The Right PCB House

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I've had excellent results with them over the last 6-8 years. They must be getting more confident in their process control, as the quickturn trace and space used to be 8mil/8mil. Now it's down to 6mil/6mil. On full-service boards they will go to 5mil/5mil. The 6mil level is good enough for any of the boards I do.

I've had upwards of 1000 boards, from perhaps a dozen designs, with no problems other than those I caused. My last production problem was a single whisker-short on a board about 5 years ago. I've never seen that again, so I suppose it was a one-time under etch.

Mark Borgerson

You must get much better service than I did. I had Sunstone build two boards for me. The first was the production board which was ordered in six panels of 22 each. They built seven panels to cover any losses and still could only deliver 116 boards. That's a loss rate of 25%!

I also asked them to build the test fixture for this board. By the time the test fixture was away to them it had turned into the long pole in the tent schedule-wise. I gave them my info and they accepted the order. A week later when I was expecting the order to be delivered, I contacted them for a tracking number. I was told that the order had been put on hold waiting for a credit card number and when the number didn't come it was ***canceled***. It seems that they lost the CC number and NO ONE contacted me about it! So then I had to wait ***ANOTHER*** week. Oddly enough, they lost my CC number a second time which again bit me in the butt... I got the test fixture panels ok, but I still needed another panel of the production board.

They had apologized for the shortage and offered me the choice of deducting the shortage from my bill or building another panel. I waited until testing of the protos was complete and asked for the replacement panel to make up the shortage which was needed to complete the initial production build. They accepted that order, but they spent an extra day checking the files I had to resend to them and it went into production a day late. Of course they were not willing to try to speed up the fabrication to make up for it. Finally they were supposed to deliver last week on Thursday directly to the assembly house. I contacted Sunstone on Friday to get a tracking number to see if the panel had made it ok only to find out that they had built the boards, but would not ship them because I was now on credit hold!!! I had received an invoice for the test fixture a week earlier and sent off a check which was expected on that Friday. They couldn't tell me if the check had been received or not and they couldn't tell me if the boards would ship or not.

I can honestly say that I have ***never*** worked with a more incompetent group of people. Every time I contacted them I had to start over explaining the situation. The different departments don't seem to talk to each other, but rather expect their internal tracking system to keep everyone informed. But I found over and over again that no one uses the system properly. They lost my credit card number, not once, but twice. That has got to make you wonder where it went! But the really bad part of all this was the way that everything that happened was as much a surprise to the various contacts there as it was to me. They did not once inform me of anything that was happening and when I asked it was like pulling teeth to get accurate info from them.

I will never use Sunstone again and I would not let anyone I liked use them either!

Rick

Why screw with crippleware when you can get totally free layout programs that are as good as commercial ones? FreePCB is an excellent program that costs nothing and has better support through the web site forum and Yahoo group than most commercial packages have if you pay for support!

I haven't found the perfect schematic program, but for layout, I am very happy with FreePCB.

Rick

Was that delay longer than the time you waited for the prototypes to be tested?

Perhaps my experience has been better because I order my boards through their web site---which has never forgotten or misplaced my credit card number. I've never confused the payment issue by sending them a paper check. ;-)

Mark Borgerson

I don't understand the question.

Sure, ordering on the web site is a great idea when it works. I tried to place the test fixture order online three times and each time the web site crapped out.

Don't even try to make this look like my fault. If they can't hold onto a credit card number long enough to bill it, I am sure not going to give them any more credit data. The real problem was the fact that they can't communicate either internally or externally. Every time I called, I had to start over with a new person explaining what I was doing and who I had spoken to. When something went wrong, they didn't communicate internally and no one ever told me about the issues. I guess if your order goes well, then you don't see the result of their poor communications. But if there is a snag, then it all falls apart.

Anyone who uses Sunstone for professional work is taking a chance with their schedule. I would compare it to those kids who thought it was perfectly safe to tease the tiger in the zoo. In 99.9% of the zoos that would be safe. But they happened to do it in the one zoo where the tiger didn't know he couldn't jump a 14 foot wall! When it went bad, it went ***really bad***.

Rick

gEDA

Sterling grade refined purified silver, M8.

Isn't that kind of hard to mail?