Author Topic: Any experience with JLC PCB house in china?  (Read 69078 times)

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Offline cellularmitosis

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Re: Any experience with JLC PCB house in china?
« Reply #100 on: June 29, 2018, 10:33:26 pm »
Haven't read through the whole thread yet, but I started using JLCPCB and wanted to chime in about two things:

1) I'm still using the "old stable" version of KiCAD, and JLCPCB doesn't recognize the edge-cuts gerber file.  It turns out this was just a naming problem -- if you rename that gerber file to use the ".gko" extension, it works as expected.

2) At first I was off-put by the high shipping cost ($2 PCB's but $20 DHL  :--).  However, I realized that you can order several different PCB designs at once and the shipping still seems to be $20 (I'm sure it will start to increase above a certain weight, but I have just ordered 3 designs and it was still $20).  Also, the turn-around time can make it worth the extra cost (ordered on the 22nd, boards in-hand on the 28th!!!).

I'm pretty happy with their 2-layer basic service.
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Offline bitseeker

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Re: Any experience with JLC PCB house in china?
« Reply #101 on: June 30, 2018, 01:16:59 am »
@cellular: Yeah, someone mentioned that they ordered five designs and the DHL was the same as one. If you have a bunch, I suppose you could add them until the price changes to see what the threshold is. It must be pretty generous.
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Offline jtronix

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Re: Any experience with JLC PCB house in china?
« Reply #102 on: June 30, 2018, 10:19:04 am »
I got the same shipping issue. after communication with JLCPCB they said  "We will make refund $20.00 to you later and also arrange combine with PCB and stencil to ship together (regarding the price different for combine shipping cost will refund to you also ) "

I don't know whether this people will refund me or not??

anyone face this kind of issue?
 

Online thm_w

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Re: Any experience with JLC PCB house in china?
« Reply #103 on: July 05, 2018, 09:08:09 pm »
Trying to order to Canada and its only letting me choose DHL as the shipping method ($18). I had no problems using airmail in the past.
To get around this I tried shipping within China, but it won't even let me select a shipping method and adds a $7 surcharge. Usually shipping within china is very cheap, $1-2.

LCSC will still ship airmail at a very slightly marked up price. So they've applied this artificial shipping limit for their own benefit.

edit: OSHpark has free shipping to canada so ended up being a better deal, as the board is very small.
« Last Edit: July 05, 2018, 09:15:03 pm by thm_w »
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Offline bitseeker

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Re: Any experience with JLC PCB house in china?
« Reply #104 on: July 06, 2018, 02:05:16 am »
It's eBay style: shipping is a euphemism for non-refundable reserve price.
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Offline noras

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Re: Any experience with JLC PCB house in china?
« Reply #105 on: August 02, 2018, 10:08:20 am »
I just had a try to their service and wanted to compare with my original PCB manufacturer (pcbway), which I have been using for more than 3 years. I have tried many other manufacturers on the way. Some of them are cheaper than pcbway, but pcbway's comprehensive service really makes me feel relieved. I have already placed an pcb and stencil order on jlcpcb. the pcb is good,but the stencil seems too thin, and their service rep's English communication needs to be improved, lack of professional customer service. I hope that you can also list what are the pro's and cons of pcbway and jlcpcb. Thanks.

Offline ebclr

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Re: Any experience with JLC PCB house in china?
« Reply #106 on: August 02, 2018, 03:21:01 pm »
I am realy happy with theyr service, and they also sell components that can be shipped together with the PCB, Really a plus
 

Offline criznach

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Re: Any experience with JLC PCB house in china?
« Reply #107 on: August 02, 2018, 03:47:03 pm »
I had some questions on JLC in the questions forum.  Maybe this would have been a better place to post them.  Anyone?

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/projects/questions-on-jlcpcb/msg1711562/#msg1711562
 

Offline stmdude

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Re: Any experience with JLC PCB house in china?
« Reply #108 on: August 02, 2018, 05:31:14 pm »
I've just assembled my first DDR3 design, with a 4-layer 3.5mil/3.5mil PCB from JLC.

The solder-mask alignment wasn't 100%, but good enough for a 0.8mm pitch BGA.

Also, it seems like their E-test isn't bullshit, as one of my boards failed it, and they offered to either re-do the batch, or send the boards that tested OK, and give me a discount on the next order.

As for their stencils, they're "OK". If you don't get the electroplating (more $$), I wouldn't go smaller than 0.35mm holes.

The impedance is a little bit off from what I'd like, but my longest track is 28mm, so it works well enough anyways.

