What is happening with JLCPB?

[Cerebus]

Thank you. It looked a bit smaller to me. I'll add that to my list of "they can definitely do this" BGA qualifications.

I never went all the way down to 80 um traces/clearances, but did plenty of 100 um traces/clearances. Also did a ton of 0.8 mm pitch BGAs, infact if you take a look at the project in my signature, you will see 0.8 mm pitch BGA (DDR2) there, and 0.1 mm traces/clearances. This project was specifically designed around JLCPCB 4 layer process (JLC2313 stackup).
So no worries at least for larger pitch BGA. I have another project with 0.65 mm BGA lined up, will see if I can make it work with their process - it will probably be pushing it.

Yeah, it's "how far can I push it" that I've an eye on. I keep finding things in BGA packages that are just that bit too small; a side effect of the current availability crisis is that things I use in, say 0.5mm QFN, are unavailable in that package, but are available in, say, 0.6 BGA. All this has had me turn my eye to what I might be able to squeeze into cheaper processes like JLC's. Generally I have little need of anything tighter than 0.5mm QFN and have routed boards where everything is 0.25mm space and trace (10mil if you're old school) with 0.5mm packages on. No point in pushing the ragged edges of the process at 90um if 250um will do comfortably, eh?

JLC have 0.25mm pad and 0.127mm space as their BGA minima (so basically a 0.4mm pitch device), but that clearly doesn't fit with using the minimum 0.4/0.2 vias and 0.09/0.09 trace and space (and no via-in-pad obviously). The BGA figures don't add up if you plan to actually connect anything to the minimum pads and spacing that they say they can support. You'd need 0.270 between pads just to get a 90um trace out with 90um either side of it, and 0.58 diagonal between pad edges to fit a via in. That will clearly work for 1.0 pitch BGA and for 0.8 pitch BGA if the package isn't too greedy on its pad size and you're prepared to breakout all but the outside pads via vias. ANything smaller and one appears to be in the sticky stuff.

So, with those conflicting capability criteria I'm interested to see what people have managed to get away with and still not get kicked out by JLC's DRC or upgraded to a pricier process.

[AccountRemovedPerUsersRequest]

Since I am in the middle of benchmarking PCB manufacturers myself, I am interested to see photos of actual issues. Silkscreen quality of USD0-20 boards is not in my focus.

A

[asmi]

JLC have 0.25mm pad and 0.127mm space as their BGA minima (so basically a 0.4mm pitch device), but that clearly doesn't fit with using the minimum 0.4/0.2 vias and 0.09/0.09 trace and space (and no via-in-pad obviously). The BGA figures don't add up if you plan to actually connect anything to the minimum pads and spacing that they say they can support. You'd need 0.270 between pads just to get a 90um trace out with 90um either side of it, and 0.58 diagonal between pad edges to fit a via in. That will clearly work for 1.0 pitch BGA and for 0.8 pitch BGA if the package isn't too greedy on its pad size and you're prepared to breakout all but the outside pads via vias. ANything smaller and one appears to be in the sticky stuff.

So, with those conflicting capability criteria I'm interested to see what people have managed to get away with and still not get kicked out by JLC's DRC or upgraded to a pricier process.

One thing you will quickly realize when you start working with BGAs is that not all BGAs are the same. Many water-level chips have pinouts which are designed to be fully routed on just a single layer. This includes a lot of power ICs (PMICs, DC-DC converters, power switches, protection ICs, etc.). For example, take a look at TI's LM3102 (BGA package version) - it's a 0.5 mm pitch 28-ball 4x7 BGA, but if you take a look at the actual pinout, you will realize that you can route it fully on just a single layer. This applies to a lot of larger BGAs too. It's a pinout which makes or breaks a routing, not just a number of balls or a pitch.

So there is no conflict in their capabilities.

[cgroen]

Thank you. It looked a bit smaller to me. I'll add that to my list of "they can definitely do this" BGA qualifications.

