UK PCB Fabrication

Not that cheap. Just tried the calculator and got a price of £1.19

The delivery is quicker by about a week allowing for transit time.

Ah, well, perhaps I should have been more specific and said for prototype/modest quantities. My quotes were for 20-off and Tecbridge were cheaper by far than any of the other UK/European places I tried.

For 1000 up I think I would be looking elsewhere too.

Cheers

Ian

PCBCART (as one example) are reasonably decent prices for small quantity, and scarily good for real quantity. And as an added bonus (for some) they accept Paypal.

I checked out my board on their site and their base prices certainly are cheap but by the time you add freight, duty and VAT they are less attractive for small quantities. Also there are half a dozen different freight options to choose from (and I have no idea of their relative costs/times) and at the end of the day if something goes wrong you are dealing with someone thousands of miles away whose first language is not English. For small quantities I would rather use a UK supplier but as I said before, for 1000 up I would definitely widen my horizons.

Tecbridge, by the way, accept Paypal.

P.S. to Raveninghorde: there's a note on the Tecbridge web site to contact them if you quantities are over 1000 becuase they may be able to give you a 'special price'. Presumably things are somewhat more negotiable at that volume.

Cheers

Ian

They always mark small qtys ( less than a couple of kilos) as sample NCV - I've only been invoiced VAT/duty form the carrier on large orders (tens of square feet) from them.

I usually use DHL - for larger orders it's worth checking the other options as at some points others are cheaper.

What makes you think they are made in the UK?

From the website : "We work closely with domestic partners in China to source printed circuit boards "....

From their contact details it looks like just a UK office acting as a broker.

For real UK made PCBs on fast turnround I use

I checked against a 4 layer board that I just ordered from PCBTrain and TecBridge were way off on 5 day delivery (more than twice the price !!). Standard design rules are not quite as good either.

Michael Kellett

I've only been invoiced

That makes a nice change. I got some boards from ExpressPCB in the USA and they marked them at the full price including freight so I ended up paying a shed load of VAT plus a handling charge. Bloody annoying.

Cheers

Ian

at some points others

printed circuit boards

Indeed you are right. I was more concerned to be dealing with someone in the UK than outside it.

(typically £40/order) , and no

I am not concerned with fast turnaround but it is interesting to see screenbond is in Baldock, my old stomping ground. I see they only do single and double sided PCBs but for me that is no problem. I have input my board details and asked them for a quote. Thanks for the link.

Cheers

Ian

Seems there is considerable variation between suppliers for the same board. I put my 2 layer board into PCBTrain and Tecbridge, 20-off on 10 day turnaround. PCBTrain is £270, Tecbridge £140. Go figure.

Cheers

Ian

they marked them at the full price including freight so

That's how the big companies work. Mind you, it is illegal to falsely mark a package to be worth less, plus insurance value in case it gets lost is smaller and they have to absorb the difference.

Also charging import tax and vat on top of everything (including shipping) is pretty standard everywhere.

It is "annoying" though, agreed :)

they marked them at the full price including freight so

package

they have to

I suppose for low quantities most of the value is in tooling and processing charges, which are never actually shipped. So the customs invoice could be just the material costs ultimately :)

UPS are the absolute worst in my experience. The actual customs charges are generally negligible compared to their "processing" fees.

PCBTrain (and a few others) combine multiple jobs on large panels which means several customers share setup and processing costs.

Tecbridge have the boards made in China which means everything is cheap but they do not attempt to share costs and there is extra time and expense required to ship from China.

PCBTrain is cheaper on small quantities and faster turn round.

they marked them at the full price including freight so

package

they have to

pretty

The other thing is I have noticed this seems to have been invoked without fail in the last 12 months. Before that, stuff I got from the USA was just delivered without duty/VAT being charged. Maybe the recession has made them keener to collect their 'handling' charge' - last one I had was £8 to collect £10 of VAT.

The rules about when charges are made have been changed recently too; don't know if that is a factor.

Cheers

Ian

they marked them at the full price including freight so

annoying.

package

they have to

pretty

I didn't get charged VAT on a recent software purchase from "over there".

...Jim Thompson

they marked them at the full price including freight so

annoying.

package

they have to

is pretty

Was it sent by a company or an individual?? There seems to be different rules for each.

Cheers

Ian

they marked them at the full price including freight so

annoying.

a package

they have to

is pretty

A Company

...Jim Thompson

they marked them at the full price including freight so

annoying.

a package

they have to

is pretty

If you are VAT registered in the UK and export from the UK, to Jim in the US for example, you do not charge VAT. If you ship to another EU country you do not charge VAT if the customer is VAT registered in their own country and you record their VAT number, otherwise you charge VAT.

If you are not VAT registered then of course you do not charge VAT and individuals are not VAT registered.

and they marked them at the full price including freight so

annoying.

a package

they have to

is pretty

A shipment from a business in the EU to outside the EU should not have VAT charged- to do otherwise would be fraudulent AFAIUI. That's the whole point of VAT- to tax domestic consumption but not exports.

When something comes in, it generally should be charged VAT unless it falls under their radar (or is in an exempt or zero-rated category).

In Canada at least, the international portion of shipping does not attact any tax (eg. international air freight is not part of the taxable value). If there is a separate charge to ship goods to (say) dockside domestically in the country of origin, that would be taxed. I don't think it's considered to be in the recipient country until it is cleared through customs, so intermodal shipping, drayage and bonded warehouse charges are not taxed.

It's kind of moot anyway, since under a VAT/GST most stuff for business use, resale or for incorporation into goods for resale attracts zero net tax and zero net duty (in our case, the 5% gets rebated back as an input tax credit).

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany