Searching PCB Manufacturer for hobbyist

[LEECH666]

Ok small update.



There seems to be some left over copper here. It looks a bit more scratched because I meassured conductivity to check for shorts on this PCB.
Not the case. This tiny tin covered spot is on each of the 11 PCBS, so I guess this had something to do with their gerber to film process (but I am not entirely sure).



They plated through my NPTH drills. D:
Hope this doesn't happen on the more critical kind of drillholes. In my case it doesn't really matter.




For some reason they fucked up the solder mask on my vias. Some have solder mask over 'em some don't. D:
Solder resist gerbers for both layers where included. Again not critical for me.

There is also a tiny offset of drillholes to to the center of the pads (only the square ones), and some tiny offset of the solder resist layer around each pad. This might be covered by the tolerances tho, as I can only see this with my 15x magnifier.

Cheer from Germany,
Florian

PS: I'm sorry your stuff didn't arrive yet. Maybe you chose some different kind of shipping? Not Registered Air Mail?

[Chasm]

For some reason they fucked up the solder mask on my vias. Some have solder mask over 'em some don't. D:
Solder resist layer for both layers where included. Again not critical for me.

Did you check your Gerbers again?

PS: I'm sorry your stuff didn't arrive yet. Maybe you chose some different kind of shipping? Not Registered Air Mail?

Parcel delivery is usually in the afternoon. Even if not it's not much of an issue, I did not even order the parts so far. To many half baked projects and the wish to keep postage down.

[LEECH666]

Gerbers look good to me! See picture.

[Laen]

There seems to be some left over copper here. It looks a bit more scratched because I meassured conductivity to check for shorts on this PCB.
Not the case. This tiny tin covered spot is on each of the 11 PCBS, so I guess this had something to do with their gerber to film process (but I am not entirely sure).

How bizarre.  Maybe they only do final electrical testing and not step-by-step automated optical inspection?  That would've been rejected by my fab.

They plated through my NPTH drills. D:
Hope this doesn't happen on the more critical kind of drillholes. In my case it doesn't really matter.

Wow, they added an annular ring?  Why the heck would they do that?

For some reason they fucked up the solder mask on my vias. Some have solder mask over 'em some don't. D:

How weird that it would be there for some but not others.  You'd think they'd make one film for all the boards.

There is also a tiny offset of drillholes to to the center of the pads (only the square ones), and some tiny offset of the solder resist layer around each pad. This might be covered by the tolerances tho, as I can only see this with my 15x magnifier.

Most US fabs have a soldermask tolerance of 2 mils and a drilling registration tolerance of 5 mils.  If you can only see it under 15x magnification, then it's probably fine.

-Laen

[LEECH666]

No I can't say they added an annular ring (pad) but the holes of my NPTH drillsholes are shiny on the inside. Pad size is still zero. I doesn't really matter in my case, as the NPTH holes are the mounting holes only (4 holes in total). I think they might not be able to properly process NPTH holes. I don't know too much about the actual manufacturing process, but my guess would be, that they drilled the NPTH holes before they sent the boards into the electroplating bath.

However the solder resist inconsistencies are weird. As you said one would think they process the design once, and then duplicate it. However some bords have all vias covered with solder resist, some have all vias left free (as in the gerbers), and some even some vias covered and some left free. Again it doesn't really matter to me.

I guess the offset isn't an offset then. All in all I am still pretty happy with the quality of the boards at that price. Turn around was like 14 days including weekends, so not too bad.

Cheers from Germany,
Florian

[Zero999]

Maybe they only do final electrical testing and not step-by-step automated optical inspection?  That would've been rejected by my fab.

I'd be very surprised if they do any form of inspection or testing given the price they're charging.

I remember someone at work getting some board sfor a project by a friend of his. It was very shoddy and one of the PCBs had a short circuit on a via!

[Bored@Work]

No I can't say they added an annular ring (pad) but the holes of my NPTH drillsholes are shiny on the inside.

It needs extra processing to not plate a hole. The hole has to be covered during the hole plating or a second round of drilling would be needed.

[Laen]

No I can't say they added an annular ring (pad) but the holes of my NPTH drillsholes are shiny on the inside. Pad size is still zero. I doesn't really matter in my case, as the NPTH holes are the mounting holes only (4 holes in total). I think they might not be able to properly process NPTH holes. I don't know too much about the actual manufacturing process, but my guess would be, that they drilled the NPTH holes before they sent the boards into the electroplating bath.

