Avoiding China for PCBs - anyone tried S Korea?

[peter-h]

Chinese are good for consistent boards but comms ranges from hard to impossible and often one tends to conclude they do it deliberately.

I have tried to establish comms with firms in S Korea but while I sort of managed a few, their prices were basically UK prices, so a pointless exercise.

[nigelwright7557]

I use JLCPCB (Hong Kong) and rarely have a problem.
On the order form there is a notes area where you can add extra instructions.

[slavoy]

Chinese are good for consistent boards but comms ranges from hard to impossible and often one tends to conclude they do it deliberately.

Which one?

[peter-h]

To clarify: this is for production, not small qty for which JLCPCB is ok. There are also low volume Korean firms but about 5x more expensive than JLCPCB.

The topic is non China and whether anyone here has tried it.

[bookaboo]

Our local CM swears by Eurocircuits for our productions runs, most of which are in the low 1000's.  Though I find them more expensive than aforementioned JLC, I can only assume there's some SMT line specifics that explain their preference.

Do you find JLC quality varies on high volume?

[peter-h]

The topic is non China and whether anyone here has tried it.

Endless threads on JLCPCB etc etc.

Do Eurocircuits (where are they? - a common name) manufacture in S Korea?

[bookaboo]

Maybe you should try North Korea, you might like it there,

[nctnico]

The topic is non China and whether anyone here has tried it.

Endless threads on JLCPCB etc etc.

Do Eurocircuits (where are they? - a common name) manufacture in S Korea?

Why are you fixated on South Korea? Eurocircuits has factories allover the world but their main office is in Belgium. They are super easy to work with and will fix a mistake without making fuss. I have been ordering from Eurocircuits for over 15 years and they have fine tuned their workflow to minimise room for error.

[loki42]

How many units are you looking for per order?  There's board houses all over the world but there's also premium Chinese ones with excellent communication,  even for very weird stuff.  Are you doing HDI, high layer count? 

[peter-h]

2k-10k circuits.

I've been using China for 30 years. Some good firms, many crap ones. Nowadays a lot of gangsters too; recently spent a lot of $$$ retrieving a moulding tool (posted about it here).

Not interested in discussing China in this case.

Eurocircuits probably manufacture in China, at least some stuff. We used to buy from companies which did that. One pays about 2x more for it.

Another factor with mainland Europe is that there is a lot of "unofficial brexit punishment" going on. For example the customs offices in BE, NL, DE, FR chuck UK packages into a corner and leave them to rot there for a few weeks, then quite often return them as "unclaimed". The couriers (UPS, etc) got this too but sorted it so the delays are much less. This attitude will calm down eventually but it is taking a long time.

[mikeselectricstuff]

AFAIK Eurocircuits has a facility in somewhere like Romania - their webpage says manufactured in Europe

[peter-h]

I could send them a board to quote on but by the sound of it they are an agent for various PCB companies. I've seen many of those...

[mon2]

I think I can help. We have used S. Korean PCB shops for years while China was learning the ropes on halogen free laminates. Korea has technical leads, along with Taiwan but you will pay a higher cost.

Suggest for you to contact Steve Ra of ACEROYAL in S. Korea:

http://www.aceroyal.co.kr/product/tyntek/TYNTEK_CompanyProfile_EnglishVersion_2023_Korea%20ace.pdf

We met Steve when he used to live in Toronto and was at a local tech fair. Years ago, he moved to South Korea to expand his business. Openly his quality of PCBs surpassed the local vendors.

One PCB shop that comes to mind is Seil PCB in Korea. As noted, the costs are higher. We can also share some excellent shops in China and believe that we are quite anal on quality. Some good shops in China include Founder PCB (used by Dell); Suntak PCB; China Fastprint; Yaxinda; Kingford PCB - each we have used for many years to date to supply HP / Dell / Intel and many medical accounts.

https://m.seilpcb.co.kr/

Trust Steve on his experience and hope it works out for you. Feel free to post back if there are any questions.

BTW - as noted a few times in the forum - if you can, consider to attend the electronic fairs in HK this fall (October) - very likely Seil will be there and so will many other PCB shops. We are planning to also attend the Nepcon fair in Shenzhen to review some new Yamaha SMT equipment.

[Mario87]

I have tried to establish comms with firms in S Korea but while I sort of managed a few, their prices were basically UK prices, so a pointless exercise.

So what you want are Chinese prices from a non Chinese supplier that is easier to deal with? Highly doubtful you’ll find that. Either you will pay more for the privilege of it coming out of a country where workers are paid more or you simply have to deal with the Chinese comms issues to get the cheap prices you want.

Even as mentioned above, a lot of the non Chinese suppliers will have factories in China but because you deal with a UK or European rep it means you pay more.

Speaking of Europe you say you want to avoid them because of brexit issues, there are minimal brexit post issues with proper couriers like DHL, UPS & FedEx…although I can’t speak for standard postal services.

Honestly is does sound a little bit like you want to have your cake and eat it too by wanting a non Chinese supplier but still wanting to pay their prices. Can’t have it both ways

[ansonbao]

I don't know what happened to you Peter, but I can understand what you said. This happens in some small companies. The main reason is that it is very difficult to manage a factory. According to my understanding, many companies in China are not good enough in managing factories. If something goes wrong later, they are less willing to take responsibility.

My suggestion is that you need to find a responsible Chinese manufacturer for a long-term cooperation, so that you can worry less and save a lot.

