Electronics > Projects, Designs, and Technical Stuff
Am I paying too much to have PCBs made?
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Dielectric:

--- Quote from: georges80 on November 01, 2015, 04:23:16 pm ---I typically use http://www.custompcb.com/ for my 2 layer prototypes. They are quick (typically about 1 week), quite inexpensive and the finished quality is good. They have some limitations on minimum drill size, but not a big problem for protos. They also ALLOW you to put multiple designs onto one pcb/panel.

cheers,
george.

--- End quote ---

I'll +1 CustomPCB / Silver Circuits.  I've been using them for years now, nice stuff cheap with a reasonable time period.  I get my boards in about 10 days, typically.  Great registration, nice clear silkscreens too.  OSHPark is fine, too.  I just placed my first order with Dirty because someone had some stuff I wanted linked up there.  I guess it's really cheap but I don't know if I've got the patience, ordered on Oct 11, shipped out in a couple of days but no tracking so who knows if/when I'll see the boards.  Hong Kong airmail, 1-8+ weeks.
rea5245:
You should switch to a different PCB CAD software package. A little-known feature of PCBShopper is that it has a list of free CAD software. The list includes open source software and zero-cost, crippled versions of commercial packages. What makes this list different from others is that it tells you in what way the commercial packages have been limited (e.g. Eagle has size limits, DipTrace has pin limits, etc.). You can then decide which limits you're willing to live with.

And as others here have mentioned, once you have your PCB design ready, you can use PCBShopper's price comparison calculator to help find a manufacturer.

- Bob
rs20:

--- Quote from: KL27x on November 01, 2015, 10:51:24 pm ---If you can design a board in Eagle, outputting Gerbers to meet any manufacturer's specification is child's play. Another 20 minutes of fiddling on the 50 hours you spent learning the quirks of Eagle. That's like running a triple iron man and stopping 2 inches from the finish line! And without actually looking at everything that goes into the Gerber layers, anyway, you will eventually run into some issues/conflicts which are difficult to handle through laborious and time-sucking email or phone correspondence. Stuff that would have been obvious and easily corrected/conveyed in an absolute manner, if you had made the Gerbers.

--- End quote ---

This. I've found so many errors that are virtually invisible on in the CAD software, but are revealed by careful layer-by-layer inspection/sanity-checking of the final Gerbers.

I've even made little tweaks to Gerber files, even though that is terrible practice for obvious reasons.
sentry7:
Thanks for all of the useful suggestions here guys. I'll be parsing through all of the good stuff here, but keep the suggestions coming.

I guess I should've saw it coming when I went in with this manufacturer. The bad part is that now, I have no way of moving the work I've already done to other CAD packages. The good news is that with the better software, it should be a breeze to redo the one board I've designed already. It could've been much worse.
rs20:

--- Quote from: sentry7 on November 03, 2015, 01:14:02 am ---The bad part is that now, I have no way of moving the work I've already done to other CAD packages.

--- End quote ---

Heh, it's almost as if that is part of their business plan...
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