Tearing my hair out with a Chinese PCB company

[james_s]

Nobody is trying to assassinate your character. We are just pointing out that you seem to have a history of trying to do things in a nonstandard way then having problems. The issue here is not them, it is you, or rather your peculiar workflow. Follow the standard workflow like everyone else does and you will stop having these problems.

[peter-h]

"When you're happy and want to order the production quality you go back to JLC and click "reorder" and enter in 100/1k/whatever quantity. That way you know that the same data has been used to fab both boards."

JLC are too expensive for production work. Also, very limited ability to communicate in English. If you can't specify the job via the form on their website, it may come back "different". The other day I ordered 10 circuits and got back 10 panels of 10 circuits Clearly I did something "wrong", but this would never happen in conventional PCB purchasing where you specify the panel layout, overall panel size, breakout tab detail (with photos), etc.

"Nobody is trying to assassinate your character"

Going back over somebody's old posts and digging up some other thread where that person got beaten up for something, is typical crappy social media behaviour. One sees it all over the place. Too many people with too much time on their hands... It's like you go on e.g. some snowboarding forum asking a question about snowboards, and a load of people dig up that you made a post in the off topic section, on brexit, and then beat you up, like a load of kids, in the snowboard section (I don't snowboard, btw).

I don't think you and some others have even read my posts and the reasons for doing the BBT comparison. To say it yet again: it is to try to eliminate the risk of populating say 1000 boards (a 5 digit GBP figure) after a change of PCB manufacturer. I have been doing this routinely for many years.

Anyway, this question is clearly not going to be answered. I was wondering if there was a BBT machine which somehow cannot test more than one board. I suspect this time that this company subcontracts the BBT and doesn't want to get involved, so is pretending they don't understand. It is a not uncommon Chinese tactic. They know that you will never turn up at their door.

[ataradov]

Why are you inventing crazy theories when there is a good explanation. This kind of behavior is exactly why they won't do your requests. Even if they do it and something does not work, you will come up with some theory to explain it, after all " It is a not uncommon Chinese tactic".

[thinkfat]

As mikeselectricstuff and free_electron have pointed out, and from what I've seen myself of BBT machines in some factory tour videos, the BBT machines will often work with a larger production panel rather than a customer "sub-panel" for higher efficiency.  Less manual handling.

I actually had a video sent to me of testing a board produced for me.  It had passed all BBT but had a shorts on an internal layer.  It turned out they had a bug in their gerber processing tool for combining boards into production panels.  The short was basically a line that ran right through the programming header, but only on some of the "sub-panels".  Because the short was in the production panel gerber data, it passed testing.  It was visible with back lighting, but annoyingly I'd already populated a few boards which failed before discovering it.

That's a good example why it's prudent to verify boards before ordering in big quantities, even if the Gerber data is known-good. But also a caveat that even automated tests at the manufacturer might not save you.

[thinkfat]

Anyway, this question is clearly not going to be answered. I was wondering if there was a BBT machine which somehow cannot test more than one board. I suspect this time that this company subcontracts the BBT and doesn't want to get involved, so is pretending they don't understand. It is a not uncommon Chinese tactic. They know that you will never turn up at their door.

On the contrary, it has been answered. You're probably not getting the size of the operation you're dealing with. Maybe watch a video about JLCPCB's automated manufacturing line, Scotty from Strange Parts has done a tour of their facility a while ago, so go and check his Youtube channel. Then you might understand why what you ask is unreasonable for them.

It might also be that the shop you're trying to contract is just an aggregator. They might not have any manufacturing capabilities themselves and thus simply cannot do what you ask for.

[48X24X48X]

It is almost 100% that PCB companies will tweak your gerber to better suite their manufacturing capabilities. But, they are usually done in order to ensure it fits their manufacturing capabilities limits and also provide a better head room if possible. So, definitely PCB factory A and B will not manufacturer a 100% same exact output. But, having said that, it doesn't mean an assembled board from 2 different factories would give very different results unless you are doing some application that needing so much of accuracy and repetitiveness.

