Has anyone used aisler.net ?

[cgroen]

Just as a test, I tried submitting the same design (135 x 135 mm, 4 layer) to both Aisler and to JLCPCB.
One of the differences is that you can select different colors of the soldermask at JLCPCB, Aisler is only green.
Also the number of boards (in increments of 3) at Aisler, drives the price up linearly, while at JLCPCB there is a lot less impact depending on the number of boards you order (and Aisler only offers 1,2 and 4 layers, JLC goes to 6 layers)

The price for 5 pcs of the board at JLC is €58,16 + €23,18 (DHL, which will give approx the same delivery time as boards from Aisler)
Price for the same board a 3 pcs at Aisler is €75,60, my guess is that using their free shipping (here in Europe) will give more or less the same total time as JLC using DHL. Might be different around the world though! (Aisler offers "over night" shipping for an extra €15!)
A stencil from both places is at JLC €6,36 (topside only, 15x15 cm) and at Aisler it is €15,75.

Not too bad for a European manufacturer!

EDIT: If the points from "nali" in the post before mine is taken care of 
Also, VAT etc is NOT taken into account in the above, which tips it even more towards Aisler!!

[Ranayna]

That 0% VAT makes me curious. Are you ordering as a VAT registered company or as private person?

[cgroen]

That 0% VAT makes me curious. Are you ordering as a VAT registered company or as private person?

As a VAT registered company

[Ranayna]

Ah, that clears that up. Thanks.

[cgroen]

I ordered 2 designes yesterday evening (both 4 layers), I was truly amazed of their frontend and gerber viewer, second to none!
The price is somewhat higher than JLC (where I normally get my prototypes from), but combined with a little less for shipping it ends somewhat similar. The big difference (to JLC etc) is that if I want more than 3 PCB of a given order, the price just multiplies (unless "series production" is selected for the order)

I ordered one of the boards with express delivery, and the other just with normal free delivery. As I understand from their website, the 2 boards will be bundled together in shipping so both are sent "express".
I'll report back once I get the boards.
Oh, and email support was stellar ! I submitted these 2 first designs after "normal closing hours" yesterday evening (I was as usual late and there were instant replies from Felix about a couple of stupid questions I had, questions that I easily managed to find answers on their website once I looked....
Crossing my fingers for this one!

Yesterday I got the first 2 orders from Aisler. The boards looks very nicely done, the silkscreen is absolutely stunning, the surface (ENIG) looks very nice too!
Below are two pictures of the boards. I have a 3rd order coming today from them (somewhat larger board of 255 x 100 mm). All boards so far have been 4 layers.
One thing that is really nice at Aisler is the ability to upload new revisions right up to the point where the boards enter production (in my cases this was a day later than I ordered them)

[jmw]

I got my order back and they didn't invert the plane layers like I required, so they have no ground plane, no power plane, and are going straight to the bin. They also never answered any of my previous emails, and if there's still nobody manning the ship when I request a refund, I'll just go through my credit card company. This outfit seems it's in over its head.

[thinkfat]

I got my order back and they didn't invert the plane layers like I required, so they have no ground plane, no power plane, and are going straight to the bin. They also never answered any of my previous emails, and if there's still nobody manning the ship when I request a refund, I'll just go through my credit card company. This outfit seems it's in over its head.

So, you did check their gerber viewer and the layers were as they should be? Not all board manufacturers support negative layers. JLCPCB doesn't, as far as I know.

But I agree, they're not very responsive over email. The couple of times I used Aisler I checked the PCB in the gerber viewer and recreated the files if necessary, until it looked good in the viewer. Never tried asking them any special treatment of plane layers, either.

[jmw]

OSHPark and JLCPCB have handled negative plane layers correctly for me. They've also sent me occasional questions about other things so they must have techs who inspect the Gerbers, and based on the lack of email thing, I suspect Aisler doesn't have staff in that role. I'm using Circuit Studio from Altium, which like Designer, plots plane layers as negatives and doesn't seem to have an option to do otherwise.

edit: I tried the PCB viewer and I can see the problem now. I was unsure at the time of the order, so sent them an email to confirm things, since I totally missed the button to turn off the solder mask plotting which obscures the internal layers. My bad there, but I would probably design the viewer to make internal layers and solder mask plotting mutually exclusive.

[thinkfat]

OSHPark and JLCPCB have handled negative plane layers correctly for me. They've also sent me occasional questions about other things so they must have techs who inspect the Gerbers, and based on the lack of email thing, I suspect Aisler doesn't have staff in that role. I'm using Circuit Studio from Altium, which like Designer, plots plane layers as negatives and doesn't seem to have an option to do otherwise.

