Author Topic: Am I paying too much to have PCBs made?  (Read 17387 times)

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Online MarkF

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Re: Am I paying too much to have PCBs made?
« Reply #25 on: November 03, 2015, 01:33:09 pm »
Thnks everyone.  I too am looking to get my first PCBs made.

I have been using DipTrace for a few months now.  It is free for 2 layers and 300 pins and you can get a free non-profit license for 500 pin layouts.  DipTrace was very easy to learn (a day or two) and can import Eagle files and parts.  The DipTrace component list is not very big but it's easy to create new parts or import ones.
 

Offline jolshefsky

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Re: Am I paying too much to have PCBs made?
« Reply #26 on: November 03, 2015, 01:48:31 pm »
I used to use BatchPCB before they became OSHPark and stick with them for prototypes. My goal is to get (1) boards that work, that are (2) available in ~2 weeks, (3) made in ethical working conditions (usually U.S.; definitely not China), and (4) reasonably priced per-unit. If you change the order of those goals then you might pick a different vendor.
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Offline smbaker

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Re: Am I paying too much to have PCBs made?
« Reply #27 on: November 03, 2015, 04:40:08 pm »
I'm an Eagle / OshPark user. Before that I used to use batchpcb, and I would send off gerbers and neurotically inspect them with Gerbview before sending them off. Prior to switching I had one mishap where I forgot to send the bottom layer for a board (doh! How this that happen?). Since switching to OshPark and sending off the Eagle board files, I haven't had any mishaps. Oshpark breaks out most of the layers into separate images during the submission process. It's not as good as using Gerbview to interactively toggle layers on and off, but it is good enough to idiot-check that I'm not missing something.

I do try to design conservatively, upping trace widths and clearances when feasible.

What's the 'security concern' with sending Eagle board files? That someone is going to steal your board layout? Couldn't they still do that with Gerbers? It'd be more work and they may have to figure out the component values themselves, but for a determined thief that seems plausibe. Besides, as soon as we make a widget and then give/sell it to someone else, they can try to reverse engineer it.
« Last Edit: November 03, 2015, 04:44:29 pm by smbaker »
 

Offline KL27x

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Re: Am I paying too much to have PCBs made?
« Reply #28 on: November 03, 2015, 06:45:14 pm »
Quote
rs20, can you provide some examples of what kind of errors you're talking about?
e.g.

Some of the pads you have placed might be bare for a reason, and you might inadvertently have them in your paste layer, because you used pads from a library or you forget to remove the paste layer on your own footprint.

Do you know if your vias are tented or not? Examine your paste layer. You might have to change some setting to get what you want.

Sometimes you may want a custom Gerber layer with detailed placement information (device outlines/reference markers) for an assembly service. But perhaps this information should not be printed on the silkscreen, because it would make things too busy, or because that information goes over areas of exposed copper.

What are all the various "other layers" in you Eagle.brd files that are "never used?" You can use those for w/e you want. You can add those to w/e Gerber layers you want. Is part of your toolset.
 

Offline sentry7Topic starter

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Re: Am I paying too much to have PCBs made?
« Reply #29 on: November 03, 2015, 08:06:53 pm »
I too need to start thinking about PCB printing. Do any of the suggested board houses do Pick n Place too?

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.

Will you make an exact replica or do you think the new board will end up different?
I would like it to be as close to the original as possible, but if the new software has an autorouting feature (ExpressPCB does not), I will probably wind up using that instead of manually redoing the entire board.
 

Offline mrpackethead

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Re: Am I paying too much to have PCBs made?
« Reply #30 on: November 04, 2015, 01:53:23 am »
the dream of autorouting.. If you ask around the professuonal board desingers here ,there will be very few using auto-routing.. thats becaseu geenrally its rubbish
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Offline rea5245

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Re: Am I paying too much to have PCBs made?
« Reply #31 on: November 04, 2015, 02:11:14 am »
the dream of autorouting.. If you ask around the professuonal board desingers here ,there will be very few using auto-routing.. thats becaseu geenrally its rubbish

I've found that autorouting is always worth a shot. I've done a lot of projects where it did a fine job, and I've done two or three where I had to do manual routing. The ones that needed manual routing have had address buses or data buses or even a row of 14 segment LEDs. Essentially, a routing solution required lots of parallel traces; the autorouter couldn't see that and plan accordingly, but I could.

