OurPCB - affordable multi-layer board manufacturer - my experience

[darrell]

That QFN looks familiar... TLV62130? I use it on my board as pre-regulator for TPS65400 main PMIC.

Yes, TLV62130 for the 1.0 V rail.

[sdouble]

I'm about to order 3 different pcbs from that company.
Did someone use their assembly chain ?
I'd love to have both the pcb pro + assembly done at the same place.

[sdouble]

3 different PCB ordered from that company.
1st one received this week.
120 units in panels of 6.
Rogers 4003c, 4 layers, DFN10 and 0201 passive in.
the plus :
honestly impressed by the quality. Price is rather reasonable. Not the cheapest, for sure, but the best Q/P ratio I ever had.

The minus :
communication in English is not straightforward
they are not fast according to modern standarts.

[Ninveh]

The minus :
communication in English is not straightforward

Could you please elaborate: did they encounter difficulties following your instructions? did they respond in a broken English so it was not clear what they meant?

I plan to try them out with some PCB fabrication and PCBA jobs, but communication (clear, and responding to *all* raised points in a timely order) is very high on my list - due to some past bad experience I had encountered with some other vendors.

P.S. I am totally not impressed with the SM and drill registration as seen in the pictures posted by Darrell, although they seem to be within  IPC-A-610 Class II limits.

[wraper]

I plan to try them out with some PCB fabrication and PCBA jobs, but communication (clear, and responding to *all* raised points in a timely order) is very high on my list - due to some past bad experience I had encountered with some other vendors.

I recently did PCBA with them. I would suggest to explicitly request wave soldering for through hole. SMT was flawless on all of my 500 boards. Around 45 SMT on components each, including 0.5mm pitch QFN. But through hole apparently was done manually with solder pot. Excessive flux residues and tons of touch up with solder iron.

[NorthGuy]

Could you please elaborate: did they encounter difficulties following your instructions? did they respond in a broken English so it was not clear what they meant?

My communication experience was completely different from sdouble.

I used WellPCB (PCB fabrication only, no PCBA). Whether they're the same as OurPCB or not is not clear, but the quote from WellPCB was much less than OurPCB wanted.

Communications were excellent. And quick too. No problems whatsoever!

[wraper]

Whether they're the same as OurPCB or not is not clear, but the quote from WellPCB was much less than OurPCB wanted.

They are the same, and they said me so as well. Assembled PCBs from wellpcb I received last time came in boxes with OurPCB printed on them.

[Ninveh]

But through hole apparently was done manually with solder pot. Excessive flux residues and tons of touch up with solder iron.

Thanks for the head up. I would have never thought that a mid-size(?) factory would hand-solder THD at Q=500 pcs.
My current design is 100% Through Hole, but very difficult to solder - large and thick board, 5 Oz copper. Some component leads extend only 1mm below the PS surface.

I can instruct my sales contact at the factory whatever I want, but at the end I may discover that either my comments have not been passed on to the factory, or that the shift engineer who got the email from the sales contact was not fluent enough in English to understand my notices.

The problem is that short of an annual factory visit, you never know how they assemble your board. While PCB fabrication and inspection is a fairly automatic process, PCBA is not, and we are at the mercy of incompetent laborers who lack training or basic professional common sense.

ISO9001 means nothing if that paper-flow process standard does not demand English proficiency tests for factory engineers or shift foremen.

[sdouble]

I did produce 4 boards in the last weeks from OURpcb. Rogers 4003c, 4 layers, and FR4 Tg=180, 2 and 4 layers.
First of all, you always communicate with the same human being. This is generally speaking nice .. except when she has days off for instance. Then you have to wait.
Second, I had to reformulate several requests due to clear misunderstanding. However, all situations were solved eventually. Sometimes it took days to solve basic problems like panel arrangement for instance.
However, i must confirm that the quality of the boards is by far higher than what i was used to.

The minus :
communication in English is not straightforward

Could you please elaborate: did they encounter difficulties following your instructions? did they respond in a broken English so it was not clear what they meant?

I plan to try them out with some PCB fabrication and PCBA jobs, but communication (clear, and responding to *all* raised points in a timely order) is very high on my list - due to some past bad experience I had encountered with some other vendors.

P.S. I am totally not impressed with the SM and drill registration as seen in the pictures posted by Darrell, although they seem to be within  IPC-A-610 Class II limits.

[asmi]

Just received another board - this time ordered through WellPCB, also 6 layers, but it only was $195 USD including shipping (last time it was $230). This time they didn't include cross-section sample nor QA report, but actual board quality is still excellent!
Front side:

Back side:

FPGA footprint:

DDR3L x16 footprint:

Main PMIC:

Expansion connector:

HDMI connector and ESD protection chip:


Hopefully will assemble the board over the weekend to see if it will work. But so far it looks amazing!

[asmi]

I've assembled the board and it's working!
I did gain a couple of gray hairs though during assembly - once I reflowed the board, +5V input power rail was shorted to ground! I traced the problem to the PMIC chip since some other pins were also shorted. After several attempts to resolder pads without removing the chip, I've concluded that the problem is with the chip itself, so I needed to replace it. This was a moment I regretted using lead-free paste as removing the chip (it's QFN-48) was quite a chore since my board had two full internal ground planes and so could take A LOT of heat - and I didn't have preheater (now it's on my shopping list). Once I took it out, I decided to use regular leaded solder for a new IC. That was much easier and faster of course.
After that I've accidentally applied power backwards for few seconds until I realized that . Once I reversed the power, only two out of 4 rails came online. Fearing for the worst (that I blew that chip too), I decided to touch up all QFN pins once again with an iron and see if that helps. And IT DID! All power rails came online and I saw "power good" LED came on.
Once the power issue is resolved, I've verified that Vref on JTAG connector is what it should be (to make sure I won't blow up the programmer) I connected programmer and plugged it all to computer. And Vivado recognized the chip!!!
There are two interesting things about this board. First of all, it included a single 512 MBytes (256Mx16) DDR3L chip, which has its "chip select" line permanently grounded as otherwise there are not enough pins in a single IO bank for ADDR/CTRL lines. I've quickly built a test design with DDR3 controller and Microblaze CPU to confirm that memory works, and indeed it did work! Second interesting thing is using 1.8V QSPI flash IC - I wanted to check if it's possible in principle to build a system without 3.3 V rail at all to save on DC-DC converters. And it turned out that it's entirely possible, so that if all your peripheral chips can work at 1.8 V, you can get rid of an extra DC-DC for 3.3V rail. There are a couple of gotchas though, so if you want to build such system - make sure you use schematic checklist spreadsheet provided by Xilinx to verify all your connections! I do have 3.3V rail on this board as I use it for HDMI stuff, and there is an option to set IO voltage for one of extension connectors, but both banks 0 and 14 (where configuration-related pins are) are completely devoid of anything 3.3V.
Finally, this is the first more-or-less complex board of mine that actually works on a first revision!
In case anyone's curious, here is a schematic of this board: https://1drv.ms/b/s!AkGeV4xlumxjg84U2EyEBlXt-h4mQQ