Good to know. Last time I checked, JLCPCB didn't support negative layers and in fact they still have this in their technical FAQ for Altium products:
 

For 4 layer boards, our system will detect .G1 and .G2 files, which are generated for internal signal layers. Our site will not look for GP1 or GP2 files however, as those are typically generated as “negative” polarity gerbers which our system may not process correctly.

I think there's at least some people in Aisler reviewing orders, but I guess they're mostly relying on their web frontend to sort out stuff for them. I just recently had a case where one of my boards violated a constraint and it was not caught by any review (looked good in the Gerber viewer, too). They remade the boards.

[jmw]

For JLC, I've actually had no problems with sending them .GP1/2 files. I hope the public health situation stabilizes over there soon. For OSHPark, I learned that I could manually edit the .GPx files in a text editor and add a line "%IPNEG*%" near the start, and it would fix their viewer. OSHPark support told me some human still has to invert the layer when they do paneling, but they know about this Gerber directive and auto-flag it. I'll see if that fixes Aisler's internal layer plotting now that I know how to show internal layers without solder mask (ugh), but they might have the same issue as OSHPark.

edit: %IPNEG*% didn't work in Aisler's viewer, so they must not recognize it. Seems like it's still a valid GerberX2 as KiCAD's viewer shows an inverted plot.

Also, these misaligned drill hits (in particular on the right in the second row of 4 vias) on 1 of the 3 boards would have shorted the power and ground planes, if they were there. Altogether, this has been a  experience.

[thm_w]

Also, these misaligned drill hits (in particular on the right in the second row of 4 vias) on 1 of the 3 boards would have shorted the power and ground planes, if they were there. Altogether, this has been a  experience.

What the hell, no e-test?

Some of your vias are incredibly close together though, I think that would be outside of JLC's spec at least.

[cgroen]

Unfortunately, I have also gotten "not optimal" boards from Aisler now 
This was my 4th design with them (I have had more than 120 designs with JLCPCB until now without any glitch), this board from Aisler was just a "proof of concept" for some simple stuff. The VIAs were misaligned, they are 0.2mm/0.4mm in the design, both within Aisler's specs.
All 3 board for this order did not work, there were 2 nets that were shorted together, I have of course double checked gerbers, got a clean DRC etc but did not find any explanation.
So I can also conclude that no etest are done.
Whats almost worse, total silence over email from them!
Until this, there were reasonably fast communication, the first 2 designs there were almost instant communication. Not so much more....
Luckily I can see my 4 layer enig boards at JLC being complete now, waiting for a second 4 layer board to be finished, and then they are shipped together 

[OwO]

That doesn't look like 0.2mm/0.4mm vias; it looks like the hole was too big or the annulus too small. For comparison this is what 0.2mm/0.45mm hole/pad diameter looks like:




Btw for larger vias I generally use larger annulus, for example 0.3mm drill diameter => 0.7mm pad diameter; 0.5mm drill diameter => 1.0mm pad diameter; 1.0mm drill => 1.7mm pad. I really don't like seeing via holes almost breaking out of the pad.

[cgroen]

That doesn't look like 0.2mm/0.4mm vias; it looks like the hole was too big or the annulus too small. For comparison this is what 0.2mm/0.45mm hole/pad diameter looks like:

(Attachment Link)
(Attachment Link)

Exactly, when looking at their own gerber preview for the exact same board it looks like below.
Unfortunately I dont have the ability to measure the physical board, but something is clearly wrong. I could live with that if the at least would answer my mails, errors are ok and can and will happen at some point, it is HOW you handle the errors that matters to me!

[thinkfat]

The diameter of the via looks good, judging by the width of the trace compared to the diameter of the via, but they drilled a bigger size than 0.2mm! Also the drill center is off. Could have worked if they drilled the holes to the correct size but with those holes... nope. That's a bummer!

[cgroen]

The diameter of the via looks good, judging by the width of the trace compared to the diameter of the via, but they drilled a bigger size than 0.2mm! Also the drill center is off. Could have worked if they drilled the holes to the correct size but with those holes... nope. That's a bummer!

Yes, I also think the holes are wrong, and the alignment are way off
The tracks are desgined as 0.127 mm for Comparison

[ebastler]

The diameter of the via looks good, judging by the width of the trace compared to the diameter of the via, but they drilled a bigger size than 0.2mm! Also the drill center is off. Could have worked if they drilled the holes to the correct size but with those holes... nope. That's a bummer!

The same just happened to me; luckily I spotted it in the web front end before placing an order. I had vias with 0.25mm drill, 0.45mm copper diameter, and they elected to "upgrade" the drill diameter to 0.35mm -- without changing the copper size. 

I noticed it on the "overview" page (edit: the page which summarizes the data for my uploaded design), where they stated the minimum drill size in my design as 0.35mm. But there was no active notification about the changes they made. Very annoying.