What the "professionals" do is irrelevant to what hobbyists like me do (and I notice you allowed that some professionals do use autorouting). My boards are smaller and simpler than a lot of professional boards. I suspect that even if I were a pro, I'd want my CAD program to offer the option of autorouting. And really ... are there any good CAD programs that don't have an autorouter?

So don't dis the autorouter. If it works for your project, use it without shame.

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Offline mrpackethead

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Re: Am I paying too much to have PCBs made?
« Reply #32 on: November 04, 2015, 03:23:35 am »
And really ... are there any good CAD programs that don't have an autorouter?

So don't dis the autorouter. If it works for your project, use it without shame.

- Bob

Theres several autorouters in CAD programs. Most of them produce garbage that needs significant work to clean up.   
50% of the work in PCB design is about placement and component choice. Where stuff goes reletive to each other makes a massive difference. Theres also a lot of arbitory choices you can make, ( simpel example, a 4 gate package.. any of the gates are good to use, but one will probalby provide a better layout.

theres often things that get complex enough that you have so many constraints.. ( differential pairs carrying high speed data, need controlled impedance, matched paths )..  that you just have to put those in..

Lastly, i know many folks would bork that the idea, but there is often signficant economy and massive time savings in going to a four layer PCB, from a 2 layer..     Your boards, often get much smaller. ( i've seen physical size reductions of 70% with my student engineers ). This is becuase you can run a gnd and power plane..    If you can reduce board size a lot, a small 4 layer board is going to be no more than a larger 2 layer.
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Offline rs20

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Re: Am I paying too much to have PCBs made?
« Reply #33 on: November 04, 2015, 04:57:57 am »
Theres several autorouters in CAD programs. Most of them produce garbage that needs significant work to clean up.   
50% of the work in PCB design is about placement and component choice. Where stuff goes reletive to each other makes a massive difference. Theres also a lot of arbitory choices you can make, ( simpel example, a 4 gate package.. any of the gates are good to use, but one will probalby provide a better layout.

theres often things that get complex enough that you have so many constraints.. ( differential pairs carrying high speed data, need controlled impedance, matched paths )..  that you just have to put those in..

Lastly, i know many folks would bork that the idea, but there is often signficant economy and massive time savings in going to a four layer PCB, from a 2 layer..     Your boards, often get much smaller. ( i've seen physical size reductions of 70% with my student engineers ). This is becuase you can run a gnd and power plane..    If you can reduce board size a lot, a small 4 layer board is going to be no more than a larger 2 layer.

Again with the all-vs-nothing, black-vs-white, you-vs-me internet mentality. Have you considered this case: manually placing components (e.g. a bunch of shift registers and 7 segment displays) and critical power and data lines manually; and then using the autorouter to place the 200 tracks from shift register to 7 seg displays? If you already have 4 layers for some other reason, it does an absolutely perfect job and saves a huge amount of time.

Saying autorouters are completely useless and should be avoided at all costs is equally as silly as someone who exclusively uses autorouting. There are shades of grey here...
 

Offline mrpackethead

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Re: Am I paying too much to have PCBs made?
« Reply #34 on: November 04, 2015, 05:17:21 am »

Saying autorouters are completely useless and should be avoided at all costs is equally as silly as someone who exclusively uses autorouting. There are shades of grey here...
[/quote]

My grey might be more dark that yours.. but i did use words like"most" and "often".  don't think i was compeltley black or white, by saying "all" or "none".    Sigh, guess with internet mentality, you did'nt read that.