(iMX6ULL + 4Gb DDR @ 528MHz if anyone is wondering)
 

Offline rrinker

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Re: Any experience with JLC PCB house in china?
« Reply #109 on: August 02, 2018, 07:43:31 pm »
 I recently did my first-ever PCB, a simple 2 sided through hole thing. I was a little nervous, since this was my first ever PCB, so I spent extra days looking over the Gerber views and comparing to the schematic and checking the schematic six ways to Sunday, but I finally decided the layout matched and it was as good as it was gonna get, so I hit the order button. Amazing how fast they came. They looked fine to me, certainly for hobby purposes. I checked them over, looked like everything was as expected, so I finally assembled one and - it worked!
 It's not much, an Arduino Nano, a ZIF socket, 4 LEDs with dropping resistors, a 16MHz crystal with caps, and a couple of bypass caps, but it's mine, and it works. Now what to do with the 9 extra boards... And off to the next design, this one being quite a bit more complex (maybe not by the standards of many here, but despite an EE degree, the most complex thing I ever designed up til now was my senior lab project, an LED matrix oscilloscope with a chain of LM339 comparators for the vertical and a 555 plus counters for the horizontal and that was all point to point wired, no PCB). I will be using JLCPCB for this one too. Basically a controller for 2 (or 3) servos, with pushbuttons and LED indicators, plus relays (for frog polarity, the servos will operate the points on my model railroad). All controlled with an ATMega 328 (the first project was a programmer for them). Prototyped with an Arduino but the actual circuit will use a plain 328 without all the unnecessary extra parts.
 

Offline stmdude

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Re: Any experience with JLC PCB house in china?
« Reply #110 on: September 10, 2018, 07:55:28 pm »
So, I've had very good experiences with JLCPCB (see above), but when ordering my latest PCBs, everything seems to have changed...

I've revised my previous design, but didn't change _anything_ for the DDR routing. Now when I submit my files, they fail review. Tracks too close, drill-holes too small, etc. All on the unchanged parts of the board.

The answers I get from the reviewers and support are "lacking" to say the least, giving me information that directly contradicts their "Capabilities" page, as well as each other.

If it was a smaller actor, I'd say they had changed factories, but as far as I know, JLC has their own factories..

Has anyone experienced the same lately?
 

Offline bd139

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Re: Any experience with JLC PCB house in china?
« Reply #111 on: September 10, 2018, 10:35:57 pm »
Just had some boards arrive yesterday. No problems at all. Literally identical to the ones I ordered about 2 months ago, minus my fuck ups  :-DD
 

Offline firewalker

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Re: Any experience with JLC PCB house in china?
« Reply #112 on: September 11, 2018, 06:22:24 am »
I also ha no problem with my boards. I only wish they offered a simple registered mail  option. For 8 USD for simple mail it could be registered.

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Offline D3f1ant

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Re: Any experience with JLC PCB house in china?
« Reply #113 on: September 13, 2018, 07:51:14 am »
The only problem I had was them rejecting my mouse bites despite having done them the same way for previous orders without a problem. I made the holes one size smaller but IMO they bit to hard to break off now. Anybody want share a perfected over time design?
 

Offline Domagoj T

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Re: Any experience with JLC PCB house in china?
« Reply #114 on: September 19, 2018, 03:06:36 pm »
So, about a week ago I received my order from JLC. It's just a simple board for daisy chaining shift registers.
I optically inspected a few, and soldered six of them I took from the top of one pile. All six appear to work without any issues. Even though drill/etch registration is not exact, I haven't seen any via holes that are not entirely inside the via copper.
There is some silkscreen smudging that is mostly cleaned by some acetone rubbing (the smudging, not the rest of the silkscreen) and there are some spots and imperfections in soldermask (trapped dust?)
I'm attaching pics.
Small vias under the ICs are 0,4 mm hole with 0,7 mm copper.
Thin traces are 0,254 mm.
ICs are SOIC20L (TPIC6B595).
Decoupling caps are 0603.

Boards are 47 mm x 45 mm, 1,6 mm thick.
I ordered 200 of them, and they arrived 10 days after payment. Cost was $40 for boards + $22 for DHL shipping to Croatia. I also paid $35 for customs, but that is not JLCs fault. :-//
All in all roughly $0,50 per board.
 

Offline bitseeker

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Re: Any experience with JLC PCB house in china?
« Reply #115 on: September 19, 2018, 05:41:33 pm »
Wow, some of those pads are mighty uneven. I haven't seen that before from JLC.
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Online mikeselectricstuff

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Re: Any experience with JLC PCB house in china?
« Reply #116 on: September 19, 2018, 06:07:59 pm »
The only problem I had was them rejecting my mouse bites despite having done them the same way for previous orders without a problem. I made the holes one size smaller but IMO they bit to hard to break off now. Anybody want share a perfected over time design?
I've always done 0.5mm holes at 0.75mm spacing
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Offline bd139

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Re: Any experience with JLC PCB house in china?
« Reply #117 on: September 19, 2018, 06:23:09 pm »
Wow, some of those pads are mighty uneven. I haven't seen that before from JLC.

