Best in-house PCB manufacturing equipment (Voltera?)

[dralthi]

Hello Folks,

We're looking to have some prototyping in house capability to build 2 layer PCB's.  We're tired of the etch and sketch method and want to buy something that will make the PCB traces and drill holes for us.

We're looking into several options:
a) Voltera - looks promising, but seems quite expensive and quality of traces does not seem like it's the best based on youtube comments.
b) Stepcraft - looks promising, but we'll have to see how the laser head can etch copper PCB and it may require some work to adapt for PCB manufacturing.
c) ??

Anyone have any ideas as to where is a turn-key product for us to make PCB prototypes in house?

Thnx

[Kean]

Check out http://www.lpkf.com/ but be prepared to spend a good chunk of money

You can get a Stepcraft or any similar CNC router running grbl or Mach 3 and do it yourself, but there is a fair learning curve and it won't be near the quality or accuracy of the LPKF machines.  I use a Chinese 6040-style machine (and a Taig before that) and have made many dozens of prototype or urgent PCBs on it over the last 10 years, including with some fine pitch parts.  But typically I now just use the low-cost 3 day turnaround PCB services from China.

In my opinion, Voltera is not really a suitable replacement for creating prototypes for a real PCB - but it does have other use cases.

[dralthi]

Which low-cost PCB services from China are the best these days?

[rea5245]

Keep in mind that for the price you'd pay for a machine that can make PCBs, the cost of consumables, and the cost of your time, you can pay for rush manufacturing and delivery from China many, many times and get much higher quality results for less effort. Yes, there'd still be a few days turnaround and depending on your situation, that might be unacceptable. But it's something to think about.

- Bob

[ar__systems]

Voltera is bs.... I solder and resolder prototype boards many times over, sometime due to failing components, sometimes I need to change values etc. I guaranty the conductive ink can't handle such abuse. And print area of 12x10cm? is that joke?

[dralthi]

Which China PCB house is good, fast and low cost?

[luiHS]

The best and cheapest is to order the PCB from the Chinese.
Currently, I order all my PCBs in JLCPCB, very cheap, fast and high quality. Before, I ordered my PCBs to ALLPCB, but JLCPCB is cheaper.

These are the web sites to order online:
https://jlcpcb.com/
http://www.allpcb.com

[rea5245]

Which China PCB house is good, fast and low cost?

You can find the answer to that at a price comparison site for printed circuit board manufacturing called PCBShopper.com (full disclosure: I run the site). You enter your board's specs and, if you're in a rush, specify how many business days until the boards arrive at your door (that's manufacturing time plus delivery time). PCBShopper will show you the prices and shipping options from up to 24 different manufacturers, including some of the best-known companies in Asia, North America, and Europe. Of course, many manufacturers won't be able to meet a tight schedule, but PCBShopper will show you the ones that can.

PCBShopper also has Amazon-style reviews of the manufacturers, written by customers. I moderate every review to weed out the fakes (and believe me, I've seen some really egregious fakes).

Companies do not pay to be included in PCBShopper's price comparison list. I choose which companies to include based on how well known they are, where they are located, and whether their pricing differentiates them from the other manufacturers. PCBShopper uses HTML scraping to get prices directly from the manufacturers' sites to ensure their accuracy.

- Bob Alexander
  PCBShopper.com

[mrpackethead]

Check out http://www.lpkf.com/ but be prepared to spend a good chunk of moneye.

ANd a lot of time and get very poor support.   I spent nearly $40,000 and got sold a total lemon.  Made worse by very bad local support.   Eventually under threat of legal action, it was returned and i got my money back. Not after i'd wasted hundreds of hours.   Hihgly suggest you dont' go there.

I went back to low cost rapid pcbs.  The idea was good, the reality is that it just doe'stn work like you hop

[Siwastaja]

What I have heard about many commercial PCB routers - especially LPKF! - is that they require a competent fulltime hire just to keep the machine operational. So while in theory, it sounds like a "press a button" thing, it doens't seem to work out that way. Actually, I have never seen an operational PCB router! They always seem to be in the "just now it has this and this little problem" state, because of the lack of maintenance resources.

It's possible that easy-to-maintain "it just works" PCB routers do exist - no law of physics say it's impossible - but you have to really do your homework before committing to expensive crap like LPKF.

The very reason, after all, people buy them is to make small scale quick-turn PCBs easily and cost-effectively, and having to put $50k-100k/year to maintenance is a big surprise for small players.

So, IME, etching, even though messy, is more reliable. You still need a CNC drill however which is another can of worms. Ours is a partially home-made modification. In any case, a CNC drill is orders of magnitude easier to get right than a precision router.

Even local, expensive quick turn around PCB services tend to be cheaper at the company level where every worker's time has a price. OTOH, in some cases, quick adapter/test boards are required in just hours, in which case your own minifab is a requirement, as a two or three day (incl. shipping) PCB service would cause unproductive time slots.

[Siwastaja]

Which China PCB house is good, fast and low cost?

If you are even thinking about milling your own PCBs and have done some etching before, that means that any fab is at least an order of magnitude better than that.

For example, through hole plating, soldermasking, silkscreening and surface tinning are very strong arguments for getting your boards done instead of DIYing, and you'll always get all of that. Also, every fab today does reliable 6 mil track / 6 mil spacing, and 0.3mm drill.

In fact, they are all very good now (expect for occasional human error, which does happen in any country, any company). This reduces your question to: which is fast and low cost?

Just use pcbshopper.com, enter your requirements regarding turnaround time, and then just use the cheapest one.

[dralthi]

Great suggestions. I ordered from JCPCB and it's so easy and you just have to wait a week and get perfect boards for $2 + $18 shipping.

Can't beat that with a stick!

Thanks to all for the suggestions!!

[GEORGE12]

we have the PCB routers Customized  suitable for Technical Training Labs, even we can sell without shell and other accessories, machines in stock