Sigh.
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Offline Fungus

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Re: Am I paying too much to have PCBs made?
« Reply #35 on: November 04, 2015, 10:12:44 am »
the dream of autorouting.. If you ask around the professuonal board desingers here ,there will be very few using auto-routing.. thats becaseu geenrally its rubbish

I've found that autorouting is always worth a shot. I've done a lot of projects where it did a fine job

Are you sure?  Upload a board design here for people to criticise...  :box:
 

Offline rea5245

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Re: Am I paying too much to have PCBs made?
« Reply #36 on: November 04, 2015, 02:03:28 pm »
I've found that autorouting is always worth a shot. I've done a lot of projects where it did a fine job

Are you sure?  Upload a board design here for people to criticise...  :box:

What a great idea! Take something I'm 100% satisfied with, and put it on the Internet so people can make me unhappy about it!

(I assume you're being facetious, Fungus.)

- Bob
« Last Edit: November 04, 2015, 02:06:18 pm by rea5245 »
 

Offline Fungus

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Re: Am I paying too much to have PCBs made?
« Reply #37 on: November 04, 2015, 02:38:10 pm »
I've found that autorouting is always worth a shot. I've done a lot of projects where it did a fine job
Are you sure?  Upload a board design here for people to criticise...  :box:
What a great idea! Take something I'm 100% satisfied with, and put it on the Internet so people can make me unhappy about it!

You're suddenly not so sure it "did a fine job"...?  :-DD
 

Offline oodavid

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Re: Am I paying too much to have PCBs made?
« Reply #38 on: November 04, 2015, 03:54:20 pm »
I too need to start thinking about PCB printing. Do any of the suggested board houses do Pick n Place too?

Are you getting hundreds or thousands of boards made? Watch Dave's video tour of a pick and place facility to understand why getting 10 or less boards pick-and-placed for you is unreasonable.

Yeah, the first batch <10 will have to be hand soldered, but looking at 100 - 200 I guess Pick n Place starts to look appealing! I guess I'd  like to use the same company to do the blank PCBs as the eventual PnP service, if only to have built up a rapport.
 

Offline Pack34

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Re: Am I paying too much to have PCBs made?
« Reply #39 on: November 04, 2015, 04:05:07 pm »
I too need to start thinking about PCB printing. Do any of the suggested board houses do Pick n Place too?

Are you getting hundreds or thousands of boards made? Watch Dave's video tour of a pick and place facility to understand why getting 10 or less boards pick-and-placed for you is unreasonable.

Yeah, the first batch <10 will have to be hand soldered, but looking at 100 - 200 I guess Pick n Place starts to look appealing! I guess I'd  like to use the same company to do the blank PCBs as the eventual PnP service, if only to have built up a rapport.

Depending on size and complexity, it may be more work to setup a machine than to just assemble it yourself.

But do yourself a favor and do the paste and reflow process instead of doing everything with an iron. You can get a cheap oven for $200 or buy a kit to refit a toaster.

I wouldn't consider moving to a PnP unless I'm doing at least small batch quantities.

For the OP: I had to use ExpressPCB at my last job (ended up having to buy my own CAD tools to upgrade). I've personally been using ITEAD for prototyping. They aren't the quickest (a week and a half) but you typically get 10 boards for cheap. You'll also be limited to 4 layers max.
 

Offline mikerj

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Re: Am I paying too much to have PCBs made?
« Reply #40 on: November 06, 2015, 12:59:37 pm »
You're suddenly not so sure it "did a fine job"...?  :-DD

Depends on your definition of "fine"  If an auto-routed board worked correctly and achieved the design goals, then many people would consider that "fine".
 

Offline zapta

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Re: Am I paying too much to have PCBs made?
« Reply #41 on: November 06, 2015, 04:10:03 pm »
Again with the all-vs-nothing, black-vs-white, you-vs-me internet mentality. Have you considered this case: manually placing components (e.g. a bunch of shift registers and 7 segment displays) and critical power and data lines manually; and then using the autorouter to place the 200 tracks from shift register to 7 seg displays? If you already have 4 layers for some other reason, it does an absolutely perfect job and saves a huge amount of time.

