PCB fabricator recommendations/comparisons?

[Paul Andrews]

Hi,

I've been using OSHPark to have my designs made up, and they are great, but I figure I should try a few other manufacturers and recently went to look at pcbway. So I am wondering if anyone has experience of OSHPark and any other manufacturer (but particularly PCBWay), and could give me some idea of what to Watch out for when trying to move from OSHParknto someone else.

For example, PCBWay's base offering is TG 130-140 - is this suitable for reflow? OSHPark is TG170. PCBWay's base offering minimum hole size is .3mm, this is possibly only relevant (to me) for vias. I'm not sure how this compares with OSHPark, but it makes me want to ask if there are specific design constraints I should be aware of for other fabricators, that perhaps OSHPark has implicitly let me get away with. I've compared all of the explicitly stated design constraints of the two shops, and apart from the TG rating and the minimum hole size, it seems that PCBWay would handle boards designed for OSHPark with no problems.

Of course once you stray from their base offering, things can get expensive real fast, but at least HASL lead-free is still reasonable (their base offering is not lead-free) - and they offer different solder mask colors :)

Thanks - Paul

[John Rehwinkel]

I've been using OSHPark to have my designs made up, and they are great, but I figure I should try a few other manufacturers and recently went to look at pcbway. So I am wondering if anyone has experience of OSHPark and any other manufacturer (but particularly PCBWay), and could give me some idea of what to Watch out for when trying to move from OSHParknto someone else.

I've done some boards with PCBGoGo, and was reasonably impressed.  I opted for red soldermask and lead-free HASL.  Turnaround was FAST (including fast shipping), price is low, and the boards are nice.  I had specified the outline to be routed with radiused corners, and they were, all edges smooth (instead of the "mouse bites" from depanelizing like the boards from OSHPark).

I don't have a lot of info handy on their via restrictions and so forth (my boards so far have been undemanding), but they support down to 4 mil lines and 4 mil spacing, and a minimum drill size of 0.2mm.  They're good about answering email (but they're in China, so their business hours are in a different time zone than I am).

https://www.pcbgogo.com/PCB_capabilities.html

I've also worked with CircuitHub, getting some thin (1mm) boards with black soldermask and some fairly fine traces and small vias, they came out fine, but they're more of a fab house than a PCB house, and more expensive and slower than PCBGoGo.

https://circuithub.com/

- John

[gregebert]

I've used OSHPark twice, for very small PCBs. High quality, fast turnaround, low cost for small boards. At $5 per square-inch, it gets expensive for large boards.

But if you have a small board, say 1" x 2", you get 3 boards for $10 US including shipping.

[Robert L]

I've had good results with SEEED Studio Fusion... A few minor issues recently around the Chinese New Year, but minor and they were addressed and resolved.

Keep your board under 100mm x 100mm and 2-layers and you will get 10 boards for $4.90 plus a $22 or more hit for DHL shipping from China. II usually collect a batch of boards to combine shipping and pay just one DHL cost at around $22 to $30 depending on how many boards... how much weight. DHL is consistently 2 days to the SF Bay area. Just designed some small power supply boards for a work project. Boards are 40mm x 50mm, 2 layer. I generated Gerbers for a 2x2 array of the boards with V-Cuts to separate. These fit within the 100 x 100 mm low cost constraint. V-Cuts make it easy to separate the boards by hand leaving decent clean edges. I get 40 2-layer supply boards for under $30. Not at all bad! I also like color coding my boards taking advantage of the 5 or 6 colors available from SEEED. Have also had nice results with internal router cuts.

I've been using OSH Park for some of my smaller boards at 2 and 4 layers... 3 boards for $5 (2-layer) and $10 (4-layer) per square inch.  Another of my boards is under a half inch square. How do they even cover the cost of postage? Quality has been excellent, customer service has been great as well. OSH is my solution for prototyping circuits that are way to fine pitch, way too small to do any other way. 

I'm using a Whizoo re-flow toaster with excellent results as well. But that's a topic for some other thread!

Regards,

Bob

[Tomasz Kowalczyk]

I've been using PCBWay at work for a while, over 50 designs with 5-20 boards per design ordered. Generally speaking, they aren't the best, but their PCBs are exactly what you'd expect for the price. 

