Cheap PCB fab place (for non-urgent stuff)

Just have the boards gold plated. The ROHS HAL finishing is okay these days. There are also silver plated boards but these are slightly harder to solder. I spray those with flux the minute they arrive.

For the UK they come straight from China, don't know about USA.

One caveat, for production quantities of 2 layer boards I recommend you specify e-test. You will probably get lucky and be fine, but I once had a batch with 5% fails. The "flying probe" test has low setup but adds a fixed ~$0.60 per board. This actually makes a big difference to production costs because the unit price is otherwise so cheap! OTOH the "bed of nails" test has high setup but no added cost per board. e-test is included anyway with 4+ layer AIUI.

That's what I did once. It cost extra but the boards sure looked posh, like jewelry. The client was mighty impressed :-)

Do they still do nickel-plating these days? Soon I'll have to design one that needs an RF tight contact to an aluminum enclosure. In the good old days one could have aluminum nickel-plated but lately all sorts of environmetal laws threw all that a curve.

I like the electrolytic gold boards, which are available at no premium AFAIR, but not RoHS solder. The gold-plated boards will work in either case, and seem to last very well on the shelf, even if you don't take special precautions against like avoiding cardboard (sulphur).

How's the pad adhesion on those, when some g-forces tug on a large SMT part?

Oh, shelf life can reliably be reduced on those as well. Just pick up chain smoking, but the real stuff such as Bull Durham :-)

They do ship direct from China to the USA.

Cheers

They guys that make stuff that go into things that fly, avoid BGA's like the plague.

Cheers

They must do nickel plating plating prior to gold plating, otherwise the copper will migrate in to the gold and corrode it. I know of no other metal that would be substituted.

Cheers

Have seen no problems with the electrolytic gold. Thicker gold, OTOH, I've seen issues, but that costs $$$.

Yuk. I could dribble slightly used chewin' tobaccer on them too.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

We do our own pick&place but would never consider doing our own PCBs. Too much EPA nonsense. We do have a prototype machine, but it been sitting in its shipping crate for four or five years.

Two or three hours is *far* more than the cost of these proto-houses. Figure at least $100/hr for everyone involved.

Who maintains the tanks? Does the EPA paperwork? Pays the fines for spills? No thanks.

I meant nickel sans the gold step. But I assume they would. The other side would be the aluminum. In the late 80's that was not a problem but with all the new rules and regs, who knows?

I design stuff that goes into things that fly :-)

But that's not the only reason why I avoid them.

Cool! It's bookmarked.

Me too, y'aall but I learned how to snip YEARS ago. PLEASE SNIP. PLEASE SNIP.

Jim

Still wanting that sex change?

AFAIK BGAs are based on an FR4-ish laminate so it can bend along with the PCB. In my experience some assembly houses do not master their soldering process and some PCBs are difficult to solder because the heat absorbtion is not evenly distributed (hot spots/cold spots). If a BGA package is causing problems its usually not the package itself but the PCB or the assembly house.

There is also makepcb.com. Never tried them though.

The failures I've heard about were in mass products which are definitely professionally soldered. The BGAs I've seen were some sort of ceramic. After all, a die cannot bend. Even if it was FR-4, think about it, what will happen if two circuit boards soldered together via bumps are bent?

Same goes for larger DFN packages but often one doesn't have a choice. I will always prefer MSOP or anything with pins because there is some movement compliance in the pins.