Oh, right.  Asian manufacturers drill, plate the holes, then etch the pattern.  US fabrications drill, etch the pattern, then plate.

[Psi]

I got these boards made by http://www.ourpcb.com/

There were no problems at all, the boards worked great and i didnt find any mistakes.
(I've only used the company once though)
They did post me a card for new years though, so they're the kind of company that will go out of their way to be friendly.

[Chasm]

Got my boards today, seems that customs took a second look.

As far as I can tell on the first look all PCB are the same.
Next up, upping the ante and ordering the 6mil design.

OTOH, it seems that a part is missing from my order. Let's see how they react. (Customs did not open the parcel.)

[Jon Chandler]

Finally!  My boards just arrived.  Shipped on December 12th and here on January 29th.  China Post had huge problems in shipping from Shenzeng.

The boards look pretty decent, especially considering the price of US$12 plus $4 for shipping for 10 boards.  The picture shows some of the boards have marks on the edges.  For this price, 5 of the 10 boards are electrically tested.

Unlike boards from PCBGeek and PCBCart (where I purchased the TAP-28 boards) which came vacuum-sealed in plastic, this stack was just taped together and wrapped in bubble wrap.

Based on these boards, and assuming the shipping was an abnormality,  I'd recommend ITeed Studios as good source for very low cost boards.

ITead Studios

[TopherTheME]

Finally!  My boards just arrived.  Shipped on December 12th and here on January 29th.  China Post had huge problems in shipping from Shenzeng.

The first set of boards I bought from Itead arrived in about 2 week from when I ordered them. I ordered another set in the first week of January and of course have yet to see them. I think something must be going on in customs as things are taking a lot longer to get out of China these days.

For all of my more "serious" stuff, I still use www.sunstone.com. They are more expensive but using Value Proto, I've had my boards in about a week from the day I order them. The quality is a lot better than most chinese places too.

[Jon Chandler]

China Post had huge problems shipping around the holidays.  There are reports of thousands of shipments being delayed.  ITead had a post about it here.  The post shows an interesting notice from China Post.  It looks very formal.  No idea what it actually says.

[johnmx]

FYI (copy/paste from an email):

Würth Elektronik is a German PCB manufacturer with three plants in Germany. We are Europe’s biggest PCB manufacturer.
Our segment is to be found in PROTOTYPES, SMALL, and MEDIUM VOLUMES. One of our plants exclusively produces PROTOTYPES. The two others make SMALL and MEDIUM VOLUMES.

Conventional PCBs(from 2 to 24 layers) and Advanced PCBs:
-   Rigid-Flex PCBs
-   Flex PCBs
-   HDI / Microvia PCBs
-   Heat-Sink PCBs
-   Etc.

http://www.we-online.com

I never used their services. I just know about them today.

[StanT]

I've used these people a few times http://www.pad2pad.com/
no complaints

[LEECH666]

Würth Elektronic is a well known component manufacturer here in Germany. I know them mainly for their inductors and coils

I wouldn't really group them with the hobbyist compatible pcb manufacturers. They are most likely very expensive, like most professional pcb manufacturers here.

Florian

[Joy at MCS]

I think Ultra  Electronics in the UK might also do make PCB's as well

[osmosis321]

Würth Elektronic is a well known component manufacturer here in Germany. I know them mainly for their inductors and coils

I wouldn't really group them with the hobbyist compatible pcb manufacturers. They are most likely very expensive, like most professional pcb manufacturers here.

I checked them out and noticed they have a bunch of metric standoff bolts, which is something I haven't seen a lot of in my regular supply haunts.

So I ordered one of their design kits; it costs US$75 and comes with "free refills for life" which supposedly means they'll replenish my supply of any parts I use from the kit on demand.  The unspoken caveat there being I'll have to eat the shipping cost.

So far so good, I've placed the order and am awaiting delivery.

[LEECH666]

Indeed, free refills sound awesome, if you do a lot of prototyping. Maybe I was wrong, however 120 Euros for a single 100mm x 100mm PCB is just too expensive for me.

Some news about the quality of my PCBs manufactured by Iteadstudio (or their contractors):

One of my coworkers bought a cheap USB-Microscope for use in our office (Electronic Design Department), which arrived here today. Of course I used it on one of the PCBs manufactured by Itead which I happend to have around.

Maybe you remember from one of my earlier posts in this thread that I talked about (supposed) stopmask-errors on some of the boards.