I never went all the way down to 80 um traces/clearances, but did plenty of 100 um traces/clearances. Also did a ton of 0.8 mm pitch BGAs, infact if you take a look at the project in my signature, you will see 0.8 mm pitch BGA (DDR2) there, and 0.1 mm traces/clearances. This project was specifically designed around JLCPCB 4 layer process (JLC2313 stackup).
So no worries at least for larger pitch BGA. I have another project with 0.65 mm BGA lined up, will see if I can make it work with their process - it will probably be pushing it.

I have done several 0.65 mm BGA designs with JLC, all without a problem (all prototypes soldered on hotplate).
I used 0.25 mm balls (might be on the small side), VIA's were 0.45/0.2 mm, tracks 5 mil.
Layout of two of them (i.MXRT1064 designs):

[rox77]

(previous message)

day 23?: today i received this new message sent from an email address that does not allow replies: "Dear Sir,
Thank you for your order from JLCPCB. Your order ***** is completed now, but we regret to tell you that there is are 2 pcs less due to the scratch during the manufacturing process.
To not delay the delivery of your order, we sent those PCBs that are good out first. For the remaining quantity, can we provide the coupon accordingly?
So sorry for the inconvenience caused!
This is an automatically generated email please do not reply to it. If you have any queries regarding your order please email support@jlcpcb.com."

it's good news and bad news. the good news is that it finally looks like this incident is going to end, the bad news is that since this was a joint order and there will definitely be two boards missing, we will have to decide which people who had already paid for them, will run out of boards and get their money back.

[rox77]

i originally said that in the upper left area of the panelized boards there were pcbs without silkscreen on the top layer.
it would be possible to use an adhesive to replace the silkscreen on the top layer but in my humble opinion it would look a little bit cheesy.

don't think was a problem with the ink refill, it was no silkscreen on the top layer at all for some pcbs, quoting jlcpcb's message "our engineer made mistake"

i also print a copy of the edge cuts plus solder mask plus top silkscreen layers for the assembly but these pcbs were made to be used in tests and measurements. the silkscreen is essential to set the pins you need for input bits, d0, d1, ... d15, for power supply and output pins

That is worse if it was entirely missing the silkscreen, and not just in some spots as originally stated.
In that case you'd want to get something like a sticky label sheet that you can print the instructions on, then attach to the PCB. So maybe remaking them is easier.

[fourfathom]

the bad news is that since this was a joint order and there will definitely be two boards missing, we will have to decide which people who had already paid for them, will run out of boards and get their money back.

Nothing to do with JLCPCB, but you don't order a few spare boards?  I always order a couple of extras so I have some bare reference boards handy.

I've also had a bunch of 2-layer boards from JLCPCB over the last couple of years, and recently a couple batches of 4-layer.  My design rules are well within the JLC capabilities and I've been 100% happy with the boards and stencils.

[rox77]

about capabilities, restrictions and limits of this manufacturer. years ago i placed an order with some gerbers files that by mistake, maybe because i unintentionally pressed undo that caused out-of-sight changes, a trace tangentially touched the corner of a rectangular pad making a short between that signal and ground. i think the mistake appeared after the drc checks and before plotting the gerber files but although i fixed it relatively easily by cutting a little on the pad corner to isolate it from the trace, at that time i was wondering what tests they performed because i would have expected the gerber file to be rejected because of the zero distance between the track and the pad.

[Cerebus]

Nothing to do with JLCPCB, but you don't order a few spare boards?  I always order a couple of extras so I have some bare reference boards handy.

I always order spare boards, not just for the convenience of having some for reference but because there is no guarantee that I (or the assembler if it's someone else) won't do something to terminally muck up a board, lose one down the back of the sofa/heavy unmovable bench, or any of the myriad everyday mishaps of a less than perfect life. The marginal cost of an extra board or 5 is normally very small, especially if one's using a board house that splits the price into a hefty NRE and relatively light per board price.

[VladaAca]

Hello,
I was JLC customer. I haven't problem with board quality but have experience with their support. I always buy boards without components. On invoice they show tariff number HS85340090 which corresponds to boards populated with components, and in my country this cause 10% custom fee. When I deal with small orders I don't care about this, but when I have larger order (1000pcb, about 3kusd) I ask them to change tariff number to HS85340011 which is my case (unpopulated board, 1% custom fee). Answer was that this is not possible. After that I change board house and use JLC only for stencils. It was at the beginning of 2021.

