Have you thought about making your own boards? You can get a decent board in an hour(excluding etching time which varies) with equipment for under 100$. Most of the time the boards turn out good enough for prototyping if your not doing stuff below 10mil-15mil.
It's actually a very simple process with pre-sensitized boards.
- Create Schematic
- Print out mask on transparency(requires laser printer or special transparency for ink jet. Else get it printed somewhere for about 50c).
- Apply mask to pcb. Simply put mask over pcb and use light to create mask in photoresist. Takes about 8 mins but a few more doesn't hurt(too much and your mask becomes thinner resulting in broken traces).
- Remove resist using NaOH. Takes about a min or 2.
- Put pcb in copper etchant. Takes anywhere from 30 mins to an hour. With proper setup can be done rather quickly and decently.
- Remove resist completely using NaOH. Takes less than a min.
- Clean up board.
- Optionally apply your own solder resist. This is more complex and takes time if you have a lot of components unless you get your own stencils made. You can make your own stencil out of the transparency or use tape to mask off component pads. Just spray the pcb with paint or something to ask as a solder resist(there are sites and discussions for this).
- Drilling holes. This can go quick if they are not too small and your pads are actually annuluses to guild the drill bit. Obviously if you have a lot it will take longer. You can usually do one hole every 5 seconds which is about 300 holes an hr. Definitely not fun but you could have bought you a drill machine for the 600$ you spent.
The great thing about this is that it's cheap and you don't have to wait to get your boards. Obviously it's more work but if your spending 600$ for a
50$ worth of pcb just for prototyping then it is a much better alternative unless you've got a few money tree's and time to waste.
If your boards are completely and/or 4 layer it may not be worth it. It is possible to do 4 layer boards but requires more work. There was a site I found a while back where some guy stacked a 1 double sided with a single sided to do a 3 layer board. He used special made via's that could be punched in. You couldn't get a via on the single sided to work unless you somehow soldered it on the inside(possibly presolder the double sided board and heat up the via hoping it will melt the solder).
If you design your layout with prototyping in mind you can usually reduce the complexity and holes significantly. Use wire jumpers instead of vias. Oversized vias where wire can be slipped in. Use components as jumpers. Etc...
The great thing about this method is when you have that super anti-gravity circuit that you dreamed up overnight you can have the prototype done within
24 hours and it will only cost you a few dollars instead of a few hundred.