This is how I route with Eagle and it works great for me.  (I am a hobbyist)


Saying autorouters are completely useless and should be avoided at all costs ...

That claim got debunked.   https://www.eevblog.com/forum/projects/the-auto-router-challenge-will-it-work/  (an extreme case where *all* the nets were auto routed).
 

Offline mal-c

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Re: Am I paying too much to have PCBs made?
« Reply #42 on: November 08, 2015, 06:01:34 pm »
I have used PCBway (http://www.pcbway.com) for the last two projects. A reptile habistat controller, and my reef controller. The last order was for my reef controller, a 12 x 10 cm two layer board in 1.0oz copper, green solder mask and normal white silk screen. the cost was a very reasonable $29 for five boards, and as I was in a hurry opted for and paid extra for the DHL 2-3 day delivery option at around $25 rather then the HongKong post option at $11. The order was procesed within 3 days of it being placed (late in the evening UK time), and so I was given the DHL tracking number and sat back anticipating delivery of my new PCBs in arriving in afew days time. A day or two later, just for fun I logged on to the DHL website and entered the tracking number and to my horror noticed that DHL seemed to be flying my parcel from Heathrow to Gatwick and back again. Heathrow some how sent it to Gatwick, who then sent it back to Heathrow as a being received at the incorrect sorting facility, so tey sent it back to Heathrow. But a Gatwick apparantly is the correct sorting center for my area, Heathrow sent it back again, and this tim it was placed on a van for delivery and I receive dit later that day, some 43 hours after it landed in the UK (it only took 19 hours from being collected in Hong Kong to landing in the UK customs office !! After complaining to DHL they offered a refund of the delivery charge, but as I wasn't their customer I couldn't claim it, so could only refund PCBway, which they did and they in turn refunded me the cost of delivery.



The quality of the boards themselves is excellent. In fact for a proptype it is every bit as good as a production board. This board was my first venture in to soldering surface mount components, which to be honest didn't save me a lot of space given the size and quantity of large components that the board uses dictated the dimensions. The silk screening is very clean and tidy, even on small fonts.

The project is basically three switched mains supplies for the pumps, which are operated by a combination of four membrane buttons on the front panel to turn the pumps on or off to allow for cleaning, and a 4 channel lighting controller with 4096 PWM steps on each channel. I've already detailed the project build on the forum http://www.ultimatereef.net/forums/showthread.php?711856-PCA9685pw-Coding

The most recent project was a revamp of my reptile habistat controller. This time the order consisted of two PCBs, so that resulted in a total of 10 PCB's - Total cost $77 (around £52) inc shipping.

-layer number: 2 layers
-board thickness: 1.6mm
-solder mask color: green
-silkscreen color: white
-the surface finish:HASL with lead
-finished copper thickness: 35?m Cu
-pcb quantity: 5pcs each (the minimum order quantity is 5pcs for each project)
Driver board -5pcs: $26
Reptitherm v3.zip-5pcs: $27

The total shipping cost via DHL to UK is $25

This time the order went through without any issues. Order was placed on 7th July at 22:36 UK time, and the goods received just before mid-day on 13th July, and it was marked as samples so didn't get stung for duty or VAT either. So that was ten boards, fabricarted and shipped half way around the world and delivered in 6 days, for just £50... Impressed.

Again the quality of the boards was excellent. There was no issues with hole sizes, pads or missing silk screening.



This project has 4 independent pulse proportional thermostats (uses a PID routine), with programable night time temperature drops, and two individual lighting timers to control the photo period. A high and low temperature alarm system that monitors high and low thresholds settings for each of the four thermostats, and the unit can be set up via a PC application using a bluetooth module. Information is displayed on a 128 x 64 GLCD, using a BV4611 serial controller than makes using the GLCD as simple as sending text to a normal LCD.