Bad:


Good:


Well if you take a look at the pictures you can clearly see that they have some sort of issue with their electroplating process (0.5mm THT vias, IIRC). Maybe it's related to their drill process too, as the holes of the defective vias seem to be a lot smaller than the holes of the vias that correctly plated through.

In their defense I got to say, that the PCB I have inspected with the microscope is one of the PCBs that wasn't electrically tested. I guess paying the extra 10$ for a 100% e-test might be well worth it.

I got to check the board that I actually soldered my components to. I am not sure if I used one of the e-tested (markered) board.

Over all I am still pretty happy with the price / quality ratio. It's just something I think you should know and look out for when you're dealing with them.

Cheers,
Florian

[Chasm]

As far as I can tell all my boards are ok, there are no problems with the via. OTOH a 24 thou design should not make any problems in the first place.

Next up is the 6 thou design. (Both signals and spacing.) I guess this will separate the sheep from the goats. 

I guess paying the extra 10$ for a 100% e-test might be well worth it.

I think this depends on the complexity of the design and the size, for the $12 5x5cm boards it does not seem too economical.

[LEECH666]

Just saying: 0.5mm -> 19.68 mil vias should be no problem if their lowest diameter for holes is 0.3mm.

Whatever, I am still satisfied . I only need two boards out of the eleven I got.

Cheers,
Florian

[Rossco]

You may wish to look at APCircuits out of Calgary. I find generally that if you stay in Canada you don't have to deal with the border costs. I have not used them so I am not sure of their quality BUT they do have an online price calculator that you can run quickly to get a price. I sure would like to know where you are end up going and the quality that you get. I have a couple of boards I would like to run soon. At APCircuits shipping was worth more then the cost of the boards. Please post results when your mission is complete.

[TheDirty]

Got my second run of PCB's from Laen and Dorkbot PDX.  The quality is the same as the previous batch, excellent.  I should retry for another picture as the PCB picture is not picking up the quality of the board and I'm too lazy to colour correct it, so it looks a little orangish.





I've only been getting tiny boards made up, but unfortunately the next board I want to be made is 10 sq/inch which is getting to an expensive size for the prototype batch PCB places.  I would go and get a full panel for it, but I really only need 1 of them made.  I could cut the size of this board by 1/3, but I want it to mount behind a GLCD, so the dimensions are fixed.

[mitpatterson]

Got my second run of PCB's from Laen and Dorkbot PDX.  The quality is the same as the previous batch, excellent.  I should retry for another picture as the PCB picture is not picking up the quality of the board and I'm too lazy to colour correct it, so it looks a little orangish.





I've only been getting tiny boards made up, but unfortunately the next board I want to be made is 10 sq/inch which is getting to an expensive size for the prototype batch PCB places.  I would go and get a full panel for it, but I really only need 1 of them made.  I could cut the size of this board by 1/3, but I want it to mount behind a GLCD, so the dimensions are fixed.

board looks nice, and that one your working on, WOW, amazing what having 6mil trace width abilities allows you to do. And may i ask what the board your working on is for?

[TheDirty]

board looks nice, and that one your working on, WOW, amazing what having 6mil trace width abilities allows you to do. And may i ask what the board your working on is for?

None of those traces are actually 6mil.  The smallest traces are all 10mil.  If it wasn't for the vias I could etch this board myself, but the size of the vias I need to be able to drill myself are too large for this design.

I signed up to get my motorcycle racing license again and had this idea for a lap timer/logger.  I got a Venus GPS module from the first Sparkfun FreeDay and was using it in a hiking datalogger, but there are a few professional lap timers out there that are based on GPS and this Venus module has a pretty good update rate.  Not certain how accurate it's going to be, but I'm not looking for hundreds of a second here.   I looked around for a pretty and simple monochrome GLCD to implement with it and settled on a KS0108 that I ordered from e-bay on the weekend.  I got the idea on Friday, and threw everything into a schematic and dumped it all on the board, so the image of the board there is a rough draft that I threw together in a couple days.  Still needs all the labeling and a bunch of tweaking before I'm happy with it.

The final system is based around an LPC1756 uC, with CAN transceiver to talk to my motorcycle for basic engine/speed data, MicroSD to log the info, temp sensor for track conditions, the GPS module, and RF module for talking to whatever else I want it to.  I was thinking of putting the control buttons on a remote since I'll need the buttons on the handlebar somewhere available.