Who Builds YOUR boards?

I was fed up with not being able to get reasonably priced "two offs" so I invested in a light box, and heated bubble etch tank from Mega Electronics  & stocked by RS. It will not take long to repay the capital when compared with the costs of getting small runs of 1 or 2 prototypes manufactured

For me it's been a case of not being able to order just one copy of my PCB design at a reasonable price; invariably I end up ordering 3, 5 or more because that seems cheaper per-board, but at the end of the day it's a waste. Ironically I am in India where PCB manufacturing is very cheap, but it has always surprised me that there's no one to do 1-offs at a decent price through batching up many people's orders etc. Last week I explored the possibility of giving that a try, by contacting several European PCB biggies who have just set up manufacturing units in Bangalore where I live. The possibilities have excited me, and I am in the process of giving it a shot now. Look at "PCB Protos" at Audesine.com, and if there's sufficient community interest in being able to order (in singles!) custom 2-layer flyprobe-tested ENIG PCBs with both-sides silk, both-sides soldermask, made by reputed European companies in India at $1.50 per square inch with no setup or minimum, I'd be glad to know! I propose to keep this price as long as I break even.

-Ram

just joined as I was interested in seeing the free pcb software (have been using EasyPC for 15 years or so), is it my imgination or does some of the interface look like easypc? Anyway back to topic. I am a one man band company doing very specialised design and product manufacture and as far as PCB manufcture goes, for prototypes I use PCB Train (UK), their 1 day prototype service is very good - you can get a 120x80mm DS pcb for £35.00 +VAT. For low volume 10-30 units I hvae been using www.pcbcart.com, China for about 3 years now, very good service, lots of questions if they are not sure on something and excellent price.

Mike.

We've do a lot of prototyping and have tried quite a few suppliers.  Quality and on time are our most important factors and we now pretty much exclusivley use PCB pool.  They also provide free solder paste stencils which we use for in house assembly using their reflow oven kit which works really well.  I wrote a bit about it here

We've also been happy with the quality of PCB train but after lots of late deliveries and poor customer service we only use their cheap 1 day turnaround boards now.

For hobbyists,

For me electronics is now a hobby since I retrained into IT some 20+ years ago but I still love nothing better than to spend a few hours designing a circuit and ultimately building it to see if it works.

Since hobbyists have little/no need to order PCBs in large quantities, I find prototyping costs for a few PCBs are generally very expensive. I understand it takes time/effort to set up equipment but realistically, these days it's practically all done by a computer with etching, milling/drilling etc often being done with one machine so I can't see how some PCB manufacturers can still justify the huge setup costs.

That said, I've been sending my designs over to Laen at Dorkbot - He runs a service for the hobbyist community where he charges a flat rate, based purely on dimensions of the PCB. It costs $5 per square inch for a double-layer board (yes - $5.00! or $10,00 per square inch for a four-layer board) and for that you receive 3 copies of your design.

If you want more copies, just ask him - He's been extremely helpful, quick to respond any time I've emailed him, even going so far as to check my designs before they were ordered.

The boards come with solder mask, screen-writing (both sides), pre-drilled etc - Just as you would expect from a professional bulk-order service.

Perfect for small quantities on a tight budget.

http://dorkbotpdx.org/wiki/pcb_order

If I had anything to complain about it would be that no-one here in the UK offers this type of service - OK, so I have to wait a while for it to be shipped from the US but hey, it's a hobby so I'm not tied to a deadline.

Dragonlaird

PCB Express for quick turn, Advanced Circuits for more intense PCB's

For assembly we typically do most builds under 10 in house, I have a script for Altium that allows me to generate multipage build sheets of the PCB with each part type highlighted. Some MIL stuff we do (funky thickness, lots of strange parts) we keep in house.

WAM
http://home.comcast.net/~ajawamnet
http://home.comcast.net/~ajawamnet/marketturd.htm
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More information on my services can be found at:
http://home.comcast.net/~ajawamnet/wc/wamcover.htm

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"Success is going from failure to failure without a loss of enthusiasm."
~~ Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill (1874-1965)

"I've failed at so many things so many times I make
Abraham Lincoln look like Bill Gates"
~~ Wayne Mitzen (1959- )

"When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all."
~~ God, in Futurama episode "Godfellas"

"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity;
and I'm not even sure about the universe."
~~ Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

"Some scientists claim that hydrogen, because it is so plentiful,
is the basic building block of the universe. I dispute that.
I say there is more stupidity than hydrogen, and that is the basic
building block of the universe."
~~ Frank Zappa (1940-1993)

As a hobbyist, I tend to make my own single and double sided boards using "toner transfer". No magic - laser print the pcb design onto an a page cut from a cheap "semi glossy" magazine, iron onto a clean pre heated copper clad board and etch in your choice of etchant. 

I find this gives a good success rate, even for small footprint SMD devices.

For larger volumes, PM Services in Rochdale, lancs, have never let me down http://www.p-m-services.co.uk/

For prototypes, I do most everything in house, albeit I have a tech about 3 hours south who also can crank out and build boards. For more than 5-10 parts, I use a local contract manufacturer who turn keys everything, pcb's, comp sourcing, and assembly. He doesnt mind running low volumes, albeit his preference is a hundred unit batch, and can run unto a few thousand a month. Its not as cheap as sending the work to China, but knowing I can be on site in an hour if need be is worth a great deal.