Sometimes the boards are perfect and only the problem is misaligned overlay layer, which usually isn't a big deal. Sometimes there are visible problems with hole centering and once we received something really unacceptable:

These are 0,5mm holes, so bigger than their specified minimum.

The upper board is 4 layer and was probably manufactured in different place (different machine or different plant) than typical 2 layer boards. 

The lower was meant to be a purely mechanical element (to put pins of a component throught those holes and holes of another, electrical board, push the board to the side and thus make a non-solder socket for it).

Fortunately out of 10 boards per design there was at least 1, which was acceptable.

Because of these problems, I usually design my boards with 0,3mm traces and spacing and with 0,5mm holes (0,3mm for via stitching ground planes) to avoid problems caused by misalignment. Right now I'm waiting for some boards which use 0,15mm traces and spacing, so I'm going to see if they will turn out OK.

But this was only one order from them. Generally, they are OK unless you need a perfect alignment of the layers.

Comparing to OSH park, which I used only twice so far - PCBWay is lower quality, but is definitely cheaper.

Keep in mind that PCBWay will put a small text on one of overlay layers with order number. They usually try to hide it under components, but sometimes they put it in visible place.

[John Smout]

On 21 Apr 2018, at 13:35, Paul Andrews <pa...@nixies.us> wrote:

Hi,

I've been using OSHPark to have my designs made up, and they are great, but I figure I should try a few other manufacturers and recently went to look at pcbway. So I am wondering if anyone has experience of OSHPark and any other manufacturer (but particularly PCBWay), and could give me some idea of what to Watch out for when trying to move from OSHParknto someone else.

I am still enthusiastic about Elecrow’s service. I have had several dozens of PCBs done by them now and I still find them competitive and perhaps more importantly responsive when things don’t quite go according to plan. They are fair and will reprint at their cost when it is their fault, with no argument. I do stuff with odd custom pad shapes (offset holes on weird wedge-shaped nixie pin pads etc and slotted tag plated hole issues) that sometimes confuses their checking software.

https://www.elecrow.com/pcb-manufacturing.html

10 green pcbs 10cms x 10cms are made and shipped to UK for $16.36 USD or £11.68 GBP. I am sent a snapshot of the order and the boards when they are shipped to me and I then know they are on their way. They do not add any extra idents of their own to the silkscreen layer, something I personally hate seeing. If there are any extra PCBs you will be sent these free of charge - you will alway get the minimum 10 PCBs, but the most I have been sent is 14. A nice touch.

Other places I have used seem to want to charge extra for panelised boards, however you decided to do them - a series of holes, milled profile or V-groove. I use a 1mm milled slot between PCBs, with a few 1mm wide tabs to hold the set together and this always works. I used a V-groove on one board and it went through fine and was reprinted fine twice more, but another time they wanted to charge me extra because of the V-groove. Their documentation is vague on the topic.

I am a Mac person and use Osmond PCB to design my boards. I am very happy and programmer Joe Chavez is extremely responsive to bugs and issues. We have co-operated together on a number of features in the last few years.

If you are also a Mac user may I recommend Cuprum for checking your gerber files? The free Cuprum community edition will add a feature to OSX that displays ripped previews of the gerber files right there and then in the Mac Finder. Checking these gerber views against my layouts has saved me a number of disappointments. Cuprum itself allows you to view the various layers and hole information.

John S

[Grahame]

Hi

Yet another alternative! I have been using Gojgo in China and OSHPARK.

http://www.gojgo.com/store/pcb/pcb-quote.html

OSHPARK seem to beat everyone with low quantity, small boards. By the time you get up to above about 50mm x 50mm I find other manufacturers like Gojgo and ones mentioned by others get cheaper.