[Mangozac]

I think it is to be expected that the errors of engineers with boards panelized by customers are more frequent than with boards panelized by JLCPCB. In the first case they have to adapt the gerber files to their own software so data preparation is more complex; in the second case the panelization is done directly in their own CAD system so data preparation is, in practice, routine and straightforward.

Sure, but I was providing the data point you were after: we do many self-panelised boards and never has there been a problem so long as we follow the JLC guidelines.

And of those tens of thousands, were mostly of them identical?

All of very similar specification, but one product would have had about 8k identical boards. As I said, yes there is variation in the silkscreen quality but nothing unacceptable and nothing by way of a trend.

[rox77]

my orders are almost prototypes, so of the boards I receive, a large part i keep as spares just in case. you know in case I have to rework them but I find it better to use another pcb or make different versions with slight handmade modifications and, above all, to be able to choose because there are many times I receive pcbs with punctures, a few 1.5 mm diameter spots where it looks like they have done so much pressure with a punch that there is no solder mask and the copper shows through... but for a joint order, I order exactly the number of pcbs that are requested which is the least problematic without having to go into deciding who would pay for the replacement pcbs or who would keep them if all the others arrived in good condition.

the bad news is that since this was a joint order and there will definitely be two boards missing, we will have to decide which people who had already paid for them, will run out of boards and get their money back.

Nothing to do with JLCPCB, but you don't order a few spare boards?  I always order a couple of extras so I have some bare reference boards handy.

I've also had a bunch of 2-layer boards from JLCPCB over the last couple of years, and recently a couple batches of 4-layer.  My design rules are well within the JLC capabilities and I've been 100% happy with the boards and stencils.

[Yuto]

day 23?: today i received this new message sent from an email address that does not allow replies: "Dear Sir,

This is a very interesting incident. Another lucky customer who has had his first problem with JLCPCB in 2021, they send him boards with PCBs without silkscreen, they offer to remake them or a discount coupon, then apparently they withdraw the offer to remake them but definitely access to remake them but in the remade boards some scratches appear and they remake them again, this time defects appear again and the final offer is to send him the ones in good condition and give him a coupon for the missing ones. Hopefully he will be able to consider the problem over (and with a solution that does not satisfy all the PCBs he needed) 40-50 days after the first defective boards were delivered.

Hello,
I was JLC customer. I haven't problem with board quality but have experience with their support. I always buy boards without components. On invoice they show tariff number HS85340090 which corresponds to boards populated with components, and in my country this cause 10% custom fee. When I deal with small orders I don't care about this, but when I have larger order (1000pcb, about 3kusd) I ask them to change tariff number to HS85340011 which is my case (unpopulated board, 1% custom fee). Answer was that this is not possible. After that I change board house and use JLC only for stencils. It was at the beginning of 2021.

Another very interesting incident with a commercial side in the last year.

Regarding customer service you also have to have some luck with them. If they made a mistake, the most dangerous stage is since you report the error to them and when they finally acknowledge it. In the meantime it is best not to chat or write because the previous kindness and apologies mood turns into nasty bigotry in the insistence that you, the customer, are wrong. At this time, for the average customer service employee, the customer is always wrong, their company is the spitting image of god on earth and the company policies and the guidelines in their customer service manual, their commandments. It is not something that happens often, but when it does, you never forget it.

Thank you for sharing.

[rox77]

hopefully.

maybe others don't see it in the same way, but being a not-for-profit joint order i would have liked to carry it out without all these problems. right now i only know that several people will be left without a pcb, i won't know how many until i got them and check their status. later we will have to come to an agreement on how to manage this lack of pcbs and what to do with the components we bought on AliExpress, which were already received but are useless without the boards. for me it is an unpleasant matter because i was very involved in it and now i see my reputation slightly compromised due to this incident.

day 23?: today i received this new message sent from an email address that does not allow replies: "Dear Sir,

This is a very interesting incident. Another lucky customer who has had his first problem with JLCPCB in 2021, they send him boards with PCBs without silkscreen, they offer to remake them or a discount coupon, then apparently they withdraw the offer to remake them but definitely access to remake them but in the remade boards some scratches appear and they remake them again, this time defects appear again and the final offer is to send him the ones in good condition and give him a coupon for the missing ones. Hopefully he will be able to consider the problem over (and with a solution that does not satisfy all the PCBs he needed) 40-50 days after the first defective boards were delivered.