I have used EuroCircuits with great success.  www.eurocircuits.com

Maybe not the cheapest but they do a great job with lots of finishing options.

One great thing about them is they always manufacture more PCBs than you order to allow for failures in production, if they have extra good PCBs after testing, they will send them to you with your order.  So if you ordered 4 PCBs you may get 5 back.  This is a bonus and is not guaranteed, but is a nice touch.

Being a student with a very limited budget and the need for single prototype PCBs, I can recommend pcbpool.com

They have a lot of options, ranging from cheap and slow, to cheap and fast.. Well not that cheap, but still not a lot for a prototype PCB. They even do single PCBs at any size, so for me it is a win!

Must admit I have never heard of a skillet before but from the description given it does not do temp profiles whereas the small T-962 oven does and only costs about $250 so quite a bit cheaper. We got the larger version T-962A as some of our boards are 300mm long and even the first board we did came out great. It has got several built in profiles and you can make your own up as well. Only problem we have had is with slight yellowing of the white screen print text. Probably due more to our mucking about with the profiles than any real problems. in operation, you just place the components, place the board in the drawer, One last careful check for any components that have moved, press start and then leave the room as the fumes are awful. Certainly beats hand soldering though. The manual is chinglish but usable after a couple of reads. It is a very cheap solution (ie in build quality) and there are some questions regards the accuracy of the profile however we have no complaints for the relatively simple boards we do. 

Also put the unit on a surface that can handle the heat from the cooling vent, it gets pretty hot during the last stage. 

Hi,

Shenzhen Zhiboxin Circuit Board Co., Ltd is specialized in PCB, PCB solution and PCB assemble service. We focus on quick-turn prototype and mass production for 1-10 layer boards (HDI, blind / buried hole, high frequency, metal based (Alum based, Cu based) .Our businesses extend far into Asia, Europe, America and Australia etc.

Please also send gerber to my email address: sales1@szzbx.com

 And we will response asap to let you know of our service.

Merry Christmas .

Cyndi.

EverythingPCB has a huge list of PCB manufacturers from all over the world at this link:
http://www.everythingpcb.com/p13057.htm
The big American manufactures with good reps & prices are Sunstone, PNC & Advanced.
One of the big European manufacturers with a good rep is PCB Pool.
PCBwing in China has been getting a lot of good reviews on many of the hobby forums for good quality, service and very low prices. (they also have a discount coupon on EverythingPCB)

EverythingPCB has a huge list of PCB manufacturers from all over the world at this link:
http://www.everythingpcb.com/p13057.htm
The big American manufactures with good reps & prices are Sunstone, PNC & Advanced.
One of the big European manufacturers with a good rep is PCB Pool.
PCBwing in China has been getting a lot of good reviews on many of the hobby forums for good quality, service and very low prices. (they also have a discount coupon on EverythingPCB)

For my tuppence worth:

I do very small runs of boards maybe 20 and often prototypes and have used several of the major scottish companies (we are based in Aberdeen) like ZOT in Edinburgh and European Circuits in Glasgow both of whom I can highly recommend for doing professional work. We have also used the ubiquitous PCB Pool for prototypes and again have no complaints......Except

The price

When we need fast turnaround we have no choice as we can always drive down and pick em up but they still cost a ruddy fortune. If you can wait 8 days then you may as well get them from china. and as for PCB pool, if you need more than one board it gets very expensive very quickly.

There are lots of companies in Shenzen that do boards and we just zip up the Gerbers and 10 to 12 days later they are back in our hands (Generally, it depends on customs clearance but is usually not an issue.)

We use right now a crowd called Shenzhen Zhiboxin Circuit Board Co., Ltd http://www.szzbx.com/en/ although there are many others and I would like to hear who other people use....

The quality is very high, they usually come back and ask questions if there are any issues (Be prepared to use google to translate the question)  although perhaps less queries than the uk companies, They have done 6 layer boards for us without any problems. There have been a couple of minor complaints mostly to do with screen printing. but to date they have been our faults, not theirs. 

I just sent off 3 different small PCB's, 2 off 2 layer, 1 off 4 layer with quantities of 50 each. All with solder mask in Blue (Nice colour) and screen print on both sides. 

Total cost for 150 boards including shipping £220 although there will be a small import duty charge on top of that. The tooling was $100 and the smallest boards were 12 cents each. (they do one offs as well for much the same price) Being chinese, you may have to haggle the price a little which may take a little time.

Out of curiosity we had the gerbers priced by an English company for the same thing and the quote for an 8 day turnarround (Plus 2 days delivery) was £3050. 

We have tried to get boards assembled in china as well however that was a lot more hit and miss. Usually miss, The last lot came back admittedly at a very very low cost but we had to change out 10% of the components due to mistakes or the wrong spec (Mono colour led's instead of Bicolour etc)

For us the solution was to buy an oven and do them ourselves and to be honest it was not expensive. Tai’an Puhui Electric Technology Co., Ltd supplied a large (ish) benchtop oven and a rework station with spare heating elements and some solder for under £1000 I think the T-962A oven was just $374 back in May. 

So now our biggest expense is components (RS are you listening ?) We do very small CPLD's and all the usual soic's with no problems, just be very sparing with the solder paste. I have tried using solder masks but find it easier to use a syringe, I limit the size of resistors to 0805 as the smaller ones are a pain and it's not critical for us

Have we been lucky so far with our suppliers in China, probably yes but the boards tend to be simple and we have no complaints (to date)