Author Topic: What is happening with JLCPB?  (Read 25898 times)

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Offline YutoTopic starter

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What is happening with JLCPB?
« on: December 31, 2021, 11:03:18 am »
I have always been with JLCPCB and, in my opinion, they have undergone major changes in the last year (2021) that have disappointed me a lot and because this I have been trying PCBWay, ALLPCB, etc. and I would like to share my experience.

First of all let me say the $2 offer for 5 boards is only for the first board order, otherwise the price is $4. I mentioned it because there are too much people used to order only one board and they usually don't know it.

The quality of the silk screen is not the same which is specially noticeable in labels or logos that have thick strokes or filled areas. Everyday it is becoming more and more common to receive the boards with vertical scratches in the silk screen which have certainly not been caused during transport but in their factories during manufacturing, handling or packaging.

Other times some of the delivered boards have strange but patently visible 1 or 2 mm. width lines with an irregular shape from top to bottom of the board very similar to the border of a spill. After the quality complaint process I got the official version: it comes from flaws in the "solder mask ink" but I never had this issue before.

In the past all the boards were sent in the typical vacuum bubble wrapping, but now they occasionally seem to forget it and send some set of boards in regular sealed bags (no vacuum) in the same box with other boards with the classic vacuum bubble wrapping, I didn't really get it.

In addition, if you are willing to save board storage space minimizing the number of unuseful prototypes and after hard work of grouping several designs on the same board the extra costs for this are really ridiculous. Using a real example with DHL 3-day shipping, I'd pay about $68 to get about 500 units (once the boards are cutted) by sending one board for each design (totalling, 9 boards); and $70 to get less than 170 units (once the boards are cutted) just because the extra "engineering" costs for group all the designs in only 4 boards.

Since years ago I used to order boards with the same design repeated, in a 2-row x 1-column matrix by copying and rotating the original design 180º in order to leave, e.g. an edge connector on the outside border. Now, it seems there is a new criteria, new staff or I don't know what but they consider that there are two different designs and pretend to charge an extra cost of $12-13 although it is obvious that the designs are the same and it is easier to manufacture it this way (if the two designs are at 180º the V-Cut between both is a simple horizontal line while if they have the same rotation the cutting of the edge connectors makes the manufacturing difficult). Talking about edge connectors, lately I use to get boards with a lot of scratches in those big plated parts.

Similarly an edge rail with one line of text is considered acceptable but adding 20 extra milimeters and a couple of lines of text or add a gap in order to ease the milling machine to do the outline cut when the design has round corners, may be considered arbitrarily and depending on the day, an additional design and imply an extra cost.

The customer service usually gives only evasive answers, does not help to solve real problems (even if they have simple solutions that the customer may not know but they should) or repeats over and over a template answers without paying attention to the details of the real case until they get you to give up.

Just as an illustrative example: JLCPCB customer service would sent you an email with the subject "Audit failed" saying you board is wrong, the minimum board size for V-cuts is 70x70mm., blah, blah; first time it may shock you because you don't completely understand what are they talking about but a few minutes later you understand they are only asking you to resize the board and reupload the gerber file. That may seems fine but in exactly the same case, same boards, the reply from PCBWay was "Thank you for uploading file on our website, we checked all the files but for number X and Z there are V-cut needed but some V-cut lines do not reach our minimum requirement 75mm., can we enlarge the length of the edge rails to reach 75mm. min?". I'd rather to get the second reply which explains the issue and offers a solution.

Compared to other manufacturers, the longest time PCBWay took to answer a question or request emailed to their support email address was 9 minutes. In the last year JLCPCB consistently takes more than 24 hours to reply anything from me. This may not seem important at times, but apart from the time spent in Live Chat and writing to the support e-mail address, in actual cases it has led to delays of more than 48 hours for the boards to go into production.

The quality claims service is lousy, they apologize a lot but (purposedly?) delay the resolution for weeks, requesting over and over again the same data, the same pictures,... information that they already had from the moment the complaint was registered.

Needless to say that from day one I found the website to be full of flaws. Sometimes the gerbers viewer is not available and you are forced to order the boards without being able to preview them; when order after order is placed, the counter of boards added to the shopping cart is not properly updated (unless you manually reload the web page); depending on the day there are too many "network errors" on different tabs related with orders or billing; when necessary it becomes very complicated to replace the gerber file because you have to specifically request it and wait for the option to appear so that, later on, the gerber thumbnail is always the original one, I mean it is never updated to the new one so you can never be sure that if it really has been updated or when.