Hello,
I was JLC customer. I haven't problem with board quality but have experience with their support. I always buy boards without components. On invoice they show tariff number HS85340090 which corresponds to boards populated with components, and in my country this cause 10% custom fee. When I deal with small orders I don't care about this, but when I have larger order (1000pcb, about 3kusd) I ask them to change tariff number to HS85340011 which is my case (unpopulated board, 1% custom fee). Answer was that this is not possible. After that I change board house and use JLC only for stencils. It was at the beginning of 2021.

Another very interesting incident with a commercial side in the last year.

Regarding customer service you also have to have some luck with them. If they made a mistake, the most dangerous stage is since you report the error to them and when they finally acknowledge it. In the meantime it is best not to chat or write because the previous kindness and apologies mood turns into nasty bigotry in the insistence that you, the customer, are wrong. At this time, for the average customer service employee, the customer is always wrong, their company is the spitting image of god on earth and the company policies and the guidelines in their customer service manual, their commandments. It is not something that happens often, but when it does, you never forget it.

Thank you for sharing.

[IconicPCB]

A question to VladaAca;

What are PCB factory Nis prices like? and how doe they compare to high tech out of Macedonia?

[VladaAca]

Hello IconicPCB,
I newer purchase boards from High tech (Macedonia) so I can't compare. Pcb factory Niš  don't share  price list publicly nor it have some calculator on official site, You must ask for offer. My experience is that they are not competitive with Chinese price+shipping for medium/large quantities (let say over 50 boards). Delivery time is typically 15 days. Regarding quality, I haven't complain (I purchase only single and double sided boards, some with fine pitch components, newer have problem). Always make few boards more than ordered. Off course, I am domestic customer, don't know if foreign customers have better treatment. During pandemic, they change prices, do to raw material and shipping prices increased. My last order, as "old customer", wasn't influenced with this so I don't know the percentage of increase.

[Bassman59]

This is a very interesting incident. Another lucky customer who has had his first problem with JLCPCB in 2021, they send him boards with PCBs without silkscreen, they offer to remake them or a discount coupon,

This notion of offering a coupon for a discount on the next order is bullshit.

They offer the coupon knowing that it is possible the customer won't place an order with them again. There is no cost to JLCPCB with this. Remaking the boards does cost them something, and clearly they are working with knife-edge margins and that rework bites them. So they'll do anything to avoid doing it.

[48X24X48X]

This is a very interesting incident. Another lucky customer who has had his first problem with JLCPCB in 2021, they send him boards with PCBs without silkscreen, they offer to remake them or a discount coupon,

This notion of offering a coupon for a discount on the next order is bullshit.

They offer the coupon knowing that it is possible the customer won't place an order with them again. There is no cost to JLCPCB with this. Remaking the boards does cost them something, and clearly they are working with knife-edge margins and that rework bites them. So they'll do anything to avoid doing it.

I usually declined the coupon and asked for remake and tell them I will wait with a "big smile". I felt that their prototype rarely have issues but only when you make a lot, there's where the yield drops. Things like broken panel, scratches, and solder mask imperfection patches (some like few mm wide with exposed copper) are the few things to look for.

[Cerebus]

This is a very interesting incident. Another lucky customer who has had his first problem with JLCPCB in 2021, they send him boards with PCBs without silkscreen, they offer to remake them or a discount coupon,

This notion of offering a coupon for a discount on the next order is bullshit.

They offer the coupon knowing that it is possible the customer won't place an order with them again. There is no cost to JLCPCB with this. Remaking the boards does cost them something, and clearly they are working with knife-edge margins and that rework bites them. So they'll do anything to avoid doing it.

Certainly not bullshit. Although I do agree that they must have paper thin margins.