Likewise, they widened the openings in the solder mask without asking (so the design no longer meets Xilinx' specs for the BGA I use), and they silently replaced all tented vias by open ones (again increasing the risk of problems under the BGA). OK, I could have known about the latter, since their specs state "no tented vias". But still, a warning message about changes made would have been in order.

While Aisler's Gerber viewer is very nice indeed, they use it to push all responsibility to the customer. Essentially it's "You order what we show you in the Gerber viewer, not what you submitted to us in your design files. Better look real close, since we might have hidden some surprises for you in there." 

[thinkfat]

The diameter of the via looks good, judging by the width of the trace compared to the diameter of the via, but they drilled a bigger size than 0.2mm! Also the drill center is off. Could have worked if they drilled the holes to the correct size but with those holes... nope. That's a bummer!

The same just happened to me; luckily I spotted it in the web front end before placing an order. I had vias with 0.25mm drill, 0.45mm copper diameter, and they elected to "upgrade" the drill diameter to 0.35mm -- without changing the copper size. 

I noticed it on the "overview" page, where they stated the minimum drill size as 0.35mm. But there was no active notification about the changes they made. Very annoying.

Likewise, the widened the openings in the solder mask without asking (so the design no longer meets Xilinx' specs for the BGA I use), and they silently replaced all tented vias by open ones (again increasing the risk of problems under the BGA). OK, I could have known about the latter, since their specs state "no tented vias". But still, a warning message about changes made would have been in order.

While Aisler's Gerber viewer is very nice indeed, they use it to push all responsibility to the customer. Essentially it's "You order what we show you in the Gerber viewer, not what you submitted to us in your design files. Better look real close, since we might have hidden some surprises for you in there." 

You tried the "Blitz" service, then? Because their 2-layer "HD" PCBs have 0.2mm minimum drill size and should have met your design. The "Blitz" service is a bit of a trap. It's full of restrictions that you're not warned about when you submit the design files.

[ebastler]

You tried the "Blitz" service, then? Because their 2-layer "HD" PCBs have 0.2mm minimum drill size and should have met your design. The "Blitz" service is a bit of a trap. It's full of restrictions that you're not warned about when you submit the design files.

Nope, it was the "4-layer HD" variant. My 0.25mm drills were clearly within their 0.2mm design spec, which makes this so much more annoying.

[jfiresto]

... The "Blitz" service is a bit of a trap. It's full of restrictions that you're not warned about when you submit the design files....

I received my first Blitz service boards earlier this week. Aisler's uploader is supposed to check that a design meets its capabilities, before offering the choice. Having been bitten often enough by PCB CAM over the last twenty years, I carefully read all that they wrote about Blitz, anyway, which in my case was enough.

Or was it? I specified four unplated mounting holes on each board, and I got that, except for one hole on one board that has a neatly plated wall and a sloppy tongue, on just one side, bridging the hole wall and ground. I asked Aisler if I should document the failure for QC purposes, as it is pronounced and unlike any I have seen. I was told the problem was that I had submitted a single drill file: that I needed to submit two, one with the plated holes and one with the unplated ones.

I explained why that is not how it works and that their fab will identify the unplated holes by the missing copper – which they did and acted on, with better than 91% accuracy. But now that you guys remind me, their board viewer does show that all the mounting holes are unplated. It is time to fire up the microscope and send off some images.

[thinkfat]

... The "Blitz" service is a bit of a trap. It's full of restrictions that you're not warned about when you submit the design files....

I received my first Blitz service boards earlier this week. Aisler's uploader is supposed to check that a design meets its capabilities, before offering the choice. Having been bitten often enough by PCB CAM over the last twenty years, I carefully read all that they wrote about Blitz, anyway, which in my case was enough.

Or was it? I specified four unplated mounting holes on each board, and I got that, except for one hole on one board that has a neatly plated wall and a sloppy tongue, on just one side, bridging the hole wall and ground. I asked Aisler if I should document the failure for QC purposes, as it is pronounced and unlike any I have seen. I was told the problem was that I had submitted a single drill file: that I needed to submit two, one with the plated holes and one with the unplated ones.

I explained why that is not how it works and that their fab will identify the unplated holes by the missing copper – which they did and acted on, with better than 91% accuracy. But now that you guys remind me, their board viewer does show that all the mounting holes are unplated. It is time to fire up the microscope and send off some images.

And have them remake the boards based on their rendering guarantee. To make the lesson stick.

[ebastler]

Aisler's email etiquette sucks.

A couple days after I had uploaded my test design (a small 4-layer "HD" board, in which they had taken the liberty to make all via holes larger without even adjusting the copper), I received an automated follow-up email: Had I figured out how great their Gerber viewer is, how to complete the ordering process, etc.?  The email was signed by Felix, one of the founders. It did nicely acknowledge that it was of course an automated email, but pointed out that "if you hit reply, I'll be right there for you".