I fully understand that many people who handle few orders and/or very simple orders will have no complaints but for me this has been a serious problem for too long.

I appreciate you taking the trouble to have read this far and, if you can spare a few minutes, I would like to know if any of you have had similar problems lately.
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Offline Martin Miranda

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Re: What is happening with JLCPB?
« Reply #1 on: December 31, 2021, 11:08:12 am »
... they are using different machine too. example is two layer board. vs n'th layer board. i use the 4 layer board just because it is alot more better than the 2 layer board. green solder mask vs black also different in terms of quality. YMMV really.  :-/O
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Offline rob77

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Re: What is happening with JLCPB?
« Reply #2 on: December 31, 2021, 03:05:15 pm »

In addition, if you are willing to save board storage space minimizing the number of unuseful prototypes and after hard work of grouping several designs on the same board the extra costs for this are really ridiculous. Using a real example with DHL 3-day shipping, I'd pay about $68 to get about 500 units (once the boards are cutted) by sending one board for each design (totalling, 9 boards); and $70 to get less than 170 units (once the boards are cutted) just because the extra "engineering" costs for group all the designs in only 4 boards.


WTF ? order some boards from fabs in europe and then complain about pricing  :-DD

it's amazing how people are able to complain about a scratch in the soldermask when they pay 4$ for 5 boards...
 
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Offline YutoTopic starter

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Re: What is happening with JLCPB?
« Reply #3 on: December 31, 2021, 08:03:49 pm »
WTF ? order some boards from fabs in europe and then complain about pricing  :-DD

it's amazing how people are able to complain about a scratch in the soldermask when they pay 4$ for 5 boards...
@rob77, I think you've got one or two things very wrong.

I am not arguing about their prices, I am only talking about the the progressive loss of quality of their products. JLCPCB set their prices according to their own criteria and needs and I respect that as long as there are no arbitrary and unpredictable increases as in any commercial contract. Last year the prices were no different and the quality was superior in every way, both in product and customer service. Don't you think they should honor their sales contract? Or do you think that because their price is lower than other manufacturers they are entitled to deliver the final product to the customers in any condition... or that we, the customers, have no right to complain?

On the other hand I have not mentioned scratches on the solder mask but scratches on several dozen of the edge connector tinned/plated contacts and not on one design/board/order or two design/board/order, but in all orders placed this past year.

Sorry if my message was too long, if you had a bad day or if on a special date like today too much slivovica was drunk.
« Last Edit: December 31, 2021, 08:06:32 pm by Yuto »
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Offline MadScientist

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Re: What is happening with JLCPB?
« Reply #4 on: December 31, 2021, 09:15:15 pm »
I haven't used PCB fab houses for a while but always used JLC. Sounds worrying
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Offline Bud

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Re: What is happening with JLCPB?
« Reply #5 on: December 31, 2021, 09:28:38 pm »
Last year the prices were no different and the quality was superior in every way, both in product and customer service.

You must be kidding, i too used them for several years and Never Ever JLCPCB quality was anywhere close to "superior".
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Offline thm_w

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Re: What is happening with JLCPB?
« Reply #6 on: December 31, 2021, 09:57:03 pm »
I received a few two layer boards in December, no issue with the quality, but they were basic designs.

In addition, if you are willing to save board storage space minimizing the number of unuseful prototypes and after hard work of grouping several designs on the same board the extra costs for this are really ridiculous. Using a real example with DHL 3-day shipping, I'd pay about $68 to get about 500 units (once the boards are cutted) by sending one board for each design (totalling, 9 boards); and $70 to get less than 170 units (once the boards are cutted) just because the extra "engineering" costs for group all the designs in only 4 boards.

Can you explain what exactly you are talking about here?
Was the shipping cost too high or NRE too high? Shipping cost is generally based on weight and number of pieces does not matter.

If you are repeatedly having issues with JLC then just move to PCBway. But I get the feeling you will start having some issues with them as well.

Posting some photos might help.
« Last Edit: December 31, 2021, 09:58:55 pm by thm_w »
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Offline YutoTopic starter

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Re: What is happening with JLCPB?
« Reply #7 on: January 01, 2022, 07:34:21 am »
I haven't used PCB fab houses for a while but always used JLC. Sounds worrying

You must be kidding, i too used them for several years and Never Ever JLCPCB quality was anywhere close to "superior".

Perhaps "superior" was not the most appropriate word but I have also been using them for many years and have only had problems of this relevance during this past year. I recall receiving a batch of boards with no silk screen on the top layer. From my point of view it is too obvious a mistake to go unnoticed during review, data preparation and quality control.

If you are repeatedly having issues with JLC then just move to PCBway. But I get the feeling you will start having some issues with them as well.

So far I have not had any relevant problems with PCBWay.

My only source of information is my own orders and I share my experience only to know how frequent this kind of problems really are.

Posting some photos might help.

I considered it but I prefer not to provide detailed information that can be associated with specific orders and/or accounts.

Can you explain what exactly you are talking about here?

It is not related to shipping costs, I have no problem with them. I was just showing my impressions about the company's policies regarding panelizing different designs on the same board. When years ago I read in their help center about it, I felt they had some paranoia about designers who might use panelization as a money saving strategy. I didn't think much about it but when I considered panelizing in this way, in the actual case of an order where 9 designs (for small size boards) were panelized on only 4 boards, I realized that in my case (and maybe only for this case) it would have been more cost effective and efficient, not to panelize several designs on one board and simply order 9 boards, each with one design, due to extra engineering costs. The final cost, shipping included, is ($2) cheaper; it is not necessary to spend so much time in the panelization which is a two-dimensional cutting stock/cut list problem with significant restrictions due to V-cuts that can only be performed from one side of the board to the other; minimizes potential (and lately almost certain) engineering errors when reviewing the boards and preparing the data; and, by panelizing a single design on a single board (a quick and trivial operation since it is easy to generate an array from a design in today's CAD), the final number of units once the boards have been splitted apart, is much higher (totalling around 500 units instead of just 170).
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Offline rob77

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Re: What is happening with JLCPB?
« Reply #8 on: January 01, 2022, 03:09:28 pm »
i think you should try a career in politics... you wrote so many words but still didn't tell what the exact problem is. that's a 100% match for a politician.
 
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Offline miceuz

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Re: What is happening with JLCPB?
« Reply #9 on: January 01, 2022, 04:22:49 pm »
I do 4 layer boards, didn't notice a decline in quality this year except for their human error that made me a stencil from random gerber files, not the ones I provided.

But in general, the picture is that their equipment got old and worn out, we had good times with it though.

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Re: What is happening with JLCPB?
« Reply #10 on: January 01, 2022, 06:15:41 pm »
I order PCBs from JLCPCB rarely so can't comment much about the original topic. The ones that I have received have had no issues.
But what is interesting is that I can share the story with PCBWay thislast year. I used to order quite a lot products from PCBWay (not just standard PCBs) and before the summer last year(ish) I had very little issues - if any. But something happened - that also reflected to the customer service. When they increased prices quite a lot In November I started to look elsewhere.
And... for the record: I seldom order those $2-4 boards. If I do, they are for random hobby level projects without much expectations for silkscreen quality etc.

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Offline thinkfat

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Re: What is happening with JLCPB?
« Reply #11 on: January 01, 2022, 06:26:13 pm »
JLCPCB were never what I'd call "excellent". Silkscreen quality has always been so-so, low-res and blotchy, and the solder mask was frequently less than stellar. I've had problems with it flaking off during soldering. I've never had that happen with boards I ordered from Aisler. The pricing for the second design in the same order has always been like this, at least since 2018 when I placed my first order. No news here.
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Offline JLCPCB Official

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Re: What is happening with JLCPB?
« Reply #12 on: January 03, 2022, 06:58:44 am »
We appreciate all comments, whether positive or negative, it takes time for someone to write some thoughts for JLCPCB. We do think correcting untrue comments is also what a company responsible for its customers should do.

"First of all let me say the $2 offer for 5 boards is only for the first board order, otherwise the price is $4. ...... they usually don't know it."
The $2 discount is a benefit that is appreciated by electronic engineers. One item of EVERY ORDER enjoys $2 discount, not only the first order does.JLCPCB continually provides monthly SMT coupons are also to reduce the burden for regular customers after weighing the positions and interests of both the company and customers, JLCPCB always wants to do more and better. If anybody feels that our information is not clear or detailed enough, please directly make suggestions to us. Dear Mr. Yuto, please believe that giving customers preferential benefits from JLCPCB deep heart.

"The quality of the silk screen is not the same which is specially noticeable in labels or logos that have thick strokes or filled areas. ......aused during transport but in their factories during manufacturing, handling or packaging."
Can you elaborate more? The silkscreen issue has been evocated in some other topics during the beginning of 2021 and we have dealt with the issues related to scratches and we are no longer receiving quality complaints about this topic since a while. Even if any accidental issue related to silkscreen occurs we deal with it immediately and we take the appropriate measures to prevent it from happening again and at this point we feel thankful for our customers who were comprehensive enough to give us feedback that led to improve our silkscreen qualityYou don't mind if you can give me the order number, we will investigate further.

"Other times some of the delivered boards have strange but patently visible 1 or 2 mm. width lines with an irregular shape from top to bottom of the board very similar to the border of a spill. "
We require more specific order information to confirm.

"In the past all the boards were sent in the typical vacuum bubble wrapping, but now they occasionally seem to forget it and send some set of boards in regular sealed bags (no vacuum) in the same box with other boards with the classic vacuum bubble wrapping, I didn't really get it."
Basically we use vacuum for some sizes of boards where it is possible to apply the vacuum technique and the sealed bags are generally oriented to small sized designs, if you have ever faced shipping issues with the sealed bags then we can check this out.  No worries about the point of packaging size because we always look for the most appropriate size that protects the goods all the way up to the delivery destination Can you provide me some photos for package can you give me this order number?

"In addition............  if they have the same rotation the cutting of the edge connectors makes the manufacturing difficult). Talking about edge connectors, lately I use to get boards with a lot of scratches in those big plated parts.Similarly an edge rail with one line of text is considered acceptable but adding 20 extra milimeters and a couple of lines of text or add a gap in order to ease the milling machine to do the outline cut when the design has round corners, may be considered arbitrarily and depending on the day, an additional design and imply an extra cost."
The edge rail has to be as simple as possible to minimize the DFM preparation by our engineers, adding slots or illustrations or texts will certainly take time and we do thousands of orders in this industry domain so we basically offer a good quality through time saving (even a millisecond count) once the engineers see your texts and slots they certainly consider it as an extra design (some designs don't have components just silkscreen) so probably what seems basic to you appears as advanced to others, I mean maybe you say what is wrong if you add one or two words on the edge rail! Yes you can but this is an extra task for the engineers. And we already detailed the cases for extra charges to keep customers aware of what they are about to experience. This is definitely not to start charging in 2021. There are also reasons for the above. This may make it hard to cut the board outline and more importantly, this will take a lot more time to pick up and package the PCB. Although by doing this, you just have the one order, this complicates the fabrication of the panel and separation of the individual PCBs, so we will usually charge more for this.

"Since years ago I used to order boards with the same design repeated, and pretend to charge an extra cost of $12-13 although it is obvious that the designs are the same "
Please provide two order numbers and more detailed information, or can't verify.


"Compared to other manufacturers, the longest time PCBWay took to answer a question or request emailed to their support email address was 9 minutes. In the last year JLCPCB consistently takes more than 24 hours to reply anything from me. This may not seem important at times, but apart from the time spent in Live Chat and writing to the support e-mail address, in actual cases it has led to delays of more than 48 hours for the boards to go into production.
Can you provide all order numbers of “In the last year JLCPCB consistently takes more than 24 hours to reply anything from me.” cases? This is related to our reputation and cannot be judged by one or two sentences

All JLCPCB customer services must undergo professional training before they are allowed to stand at the front line. A professional team and a good company rely on the efforts of every employee. Our team is not 100 % perfect, however, our team is working hard to stand for a perfect customer experience. We are willing to review and learn from the actual cases, hoping to truly solve and serve the customer. You mentioned that the customer service of other companies makes you satisfied. It is a great thing to have an excellent peer company. A healthy competitive relationship will make JLCPCB more advanced, develop more steadily, and give full play to its advantages to satisfy customers. We are confident to accept any challenge.

We appreciate every comment. Thank you all for the support and love of JLCPCB. In 2021, we can't have any offline events to see you guys face to face, however, the relationship is closer because of trust. JLCPCB, for customers and be trustworthy! Some gift words for all, open heart, and excite the mind, energize your body, and stay Positively Happy!  Happy New Year "
« Last Edit: January 04, 2022, 02:35:11 am by JLCPCB Official »
 
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Offline SilverSolder

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Re: What is happening with JLCPB?
« Reply #13 on: January 03, 2022, 09:05:59 pm »

As good a response to criticism as I've ever seen from a company.

Happy new year!  :D
 

Offline DIYGUY Chris

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Re: What is happening with JLCPB?
« Reply #14 on: January 03, 2022, 10:17:21 pm »
Here is another post about "misunderstanding the supplier capabilities" I truly don't know why you guys just run to the cheapest supplier without reading details about the supplier, I don't mean that JLC is not good enough for your orders but I mean that obviously you didn't pay attention to what they are posting in their support guides which is updated from here : https://support.jlcpcb.com/
You break their rules and then you get surprised with the results! I noticed this when I read the point about the edge rail!
Being honest I envy you all because of the cheap prices that you are getting for your orders, few bucks for the good and same for the delivery.
 
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Offline snarkysparky

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Re: What is happening with JLCPB?
« Reply #15 on: January 03, 2022, 11:05:14 pm »
I have always been satisfied with JLC.   For their price I dont expect the best.  Nor would I pay for it.  They hit my price point exactly
 

Offline Martin Miranda

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Re: What is happening with JLCPB?
« Reply #16 on: January 04, 2022, 02:59:00 am »
before jlcpcb i used to get my board on DIRTY PCBS and it just works and i am happy  :-+ misaligned soldermask, bad printing but it works. as i have said... if you want consistent boards on jlcpcb. don't use a 2 layer board. (personal experience)
https://dirtypcbs.com/store/pcbs
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Offline thinkfat

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Re: What is happening with JLCPB?
« Reply #17 on: January 04, 2022, 08:11:55 am »
before jlcpcb i used to get my board on DIRTY PCBS and it just works and i am happy  :-+ misaligned soldermask, bad printing but it works. as i have said... if you want consistent boards on jlcpcb. don't use a 2 layer board. (personal experience)
https://dirtypcbs.com/store/pcbs

I agree. The only problems I've ever had with JLCPCB boards were with 2 layer boards. Those are really focused on getting them out as cheaply as possible. But they're still fit for the purpose.
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Offline YutoTopic starter

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Re: What is happening with JLCPB?
« Reply #18 on: January 04, 2022, 12:18:11 pm »
As good a response to criticism as I've ever seen from a company.
Happy New Year!

I agree with you. It's a response but I'm not going to get into that game. When their claims department replies "Sorry, it was a mistake by one of our engineers but..." there is little more to add and I'd rather skip the typical "what are you saying? are you sure? no, that has never happened!" arguments. You know, "Admit nothing. Deny everything. Make counter-accusations!"

Here is another post about "misunderstanding the supplier capabilities" I truly don't know why you guys just run to the cheapest supplier without reading details about the supplier,

You cannot understand it because obviously that is not what is happening. Anyway I understand why you can argue like this and if that is what you want to believe, it is your right but unfortunately, for me reality tends to impose itself and, as you can infer by reading the few messages I have written, all or almost all my objections have their origin in the comparison between old and recent orders, in other words, problems that have appeared out of nowhere that are in more recent orders and had never appeared in older orders (I cannot stress this point enough). I don't know the reason, if they have new factories, if the current ones are a little bit obsolete,... but these are the facts and this is why I'm  asking because no matter how many orders I've placed, I'm pretty sure that it is more than likely that these same issues are happening to others.

One more mind-bogglingly absurd example. it is known JLCPCB send an e-mail every time a new order goes into production and, days later, another one to notify that it has been shipped. We assume that this is an automatic process in which a server sends an e-mail once the order changes to that status, so how is it possible that for one of my orders, I never received the e-mail when it went into production but I did when it was shipped? Some will think that it was my anti-spam filter or my spam box (which do not exist), failures in my mail service provider,... in short that it was my fault. I won't go into details but suffice it to say that in my case it is more likely that one day the sun won't rise than one of my e-mails will be lost. At the time I was surprised but given the continuous disappointments with the Live chat and the support service, I assumed that it was not important, that sooner or later the progress of the order would continue and that it was not worth contacting to ask what had happened. Is this a serious issue? No. Is it an important issue? No. Just another drop in their ocean of issues.

On the other hand I don't know why the recurring fallacy of the "too cheap" price comes up again and again. Anyone could say, "you paid 'only' N dollars? then what are you complaining about?" but, unfortunately, the world doesn't work that way - how much would you have to pay to have the right to complain? There is an implicit and explicit contract between supplier and customer, even more after years ordering, and price and quality minimums are included in the agreement. I understand that someone does not like those prices and always has the freedom to opt for other manufacturers but that does not imply that paid a price, the customer has no rights. By the way, including all the extra costs I am paying around $20 per order (for each order in a batch), sometimes more, and shipping costs around $30 and $40 (depending on the number of orders in each batch); not just the $2 or $4 offers.

I have always been satisfied with JLC. For their price I dont expect the best.

I was always satisfied with them and after years I also knew what to expect, until issues not present in any of the previous orders began to arise.

Finally, I do not rule out at all to count on JLCPCB again for new orders, that is why I ask what is going on, why this is happening and how they could fix it, otherwise I would have simply switched to another manufacturer.
« Last Edit: January 04, 2022, 12:31:15 pm by Yuto »
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Offline thm_w

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Re: What is happening with JLCPB?
« Reply #19 on: January 04, 2022, 10:57:34 pm »
It is not related to shipping costs, I have no problem with them. I was just showing my impressions about the company's policies regarding panelizing different designs on the same board. When years ago I read in their help center about it, I felt they had some paranoia about designers who might use panelization as a money saving strategy. I didn't think much about it but when I considered panelizing in this way, in the actual case of an order where 9 designs (for small size boards) were panelized on only 4 boards, I realized that in my case (and maybe only for this case) it would have been more cost effective and efficient, not to panelize several designs on one board and simply order 9 boards, each with one design, due to extra engineering costs. The final cost, shipping included, is ($2) cheaper; it is not necessary to spend so much time in the panelization which is a two-dimensional cutting stock/cut list problem with significant restrictions due to V-cuts that can only be performed from one side of the board to the other; minimizes potential (and lately almost certain) engineering errors when reviewing the boards and preparing the data; and, by panelizing a single design on a single board (a quick and trivial operation since it is easy to generate an array from a design in today's CAD), the final number of units once the boards have been splitted apart, is much higher (totalling around 500 units instead of just 170).

Its an automated pricing system, if you've found a way to beat it, or optimize for it, congratulations.
I upload individual design and get it fully routed as that is the easiest option for me.


I considered it but I prefer not to provide detailed information that can be associated with specific orders and/or accounts.

This is paranoia, do you think JLC will retaliate against you?
Without posting an example photo its hard to understand what you are talking about, and we have to trust your word as to if these issues are actually serious or not.
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Offline rob77

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Re: What is happening with JLCPB?
« Reply #20 on: January 05, 2022, 06:20:50 am »
ok... so no photo, not order numbers just shitting at a vendor... and it's the user's very first post on the forum... i call this bullshit.
 

Offline YutoTopic starter

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Re: What is happening with JLCPB?
« Reply #21 on: January 05, 2022, 07:08:36 am »
I upload individual design and get it fully routed as that is the easiest option for me.
Thank you, it is the same thing I have always done and will continue to do. It is 100% clear that it is the easiest, fastest and most economical way.

Without posting an example photo its hard to understand what you are talking about, and we have to trust your word as to if these issues are actually serious or not.
I don't think it has any importance and in any case it would not be possible to publish such pictures to compare when one of the two examples I mentioned corresponds to a real order and the other one is purely hypothetical, the result of the cost calculation after uploading the gerbers and choosing the shipping method.

On the other hand I am not asking you to trust my words, I am 100% sure that other people are having the same problems and these people are the ones I was hoping to exchange impressions with.

In the end this is an internet forum and any information including pictures and videos should be quarantined and scrutinized. I have been waiting for too many months for all these problems to be fixed but I feel the time has come to expose them, share them and check their true extent.

do you think JLC will retaliate against you?

Of course, I am managing several accounts and do not wish to attract any resentment or retaliation against me or the customers on whose behalf I place orders. Obviously I also do not want them to be directly or indirectly identified or have their personal data exposed in any way.
"Be excellent to each other"
 

Offline rob77

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Re: What is happening with JLCPB?
« Reply #22 on: January 05, 2022, 07:16:41 am »

Without posting an example photo its hard to understand what you are talking about, and we have to trust your word as to if these issues are actually serious or not.
I don't think it has any importance and in any case it would not be possible to publish such pictures to compare when one of the two examples I mentioned corresponds to a real order and the other one is purely hypothetical, the result of the cost calculation after uploading the gerbers and choosing the shipping method.


actually it's very important ! post the picture of the defects you mentioned.
 

Offline rox77

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Re: What is happening with JLCPB?
« Reply #23 on: January 05, 2022, 01:08:46 pm »
i have had similar problems. almost three weeks ago i received some pcbs from jlcpcb, part of a joint order from some users of an internet forum for which we paid $24. the boards were panelized, 5 rows by 5 columns, and surprisingly in the upper left area the silkscreen on the top layer of some pcbs was missing. on the bottom layer everything was in order. the pcbs depend on each other and contain dacs and level shifters, there are about 15 connections and the silkscreen on the top layer is essential to know how to connect them.

i double checked it, both my cad application, kicad, some gerber viewers and the jlcpcb's own gerber viewer showed the pcbs without anomalies with silkscreen printing on both sides so i opened a quality complaint.

day 0: pcbs were delivered. quality complaint including description, pictures of the defective boards, screenshots of different gerber viewers and a video from the output of the jlcpcb gerber viewer.

day 3: i receive a response with an apology, an announcement that they are investigating it and will reply at a later date.

day 4: new message asking how many pcbs were affected and the order number printed on the boards, something known since the quality claim was opened.

day 7: new message to ask again for the order number printed on the boards, sent for the second time a few days before. they also told me that there is no found the problem record in their factory side.
i reply by resending the order number printed on the boards.

day 8: asking again for the printed order number, i reply by sending two new photographs of that area of the boards.

day 11: "Sorry for the the delay in replying, after double checking with our engineer and factory, so sorry that our engineer made mistake mentioned silkscreen area, they have found and fixed the production file just now, don't worry about it."
then they offer me two options to choose from: remake the boards or a coupon to use on my next order.
since the order was not just for me and some users' pcbs were missing, i quickly replied by choosing to have them remade. in my message i suggested that if it'd be convenient and advantageous for them, they could send the remade boards along with another order i had placed that same day. that way they could save money on shipping.

day 12: "Sorry for the inconvenience , remaking order can not be combine shipping with in production order at present, due to the custom policy.
So we arrange remaking and reshipping it in a separated shipping, is it ok??"
i reply them that as they wish, they can remake and shipping them separately.

day 14: "Thank you for your reply, since there is no problem for many other small boards, if we remake, all the other ok boards will be remake again.
Please kindly try to use these boards this time and we refund its cost to you, is it acceptable??"

day 20: today. still waiting for an answer but in short, they had offered me two options, remake the boards or a refund using a coupon for my next orders. i chose to remake them, they confirmed they were going to remake and send them to me separately and only two days later, if i do not misinterpret their answers they back out and the option to remake them seems to be unavailable.
« Last Edit: January 05, 2022, 01:30:22 pm by rox77 »
 

Offline rox77

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Re: What is happening with JLCPB?
« Reply #24 on: January 05, 2022, 02:44:26 pm »
I don't know if it was because of my last post here but I just received a new message from them:
"Thank you so much for ordering from JLCPCB, but we regret to tell you that your order ***** will be delayed due to some of the PCB scrathed during the manufacturing process and it will take about 2 days to be redone/ re-manufactured to ensure sufficient quantity for your order.
We will send your order out ASAP it is completed.
Sorry again for the inconenience caused!"
which contains good and bad news, the good news is that it seems that without prior notification they decided to remake the pcbs, the bad is that due to scratches on the pcbs they are going to delay even more because they are going to remake them for the second time.
 


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