Could some electronics guru please provide some hints on this ? We would like to make a set of 50 6-layer printed circuit boards. We do have contacts in Asia, and we could have them fabricated there, or have it made by some US fabricator. How do the costs/ prices compare ? Any hints, suggestions would be enlightening.
For that quantity, I don't think it's worthwhile going offshore. There are plenty of US manufacturers specializing in such things.
Unless you can find a circuit-board aggregator that does 6 layers, which I doubt. Oshpark does 4, but not 6.
-- Tim Wescott Control system and signal processing consulting www.wescottdesign.com
d r
does 6 layers, but for 50 pcs. is seems about twice as expensive as medium quantity from:
-Lasse
What are you talking about??? Almost anyone does 32-layer, and in many cases can get them populated too.
Huh? For fifty boards you don't need an aggregator.
I thank each of you for your responses, could anyone of you please elaborate a bit on the cost/expense of using a US fabricator, as opposed to an Asian fabricator. Any, ideas, hints would be of immense help. Thanks in advance for your help.
Many sites have online quoting. Pick a couple US and non-US and compare. I have had good luck with Advanced Circuits (US) - on the higher end of the price spectrum but they have always done right by me for quick turns. Sunstone is OK, there are others. duckduckgo or google and find them. Some US companies may outsource so be careful on the prices. I just got a batch of boards from Epec. Good quality but they were actually made overseas. I have ordered 100s of boards from PCBCart. No big issues other than some missed delivery dates.
-- Chisolm Republic of Texas
Limited experience here, since I've only just had a PCB person this year. So far I've had good luck with Pentalogix, but I haven't ordered that many boards yet. Sunstone seems to have jacked its prices up when it started advertising ITAR compliance.
Gold Phoenix in China seems OK too.
Cheers
Phil Hobbs
-- Dr Philip C D Hobbs Principal Consultant ElectroOptical Innovations LLC Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics 160 North State Road #203 Briarcliff Manor NY 10510 hobbs at electrooptical dot net http://electrooptical.net
We use Tech Circuits for low volume stuff but I'm sure they're not bargain basement. there are hundreds of board makers in the US. They'll have better delivery and (usually) better, or at least more consistent, quality than what' you're likely to get off-shore. Stay far away from India. I've had many disasters with Indian PCB companies.
(snip)
Interesting - up until the time we stopped using them (they upped their area price when their competitors didn't) they had always delievered on the scheduled day. How often did they miss for you, and by how much?
They have only missed a few times and usually a few days. Only once was it close to a week. This is over a 3+ year time frame. They have been good to work with. On one board they came back with a higher price than was quoted but then agreed to the original price because they had made runs before at that price. Come to find out the problem was mine, in the drawing. But they said they would continue to build at the original lower price. I did a respin on the board to fix the issue. I need to re-order some boards from them today. Login, click re-order, pay with PayPal and wait for the FedEx truck to show up in a week.
If you put a board from PCBCart next to one from, say, Advanced Circuits, you can see the difference. The AC board will have a sharper silkscreen, the solder mask seems little more dense and the price will be 2 or 3x. But the PCBCart board is electrically and mechanically correct and we have not had any failures. I'm not sure I would use them for a 100G backplane but for most of our boards they are a good choice.
I'm not ragging on AC. I like them and when the crap hits the fan and I need a quick turn, I order from AC.
-- Chisolm Republic of Texas
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