I had a 1 board shortage on a trivial 5 board order (It was a set of boards with HASL finish that were identical except for finish to a larger order that went in at the same time with ENIG finish. I wanted to experiment with assembling these versus the ENIG boards to see if HASL affected assembly quality - for my case [a 0.5mm DFN16 package was the critical component] it didn't). So I got 4 boards, which was more than enough for my experiment and a credit that was almost as big as the whole cost of the 5 board order. There was enough order history there that they could see I was likely to order again, so they weren't offering a credit that they didn't expect to have to honor. As it was I used up the credit on my next order a few weeks later. I was perfectly happy to have run my experiment essentially for free, although at full price it would have been all of £1.44 plus whatever it added to the carriage.

Earlier in JLC's life it seems that for the pool processes they ran an extra couple of pool boards on every job. Say if a batch of orders was for 5 boards they would run off 7 copies of the pool board. If a particular batch yielded all the boards ordered in good condition, that was all they would send. If they didn't they offered the usual credit or remake, but they would send out all the boards they had made, including faulty ones, which is how we collectively learned that the batch size was bigger than the order size and that they were making 'overs'. To me that suggests that they were dialling in their processes.

Nowadays the fact that they don't appear to have 'overs' to cover the odd minor issue - my missing board was reported as "1 pcs less due to the scratch during the manufacturing process."  - suggests that they are more confident in their process, don't run 'overs', but also don't have the process so tight that they can always guarantee to pass all boards in a batch. The commonest complaint I hear nowadays is that someone's order has come up a board or two short.

Once one knows all that it seems to make sense to order a few 'overs' yourself and build that cost assumption into the order, so that you always get at least as many boards as you need. If they deliver one or two short it just eats into your safety margin and you get a relatively generous credit for the nominally missing boards.

[ace1903]

If someone needs info company in Macedonia is called Hi-tech corporation. Beside PCB they offer assembly services also.
Worked with  PCBs from them several times and can say quality is perfect. They address different market so can not be compared with JLCPCB.
Main target for them is industry that needs accompanying paperwork and traceability from aerospace to medical and up to 28 layers.
Can not say anything about pricing since every time it was covered by other departments in the company I worked for.
But pricing was on panel quantity so no options 10pcs for 2$ and setup fee was significant since they use top notch machinery and materials even for ordinary trough hole two layers pcb.
On the pros side is that we are in the same time zone as Europe and they provide excellent tech support 24/7(yes I called them at 2am and got CAD/CAM engineer explain me some issues since I was changing existing design and I am not PCB designer).

[SilverSolder]

[...] 28 layers [...]

 

[rszemeti]

In the UK I can get very basic PCB made, no silk screen, no solder resist and only 10x the price of JLCPCB,  and for just 15x the price I can get with solder resist and silk, the time for this is about the same as JLC.

I've had many, many boxes of PCB's from JLC in the last 5 years, and so far, not one bad board and many times extra boards.  Before complaining too much, I think you have to consider the price ... if you don't like the quality, you should try your local board company for a year and then decide if *for you* the extra cost is worth it and if the local company is better ...

[JLCPCB Official]

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.

Hello, sir. Thanks for your orders on JLCPCB. No matter new or regular customers, JLCPCB are all equally valued, so would you like to provide me your order information/pictures to investigate closely? When any problem occurs, solving the problem directly is the first thing to do. So please help us to improve. （order number, or customer number, or PCB pictures, etc. all accepted, or email me at rebecca@jlcpcb.com）

[Harjit]

@cgroen - can you post a close up of the "BGA" just under C13 and share the ball pitch, pad size, silk screen opening, etc.?

Also, your opinion of how it turned out and if soldering worked fine or not?

Thank you.

[cgroen]

@cgroen - can you post a close up of the "BGA" just under C13 and share the ball pitch, pad size, silk screen opening, etc.?

Also, your opinion of how it turned out and if soldering worked fine or not?

Thank you.

The pitch of the small BGA (a buck/boost from Maxim) is 0.4 mm. The pads on the PCB is 0.25 mm in diameter
The soldermask expansion around the pads are 0.05 mm, this is not optimized in any way yet, this might change when going into production, but works fine with my "manual prototype assembly" here.
The boards so far have worked perfectly when done by JLC, the prototypes I solder myself (stencil/hot plate) and so far has been flawless. Final production will be with a subcontractor (they do not use JLCPCB but their own "preferred" PCB house).