But, JLCPCB is not expensive for their PCB (probably the cheapest) but maybe not an optimized option for assembly especially if your parts are not in their inventory. But, if you can only use their parts in your design and not looking for big volume or requiring full turnkey solution like testing, packing, etc, it is a good option. I have only tried them once for fun but for real production I used other service provider in Shenzhen.

[thm_w]

Going back over somebody's old posts and digging up some other thread where that person got beaten up for something, is typical crappy social media behaviour. One sees it all over the place. Too many people with too much time on their hands... It's like you go on e.g. some snowboarding forum asking a question about snowboards, and a load of people dig up that you made a post in the off topic section, on brexit, and then beat you up, like a load of kids, in the snowboard section (I don't snowboard, btw).

I didn't "go over your old posts", I remember you posting about having issues with JLC. Which is incredibly relevant to this thread, as the problem is almost the same.

I've also already recommended making a handful of pre-production units, to verify that their production process is correct, parts are good, etc.
This way you are checking: the PCB, the pick and place, solder, the components, etc. Instead of just going overboard checking the PCB only, and assuming everything else will be good.

[Mangozac]

It is almost 100% that PCB companies will tweak your gerber to better suite their manufacturing capabilities

And for those concerned about such tweaks they do offer the "Confirm Production file" option when ordering.

JLC are too expensive for production work. Also, very limited ability to communicate in English. If you can't specify the job via the form on their website, it may come back "different". The other day I ordered 10 circuits and got back 10 panels of 10 circuits Clearly I did something "wrong", but this would never happen in conventional PCB purchasing where you specify the panel layout, overall panel size, breakout tab detail (with photos), etc.

JLC have always come in the cheapest for any quotes I've done. Are you doing giant quantities or something?

What are you doing that's so complex that you need to provide written instructions? When I design a board I specifically refer to the JLC design rules so that I can place the order without having to provide any further instructions. I understand that sometimes something more complex needs to be achieved; that's why you order just a couple of prototypes first and/or use the "confirm production file" option.

The JLC order form provides plenty of guidance. Click on the question mark next to quantity and it specifically states "If your design is a panel with several boards on it, it is the number of your panels ..... When you place an order that requires us to panelize the board, it will be the number of panels. "

[james_s]

What are you doing that's so complex that you need to provide written instructions? When I design a board I specifically refer to the JLC design rules so that I can place the order without having to provide any further instructions. I understand that sometimes something more complex needs to be achieved; that's why you order just a couple of prototypes first and/or use the "confirm production file" option.

From what I can tell, nothing. The issue isn't complexity, the issue is his unorthodox workflow and ignoring of standards and conventions that if followed, would negate the need to explain anything. I have never once had a board come out with an error that I didn't design into it myself. I've goofed up layouts a handful of times and it was always entirely my own fault, JLC and other providers manufactured the board exactly as I designed it.

[langwadt]

What are you doing that's so complex that you need to provide written instructions? When I design a board I specifically refer to the JLC design rules so that I can place the order without having to provide any further instructions. I understand that sometimes something more complex needs to be achieved; that's why you order just a couple of prototypes first and/or use the "confirm production file" option.

From what I can tell, nothing. The issue isn't complexity, the issue is his unorthodox workflow and ignoring of standards and conventions that if followed, would negate the need to explain anything. I have never once had a board come out with an error that I didn't design into it myself. I've goofed up layouts a handful of times and it was always entirely my own fault, JLC and other providers manufactured the board exactly as I designed it.

at the low price per board they must be making huge numbers every day, if they didn't have very high success rate they wouldn't be around for long

[Matt-Brown]

Asfter I have any of my customers panls made (I work for a contract manufacturing pcba house), we ask for the panelized working files of the panel from the bare board house that made the array. We then send that along with our specs and single gerber (original files) to any other board house we use to make the bare boards.
This way array, rails, fids and elctrically they are wasy to match from  house to house