[mengfei]

OR maybe Philippines Perhaps 

https://www.pcba-manufacturers.com/top-8-pcb-fabrication-and-assembly-manufacturers-in-philippines/

https://www.pcbdirectory.com/manufacturers?country=Philippines&order_type=Production#:~:text=Production%20PCB%20Manufacturers%20in%20Philippines%201%20Antech-Enviro.%202,Express.%208%20Tianjin%20Xiangyuan%20Insulation%20Material%20Co.%2C%20LTD

[liaifat85]

Which particular manufacturer did you use in China. Did you try PCBway?

[mairo]

Look at the exhibitors list at Nepcon in South Korea (Seoul) for a list of local PCB manufacturers.

Kingford PCB in China as mentioned above are quite good (I know you are not looking at China, just wanted to share a good experience with them).

[peter-h]

I've used 10+ chinese companies over the years, plus some UK based front companies who manufacture in china.

The problems tend to be the same. Comms problems (some probably just google translate), hacked emails with fake bank details sent (have to phone the company to check but most hang up the call if they hear English), tooling destroyed after 1 year since last used and then they look totally puzzled why you went elsewhere next time , etc.

Actually PCBs are "easy". Try making whole products out there. I used to do that. Tooling smashed, missing, companies going bust with our stock / work in progress. Last one went bust a couple of weeks after the $20k shipment was loaded onto the ship (and we lost all test equipment and a $10k injection moulding tool). Last moulding tool was retrieved via what would make a good gangster movie, with several payoffs... I stopped all product mfg there after that. I posted about it here...

Thank you all for your input.

[ansonbao]

Peter,you didn't find the right company. I understand the situation you met.
You cooperated with the company that don't have their own mail system. Usually in China they use Foxmail totol,it is easily be hacked(the situation serious in China before).
I suggest you cooperate with those companies that have brands in the market.

[peter-h]

I think the email hacks are often inside jobs.

For example I use JLCPCB for prototypes. Used ITEA but JLC are fine and much cheaper. Within a month or two of buying something from these, I get emails from a load of chinese pcb companies

But yeah if you are on gmail, with a password like jlcpcb2022, it will be hacked. In the West no real business uses gmail.

[HwAoRrDk]

I think the email hacks are often inside jobs.

Yeah, most likely some employee leaves and takes a copy of customer list with them to a new company. Or an employee sneaks a copy of the customer list out the metaphorical back door to their buddy who works at or runs a prospective competitor.

At least once a month I get an email from some Chinese PCB company that I've never heard of trying to promote their services. (And those are just the ones that make it through spam filtering.) But I've only ever done business with a handful of PCB manufacturers: JLCPCB, PCBWay, ALLPCB, Elecrow. So one of them must have spilled my email address.

[peter-h]

Exactly.

There is a lot of basically criminal behaviour there.

And China is the world capital for hacking. I run a few servers and they are attacked, mostly from China but also some from Russia, at 1-10Hz Some I have put behind Cloudflare (which is free for nonprofit bodies) and there I block China and Russia in the firewall rules. Of course with a VPN they still get in, but far fewer.

[AndyBeez]

May I ask your motivation for avoiding Chinese PCB fabrication? Considering that 99% of the parts placed on the board will be Chinese, possibly using a fabrication process using Chinese made machines and Chinese raw materials, are your concerns to do with intellectual property, or production and quality control? If you want Chinese prices, cut out the western middle men and pay Chinese factories direct. Just because South Korea is in south east Asia, it does not mean Koreans should be paying themselves at Chinese, or even Cambodian wage levels.

There is certainly nothing more productive than being able to pick up a phone and speak to a knowledgeable human at the sub-contractor, who speaks the same language and is in the same timezone. But this situation has not existed since the 1990s when the G7 'club' dashed towards globalisation, and China reciprocated by exporting their unemployment.

I note my 'Korean' Samsung and LG kit all says on the back Made In China. Which is the same origin as my Apple and Asus kit. btw, South Korea is renowned for its high volume ship production, which is only possible by outsourcing component(block) production to mainland China. So unless you visit the SK fab house and watch your boards passing through the tanks, is there any guarantee that your product will remain south side of the DMZ?

btw Vietnam is an emerging market. https://www.mokotechnology.com/top-10-pcb-suppliers-in-vietnam-2022/

[Black Phoenix]

I think the email hacks are often inside jobs.

Yeah, most likely some employee leaves and takes a copy of customer list with them to a new company. Or an employee sneaks a copy of the customer list out the metaphorical back door to their buddy who works at or runs a prospective competitor.

At least once a month I get an email from some Chinese PCB company that I've never heard of trying to promote their services. (And those are just the ones that make it through spam filtering.) But I've only ever done business with a handful of PCB manufacturers: JLCPCB, PCBWay, ALLPCB, Elecrow. So one of them must have spilled my email address.

All of this is true. I am in Shenzhen, Mainland China and also Hong Kong.

That is the modus operandi of it. Last company I do a job for one of the project managers had set a parallel company and was "syphoning" customer from his employer to his own company owned by him and his brother.

Main boss (who is German) knows but can't do anything (the guy family have connections with the CCP).

Good thing is that the guy is incompetent in the technical side and the international customers don't go directly through him but through the office in Germany (the main money making of the company).

The only reason why he still is there is because how good he is in getting customers in Mainland China and the fact the ones he "stole" come back after problems, plus his connections.