quick turn boards

I've been uniformly happy with PCB Express. (Not Express PCB -- although I know folks who are uniformly happy with them, too. But the last time I looked, Express PCB locked you into their tools).

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Tim Wescott 
Control system and signal processing consulting 
www.wescottdesign.com

In the past I've also used PCB express (the guys that have PCB123), we did a bunch of DB style break out boards. More receintly I had Sunstone do 2 proto boards, multilayer, 1 week turn around for about $600. Both companies did good work. Your smaller boards probably will not cost as much.

Cheers

I have used advanced circuits (4pcb.com) for 3 recent projects. Quick turn 10 boards each. Everything from 2 layer to 6 layer. No complaints in the quality or turn time. Pricing was not great but they beat everyone else for my specs (size, layers). Nothing exotic, FR4, .062, 1 had gold fingers on one edge.

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Chisolm 
Republic of Texas

If you could cope with more than a week lead time, you could try

The nice thing is that they charge by the square inch. One of my smaller boards was a total of $4.50 including international delivery for 3 copies.

Chris

I would caution anyone away from Sunstone. I had some prototype boards made by them about five years ago and am still dealing with the PITA they caused. First, their online ordering accepted the order and credit card, or it seemed to. But something went wrong and no one contacted me, the order just sat! So a week or so later I called to check on it and they said they were waiting to hear from me! Too bad they didn't bother to tell me that in any way...

So we got the order going and I gave the credit card number over the phone. A day later I got a call that they lost the credit card number and would I please call with it again. Something else was then wrong so another day delay before I heard from them and once again I had to give them the credit card number.

But wait, there's more! This was the test fixture for the boards they were also prototyping for me. That order was processed ok, but the boards were crappy. They said they couldn't do 10 mil drilled holes, so they rounded the holes up to 13 mil without asking. Even with that there was over 30% X-outs on the panels. When I tried bringing up the boards out of 20 protos some six never worked, I just got tired of tracking down the open and shorted vias.

I only built up one of the test fixtures from the second order that was so messed up. I used the same design rules of 6/6 trace/space and 10 mil holes which they, you guessed it, rounded up to 13 mil. It worked ok at least. But recently I had four more of the test fixtures built up from that batch of boards. These have the same problems as the other boards, lots of problems with open or shorted vias. I was able to get three of the four working and have not been willing to invest the time and effort to get the fourth up. I hate hacking up boards to isolate shorted vias.

Maybe this was an isolated case, but it was more than the facts of what went wrong. It was just as much how they handled it. Every issue with the problem order was blamed on me. Even after some four or five days of trying to get the order placed, the gal was still trying to blame it on me and I had to literally yell at her to just process the damn order! The delays of his order delayed my prototype testing and my customer wasn't happy. I did ok with them in the end. They had enough schedule delays on their end to more than match my two weeks. More importantly they were very pleased that the board worked as intended. But I have never gone back to Sunstone and I think their boards would be far too expensive even if they were free!

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Rick

I agree, I've had nothing but good dealings with PCB Express. They used to lock you into a fixed set of tooling if you wanted quick turn, but they've added routing slots and no change to your tooling files, as of late.

If you can tolerate long delivery- 3 wks, IteadStudio price boards by the sq cm. and 10 off per order. No tooling, shipped by HK/China post. Very economic- 5 x10 cm $13 ish

For those living in the USA,

might be better as the boards are made in USA so the shipping should be rather quicker.

Chris

Looks fine for one-offs. But, for the rest of us with real production needs the tooling cost is the problem. I'd rather double check the artwork, get 2-3 protos and if there are no errors then I am all set to manufacture. Thats wishfull thinking ;) Usually it's 2 spins of the artwork resulting in 2 tooling charges. And if you go somewhere else, theres a tooling charge.

Cheers

Oshpark doesn't charge tooling costs. I find it useful for one-offs for that very reason. One recent tiny board was $4.50 for three copies, including international postage from the USA to my location. Conversely I would not use them for production because when I can fill a whole panel or many identical panels then I can get a better price locally than through oshpark and I don't care so much about the tooling cost as it is a small fraction of the total cost.

In your example, when you usually take two goes at the artwork, if your board is only a few square inches then you might consider doing the first prototypes through oshpark and the second set at your usual supplier where you can reuse the tooling. This would especially make sense if you were located near Oregon, USA.

Chris

They only do up to four layer though.

BTW, they also have a medium run size for $1 a sq inch. Minimum of 150 sq inches and 10 boards I think. It's not clear if the 150 sq inches is a total, but I think that is how he works. I see the Gold finish is standard now and internal cutouts are supported. I think they are always a purple color though. I guess for protos that usually isn't a problem... lol

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Rick

That's a very good price for prototypes though - especially with boards getting smaller and smaller. I may give them a go next time; will be interesting to see how well their web automation works.

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John Devereux