, their prices are not bad, didn't check the specs. I was looking at pricing options and they said it was +$30 to panelize 4 boards, but they added $60 to the order. I guess they double the charge for 4 layer boards. What's with that anyway? How do they have a higher cost for panelized boards?

I checked the specs and they get pretty sloppy for 4 layer boards. Not sure why the inner layers have worse trace/space than outer, but it's

That is for 2oz copper. For the usual 1oz Cu it's 6 mil outer and 8 mil inner layer. Surcharge for panelized boards applies only if the boards are different. The higher price is probably for the additional processing step for V-cuts.

You misunderstand what I wrote. Inner layer is 8 mil trace, 10 mil space regardless of copper thickness. They list copper thickness of the outer layer as 1 or 2 oz and don't distinguish between these for the trace resolution. The inner layers are always 0.5 oz., so the inner layer trace width would not vary based on outer layer thickness.

They also mix units between mm and mils as the selected unit for the spec. Example, Minimum inner trace width (for 4 layer) 0.204 mm, 8 mil. Drilling Hole Diameter (Mechanical) 0.3 mm, 11.81 mil. It would be nice if they used the same unit type as the primary units for all the specs.

Specs in mm are annoying. Does anybody work in mm for pcb designing?

Yes, most of the world does.

Apart from Americans, I think it is just older Brits that use metric units for any sort of specifications. It is not uncommon to use mils for approximate numbers for track width and spacing, simply because you get nice numbers like 8 mil rather than 0.2 mm. But when you need accurate numbers, metric is how almost everyone outside the USA does it.

Wow, I thought everybody works in mils for pcb designing... I'm not american, but I work in mils for pcb layout since I started my career in embedded systems, 20 years ago...