Not sure how that compares to some of the other board manufactures you guys use, but I'm really pleased with the quality and service I get from PCBway


 

Offline zapta

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Re: Am I paying too much to have PCBs made?
« Reply #43 on: November 08, 2015, 06:58:38 pm »
Not sure how that compares to some of the other board manufactures you guys use, but I'm really pleased with the quality and service I get from PCBway

mal-c, can you share with us what is behind your post?  I see many first time posters coming here and posting about PCBway and I wonder what causes it.
 

Offline squealer

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Re: Am I paying too much to have PCBs made?
« Reply #44 on: November 08, 2015, 07:40:39 pm »
mal-c, can you share with us what is behind your post?  I see many first time posters coming here and posting about PCBway and I wonder what causes it.

PCBWay offers coupons worth as much as $100 for positive reviews. See the attached snapshot from their web site.
 

Offline mal-c

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Re: Am I paying too much to have PCBs made?
« Reply #45 on: November 08, 2015, 10:53:32 pm »
mal-c, can you share with us what is behind your post?  I see many first time posters coming here and posting about PCBway and I wonder what causes it.

I've frequented the Ultimate reef forum for some years now, having kept marine fish for the past three years.  They have an active DIY section, and quite a few fellow members, like me have made their own controllers and lighting rigs, often using PCB houses to make up the boards.  I added a post on that forum http://www.ultimatereef.net/forums/showthread.php?770730-PCB-manufacture-Reviews to get others to post up details of their projects and which house they use, and it was suggested by one member that I reposted over here.  I simply copied the post and pictures.


PCBWay offers coupons worth as much as $100 for positive reviews. See the attached snapshot from their web site.

Wasn't awear of that.  Last time I used their services they simply gave a $5 coupon if you uploaded the images of the boards to their website... but thanks for the tip off, I might try my hand to see if my post qualifies - Thanks, much appreciated.
 

Offline mal-c

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Re: Am I paying too much to have PCBs made?
« Reply #46 on: November 09, 2015, 12:52:05 am »


Looks nice, nice and neat enclosure and wiring.

Thanks... I'm no expert, but try to keep things tidy :)
 

Offline AlxDroidDev

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Re: Am I paying too much to have PCBs made?
« Reply #47 on: November 09, 2015, 01:05:04 am »
Extremely expensive!

I've had success with ITeadStudio. They aren't exactly fast, but they are quite inexpesive and provide lots of options regarding quality, color, layers, size, shipping, etc.

"The nice thing about standards is that you have so many to choose from." (Andrew S. Tanenbaum)
 

Offline mrpackethead

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Re: Am I paying too much to have PCBs made?
« Reply #48 on: November 09, 2015, 09:37:51 am »
mal-c, can you share with us what is behind your post?  I see many first time posters coming here and posting about PCBway and I wonder what causes it.

I've frequented the Ultimate reef forum for some years now, having kept marine fish for the past three years.  They have an active DIY section, and quite a few fellow members, like me have made their own controllers and lighting rigs, often using PCB houses to make up the boards.  I added a post on that forum http://www.ultimatereef.net/forums/showthread.php?770730-PCB-manufacture-Reviews to get others to post up details of their projects and which house they use, and it was suggested by one member that I reposted over here.  I simply copied the post and pictures.


PCBWay offers coupons worth as much as $100 for positive reviews. See the attached snapshot from their web site.

Wasn't awear of that.  Last time I used their services they simply gave a $5 coupon if you uploaded the images of the boards to their website... but thanks for the tip off, I might try my hand to see if my post qualifies - Thanks, much appreciated.

I've spent more than $10k with pcbway in the last month and they are great
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Offline Aarom

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Re: Am I paying too much to have PCBs made?
« Reply #49 on: April 13, 2020, 08:08:25 am »
It is really expensive, similar data will be much cheaper in other manufacturers, the 10PCS standard board is about $ 24, on aipcba.com.
 


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