In recent years I have abandoned US and Canadian board shops because they have become un-godly expensive and refuse to accept the reality of Chinese board shops taking away their prototyping business. I have found that the chinese quality ( for straightforward designs) is exceptional and at about 10% of the cost compared with US shops. On the downside, communication can be a little frustrating, especially if you want to get something non-standard done.
My current medical/dental equipment client has asked me to spin an optical front-end board with a InGaAs PIN diode at one end. The current PIN variant is in a can but the new design will have no can, so we are mounting the die right on the board(cathode-N) with conductive epoxy (eutectic in a later spin on for better CTE match) and the (anode-p) is going to be connected with a bondwire from the die edge to a single pad on the board. I specified soft wire-bondable Au (50-80 micro-inches) for only this one pad and our Chinese board house can/will not quote it. They only do ENIG plating.
Having this done in China without the wire-bondable soft gold requirement would cost us $65 USD for 10 boards (including DHL shipping to the US). A US board shop would do it for $650 USD. Adding the soft gold requirement ramps the price up significantly, so again I am happy to tell them to pound sand and go offshore once again. If US shops think Trump tariffs are gonna save their domestic business, they are dreaming.
To that end, I was wondering if any of you ( Blueskull?) can recommend board shops in China (mainland) that are reasonably priced and can do a decent job for a US-based customer. My wife is from Shanghai and she used to work in a PCB factory during the cultural revolution so language/communication shouldn't be an issue
@grouchobyte
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