Me neither. The boards I had arrive the other day are totally smooth.

Wonder if they subcontract out any over capacity problems they have.
 

Offline MiDi

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Re: Any experience with JLC PCB house in china?
« Reply #118 on: September 19, 2018, 07:47:13 pm »
Did not try JLCPCB yet, but I am quite happy with allpcb as they do not charge for shipping for common orders.
I always look at pcbshopper for best price delivered with quite fast shipping...
 

Offline Domagoj T

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Re: Any experience with JLC PCB house in china?
« Reply #119 on: September 19, 2018, 08:15:03 pm »
Quote
Wow, some of those pads are mighty uneven.
Yes, a good deal of pads are uneven, but the image is a little bit exaggerated. I had a strong light on the side that probably accentuated the unevenness.
Nevertheless, that's another imperfection, that so far is only affecting aesthetics. I had no problems with soldering on those pads.

Over the next few weeks I will be assembling more of the boards and will report back if I find any more issues.

Quote
Wonder if they subcontract out any over capacity problems they have.
I had no indication that this was the case. It could be, I have no idea.
I checked my JLC profile and order status. Have a look at the attachment. Step 13 Final inspection was skipped, or at least not marked as done. ;D
 

Offline bitseeker

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Re: Any experience with JLC PCB house in china?
« Reply #120 on: September 19, 2018, 09:06:55 pm »
Have a look at the attachment. Step 13 Final inspection was skipped, or at least not marked as done. ;D

Aha! That must cost extra. :-DD
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Offline FrankBuss

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Re: Any experience with JLC PCB house in china?
« Reply #121 on: September 19, 2018, 10:36:32 pm »
I ordered a simple board on 8/31. I needed it fast, so I used UPS. The tracking link didn't work, so I contacted the support (their English is the typical Chinese English, worse than my German English, but  I could understand it). Turns out the number they are using is not the tracking number, but you have to manually open the UPS tracking site, then search for the order number from JLCPCB with the "Track by Reference" option. After a week, the tracking page still said, that only the shipping label was printed, shipping didn't start. I asked the support again, they promised it was shipped, showing me a screenshot of some internal system, which suspiciously looks like they don't use UPS from their company site, but send the PCBs to a shipping company first, which then uses UPS, but they didn't confirm this.

After some more days they responded that UPS had a problem with my address, which was not a problem for any other company so far. I answered to the support that the address is right. After another day the support answered that the phone number was wrong (I admit that I entered "0", because I don't want that somehow it gets transferred to some telemarketer). After telling the right number, the shipment started and finally it was delivered on 9/17. The PCBs itself were flawless.

Another problem I had with some Gerber files I downloaded from a website for a FET probe (this one). First they accepted the files, I paid by Paypal and the status said "in production". But after a day they said that the files don't have the board outlines, but e.g. http://gerber-viewer.com has no problems to show the board. They refunded the Paypal payment and cancelled the order. They told me they don't provide just sending a fixed version of the Gerber files, I have to go through the whole order process again.

And a minor problem was with their panel service. I used this service, because according to their FAQ, this is a way to avoid the ID marking on the PCB, because it is printed on the scrap part of the panels. But I managed to order a too small panel (the single PCB was tiny), and their webpage didn't show me an error. Again I paid with Paypal and was accepted, but you guess it, then they refunded the money and cancelled the project. Just by submitting the same project again, but this time with a different number of PCBs in x/y per panel, for the same price, because it was still below 10 cm x 10 cm, it got accepted. Surely they could have fixed this on their own.

So if you have a standard board, and if you are not in a hurry (or don't use UPS, maybe I'll try this again with the right phone number), the board quality is good and one of the cheapest services. But the customer service and website etc. could be better.
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Offline FrankBuss

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Re: Any experience with JLC PCB house in china?
« Reply #122 on: September 19, 2018, 10:44:38 pm »
PS: if you use the panel service and the panel is below 10 cm x 10 cm, and your individual PCBs are small, the individual PCB costs only cents. E.g. you can fit 9 boards of 30 mm x 30 mm on one 10 cm ^ 2 panel (they have a border of 10 mm, where the ID is printed as well). And then you'll get 10 panels, which is 90 of your boards for $2. This means one board costs less than 3 cents.
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Offline firewalker

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Re: Any experience with JLC PCB house in china?
« Reply #123 on: November 17, 2018, 11:16:57 am »
This time there was an error on the silkscreen of my boards.

It should be like this:



Not like this:

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Offline cgroen

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Re: Any experience with JLC PCB house in china?
« Reply #124 on: November 17, 2018, 11:23:42 am »
This time there was an error on the silkscreen of my boards.

It should be like this:



Not like this:



And how did the "preview gerber" look on their page when you ordered ?
 


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