I recently ordered with ALLPCB as well, specifically the KJPCB fab. I ordered five of two designs in one file for a nixie tube clock (which may or may not have been inspired by Dave's nixie project
) standard 1oz copper, 1.6mm FR4 and green soldermask and received 6. I did pay extra for ENIG over HASL as I had been spoiled by OSHPark and I think it really helps with fine pitch parts (and looks good too
). It wasn't much extra either unlike most other manufacturers. I paid just under $50 in total, including express delivery by TNT. This was very quick, and overall from ordering to having the boards in my hand was 5 days! OSHPark would have been slightly cheaper, but taken several weeks longer and I was looking to try another company. If I hadn't gone for express delivery or ENIG it probably would've been cheaper. It also looks like the pricing would've scaled better for larger boards and multiple designs. Most of my boards are as compact as possible as I've gotten used to optimising for cheapest price on the PCBs over anything else.
The website is generally pretty good, however a few things I noticed is that I couldn't find a list of naming conventions for Gerber files, only the format. I had to try several attempts to get it to accept my drills file (apparently .txt worked, even though the file with the exact same contents with other extensions was rejected). The order status indicator could also be better, maybe indicating which stage of the process it was at during manufacturing but even just kept up to date would be nice. I contacted customer service after a few days when it still said 'awaiting manufacturing' and they quickly responded to my query that they had been manufactured and were waiting shipment. The login page could also be improved, as it doesn't use SSL/TLS (password being transmitted over plain text) nor is there any option to remember the password, and you must type in a capcha each time.
Overall I am pleased with the quality of the boards. Good quality and service, I'd recommend them and use them again. I haven't assembled them but they look like they're fine electrically. The copper and finish also looks fine and all within spec. Soldermask is also a decent job, though the areas without soldermask are a bit inconsistent (see the rings around vias at the bottom). Nothing that looks like it'll be a major concern though. I did use a mixture of tented and untented vias of differing sizes and selected the 'tented vias' process whilst noting that the design contains some which are tented and some which are not. I did intend to have almost all of them tented except the thermal vias and a few for important signals which I might need to probe or solder mod wires to. However, the boards I received seem to have fairly random tenting applied. The majority of them are ok, but some of the ones I wanted tented are untented and vice versa. Not a huge problem though, I can live with it. The final point is the silkscreen. This is probably the most disappointing part of the process, as it's quite inconsistent, varying in thickness and readability with not enough ink in places and big blobs in some. The bottom of design 'B' also all came with it offset by a couple of millimetres in each direction which whilst isn't a massive issue with my design, doesn't look great and it's actually printed over one of the pads. I couldn't find any manufacturing specifications for the silkscreen but I'm used to OSHPark being nice and crisp so I assumed it would be fine (I actually used a larger font than I usually use). Nevertheless, it does it's job adequately enough and isn't a massive issue.
Whilst writing this review I was inspecting one of the boards and actually noticed something stuck to one of the traces (bottom photo). I'm not entirely sure what it is, it almost looks like a trace pulled from another board, but it appears to be gold plated and it's well adhered to the board. Doesn't look like a short from a visual inspection so it probably passed the e-test (I don't have a multimeter with me at the moment to test), but I probably won't use the board anyway as it's carrying a moderately high voltage. They sent an extra anyway as mentioned, so I can't complain too much.
The positives:
- Cheap
- Received one additional board than I ordered
- Very fast service
- Edges are all cleanly routed - no v-grooves or mouse bites
- Looks good quality and up to spec
- Good customer service
The negatives:
- Silkscreen not the best quality
- Hidden payment charge at checkout
- Solder mask edges aren't particularly consistent around unmasked areas
- ALLPCB website could be better
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