I actually did reply, to use the opportunity to let them know about my disappointing experience with the drills. (Plus the uncalled-for widening of the solder mask, and the lack of tented vias. All three combined would have virtually guaranteed that the BGA I have on that board would have been soldered with plenty of shorts.) Wrote a polite and detailed email, and expressed my hope that they would fine-tune their Gerber handling, since I would really like to order prototypes from them.

The answer: Nothing, neither from Felix nor anybody else, for a week now.

Instead: The next automated email. Subject: "Drills, drills, drills -- how important they are and how serioulsy we take them at Aisler". 

This is sad. I want Aisler to be good, since they offer a combination of pricing, features and turnaround time I can't get anywhere else in Europe. But they seriously mess with my Gerbers without even telling me, they don't reply to emails, and send me stupid spam instead. 

[m98]

The etching of cgroen's prototype PCB looks horrible. Whatever German PCB manufacturer they're using, it's probably one in someone's mom's basement...
It's a shame what the Fritzing Fab service has become. Ordered a few times from them, the quality was excellent. Seems like they switched to a cheaper manufacturer to keep a similar pricing scheme.

[cgroen]

The etching of cgroen's prototype PCB looks horrible. Whatever German PCB manufacturer they're using, it's probably one in someone's mom's basement...
It's a shame what the Fritzing Fab service has become. Ordered a few times from them, the quality was excellent. Seems like they switched to a cheaper manufacturer to keep a similar pricing scheme.

To be honest, Felix agreed that the first ones where "not optimal"!
He redid the boards, and the new ones were very much perfect

[ebastler]

A couple of days after I had posted my complaint about Aisler's lack of email response here, Felix did send a nice reply. (Not sure whether it was prompted by the post here or a coincidence.) He explained that they indeed make those changes to the drills, and stated that the Chinese manufacturers do the same without telling you.

Since I had already ordered the board in question from JLCPCB, I thought this would be a good opportunity to compare the two, and ordered the same little PCB from Aisler too. Both boards have arrived now, and I have attached closeup photos of both of them. A few comments:

Both manufacturers did a clean job on the etching; no problems whatsoever with the 5 mil traces, as far as I can see.

Aisler has indeed made the via drills larger (0.25mm to 0.35mm), without enlarging the annular copper ring. The resulting annulus is very narrow, but they seem to get away with it since the registration of drills vs. copper is excellent. JLCPCB kept the drills unchanged, and has maybe enlarged the annulus a bit (making it non-spherical to keep a safe distance from the pads). They can use the extra leeway, since the drill registration isn't quite as good. Either approach should work, I think, but it feels like Aisler is taking a high risk here, or has a lot of confidence in the precision of their drills.

Aisler has also enlarged the openings in the solder mask a bit, apparently in proportion to the pad size -- it is hardly noticeable with the BGA pads, more so with some larger discrete components on the bottom. JLCPCB has shrunk the openings for the BGA pads somewhat, distorting them to cover any tracks which connect to the pad. That may be a good idea, to avoid variations in the copper area available to the BGA's balls, but is probably not critical?

Aisler does not officially support tented vias. They did cover the copper annulus of all vias with solder mask, but some of the holes are filled/covered, while some are not. For the BGA, I feel a bit more comfortable with the JLCPCB board, where all vias are closed. (But the surface is not planar, and I realize that I can't expect that.) Not sure whether it makes a practical difference though.

Aisler's silkscreen print is much more precise that JLCPCB's. Not very visible in the photographs, but JLCPCB's ink is thicker, with less well-defined contours. But it's clearly readable at 0.8mm character height.

JLCPCB did a shabby job with the contour milling. Some corners have strange little steps or indentations; and they apparently took some sandpaper to some of the boards (badly) to cover that up. The two corners shown here are some of the more pronounced samples, not all of them are that bad. Aisler's milling is perfect, giving the slightly rounded corners I wanted. But then you get the mouse-bites on all sides which I hadn't expected...

Finally, JLCPCB does of course give you more choice. With Aisler, green soldermask and 1.6mm material are the only options you get. Worked for me in this case.

In summary: Both boards seem usable. Given the low shipping cost and the favorable price structure for small quantities, I will definitely order from Aisler again.

Edit: Forgot to mention -- I like Aisler's stencils much better. JLCPCB sent one huge sheet with sharp corners (30*40cm², for a PCB that is DIP-40 sized) with combined stencils for both sides. Aisler provided two separate postcard-sized stencils with nice rounded corners, which are handy but still have enough surrounding space to fixate them and work the rake. I will definitely use the Aisler stencils. Thickness is 100µm for Aisler and 150µm for JLCPCB, by the way.