PCBWay

[Terry S]

PCBway has a sale on boards -- 10 boards for $5 + shipping. Not sure what size that goes to, and you do need to use their default parameters. But if you can live with them this is a great deal. The default parameters are pretty much OK and what you might expect. 2 layer, 6 & 6, 1.6 thick, .3mm drill, green mask, white silk, 1 oz copper, HASL.

I plugged in 100 x 100 mm and for 5 boards the price came to $5. Not $5 each, but $5 total.

Terry

[Terry S]

Sorry, make that $5 for 10 boards!

[Quixotic Nixotic]

I am still running with Elecrow.

Elecrow's 10 boards are fractionally cheaper at $4.90, not $5.00. Elecrow do any profile milling and sub boards within the cost, PCBway want to charge per sub board. PCBway load on the shipping, which for me in UK is $12.00. A total of $17.00.

My last Elecrow order for the 10 boards was $4.90 + $4.80 shipping, a total of $9.70.

Elecrow send me a picture of what they are sending me when it ships. I've had one issue with a board, out of several dozen, and they remanufactured immediately without any argument. They had misunderstood a plated-through tag slot pad and joined it to a ground plane.

Elecrow do not put any of their own annoying identification codes on the PCBs and if they manufacture any extra PCBs these will be included free also. My last order yielded 13 rather than the 10 I paid for.

John S

[Tomasz Kowalczyk]

At the place I work at we're ordering our PCBs from PCBway, about 25 different designs in last 12 months. I generally recommend them, however it seems that they have more than one plant and/or are outsourcing the job to smaller companies if they get overloaded - shades of soldermask are inconsistent and once we received really low quality PCBs (it looked like the drilling machine was working during an earthquake, drills were misplaced by as much as 0,3mm).

Their silkscreen accuracy is consistently poor, there is always a slight offset. And the order number...  My boss allows me to fill the PCBs up to 10cm x 10cm with my designs, so I used some extra space to make a board for a B-5445 clock. I took some effort to hide the designators under the sockets, but PCBway didn't see it my way and they placed the order number in plain sight. Usually they hide it under some IC.

I don't mind the shipping cost, we're using DHL anyway :)

I have to try Elecrow. I'd like to compare the quality of those two companies. What were the smallest holes/traces/clearances that you've tried?

[Luka C]

I will be placing a PCB order soon so I have checked Elecrow that was mentioned in this topic. They have a pdf with details on SMD stencil production ( https://www.elecrow.com/download/Readme%20before%20ordering%20stencil.pdf ) . In the document they state that they will use the "paste" layer to manufacture the stencil except in case there is an "obvious RF antenna". Considering my PCB contains an UFL antenna connector, what would this mean? Perhaps someone knows?

[John Rehwinkel]

I will be placing a PCB order soon so I have checked Elecrow that was mentioned in this topic. They have a pdf with details on SMD stencil production ( https://www.elecrow.com/download/Readme%20before%20ordering%20stencil.pdf ) . In the document they state that they will use the "paste" layer to manufacture the stencil except in case there is an "obvious RF antenna". Considering my PCB contains an UFL antenna connector, what would this mean? Perhaps someone knows?

I'm guessing they're referring to a "trace antenna", where a PCB trace is used as an antenna (do an image search on "bluetooth module" if you're unsure what I'm referring to, that zigzag gold trace is the Bluetooth antenna).  I doubt a u.FL connector would qualify.

- John