Cheap PCB prototpes?

Once a vendor who was allowed to finally make some boards for us, after begging to show off their expertise and asking please, please please can we do one of your boards: was allowed to make a small PCB that would be used in a high voltage, high frequency situation. As they made the PCB board and of course wishing to 'label' the board with THEIR logo, THEIR address, THEIR part number found a large 'blank' area on the board to leave all their information in nicely raised metal characters, cleanly printed in that, convenient for them, 'unused' blank area. When they delivered the blanks, I exploded at the salesman for putting metal in our high voltage keepout section!

The salesman being fast told me we should have 'asked' [included in the spec notes] that they not put anything there. The staring at him and cold silence that followed resulted in profuse apologies and an offer to remake the boards for no charge at premium speed. Too bad, they did nice work otherwise.

90% of your traces are approaching 1m long? If so, you really need to work on your layout skills.

Did you ask them why they bothered to etch the boards? You didn't explicitly tell them that there should be no metal between traces. You only specified where the traces were to be.

lol.

thanks! I needed a laugh this morning.