Gojgo was recommended to me by a friend in the USA who runs an electronics design and assembly company (he has his own SMT assembly lines located in the USA) and uses Gojgo for his products. I can say that their board quality, silkscreen, SS stencils are all very good. They mill odd shapes and slots can be plated if you tell them so. Standard turn round is fast and the longest step always seems to be the shipping. For large orders, I tend to wait until I have several boards ready to minimise the shipping overhead per board and the fixed part of the UK import duty fee. They've made 1, 2 and 4 layer boards for me. They do place their own ident in the silkscreen annoying as it is. The only limitation I have found is that they don't do a matt black solder mask. But $17 for an aluminium framed SS stencil I find is an amazing price.

Hope this helps
Grahame

[Mitch]

I started with OSH Park for the first tow or three orders and never had a complaint. Larger boards can be seriously expensive and they take longer than the Chinese manufacturers, when shipping from China is by DHL. So far I’ve placed about thirty orders with pcbway.com without an issue, and order o delivery time is always one week. I also tried Elecrow for one order and they were equally good.

What’s interesting about both pcbway.com and Elecrow is that the quotation software is very similar, too much so for coincidence.

[Terry S]

. They do place their own ident in the silkscreen annoying as it is. 

I always require them manufacturer to put their identification logo, job number, and date on the boards. I put it right on my PCB fab notes. This is for trace-ability purposes.

Granted this is for commercial or industrial use, but doesn't it make sense that you can simply look at the board -- and know where it came from?

Terry

[Dan Hollis]

I use jlcpcb. 4 days from china to seattle. Extremely low cost boards, and
if you use their partner lcsc.com you get incredibly cheap components too.

-Dan

On Mon, 23 Apr 2018, 'Grahame' via neonixie-l wrote:

> Hi
>
> Yet another alternative! I have been using Gojgo in China and OSHPARK.
>
> http://www.gojgo.com/store/pcb/pcb-quote.html
>
> OSHPARK seem to beat everyone with low quantity, small boards. By the time
> you get up to above about 50mm x 50mm I find other manufacturers like Gojgo
> and ones mentioned by others get cheaper.
>
> Gojgo was recommended to me by a friend in the USA who runs an electronics
> design and assembly company (he has his own SMT assembly lines located in the
> USA) and uses Gojgo for his products. I can say that their board quality,
> silkscreen, SS stencils are all very good. They mill odd shapes and slots can
> be plated if you tell them so. Standard turn round is fast and the longest
> step always seems to be the shipping. For large orders, I tend to wait until
> I have several boards ready to minimise the shipping overhead per board and
> the fixed part of the UK import duty fee. They've made 1, 2 and 4 layer
> boards for me. They do place their own ident in the silkscreen annoying as it
> is. The only limitation I have found is that they don't do a matt black
> solder mask. But $17 for an aluminium framed SS stencil I find is an amazing
> price.
>
> Hope this helps
> Grahame
>
>> On 21 Apr 2018, at 13:35, Paul Andrews <pa...@nixies.us

>> <mailto:pa...@nixies.us>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> I've been using OSHPark to have my designs made up, and they are great,
>>> but I figure I should try a few other manufacturers and recently went to
>>> look at pcbway. So I am wondering if anyone has experience of OSHPark and
>>> any other manufacturer (but particularly PCBWay), and could give me some
>>> idea of what to Watch out for when trying to move from OSHParknto someone
>>> else.
>>
>>
>

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[Stef de Korte]

I also use JLCPCB, received my first order today. Very cheap, very high quality boards. Tested fully functional. Would definitely recommend!

Op maandag 23 april 2018 20:02:14 UTC+2 schreef bani:

[SWISSNIXIE - Jonathan F.]

I started using ALLPCB a few weeks ago and are very happy with speed, quality and service. I ordered 5 boards and got 7 which 2 were not flawless but 100% usable (the soldermask had small scratches around big holes, but no electrical problems!)

[Paul Andrews]

I see what @Mitch means. JLCPCB also seem to use the same quoting interface. I see that JLCPCB also provide a self-panelization mode. That would make me feel even more guilty about ordering 5 or 10 PCBs when I only want a couple! Any ideas what to do with my growing pile of unused PCBs? Its almost like they are forcing you to go into business. Some questions though:

• Can you include something on the board to tell them where to put their order details? Can you specify that it uses the back-silkscreen for example?
  
• Should I care abou the TG rating?
  

Now I need to figure out which board to trial them with!

[newxito]

I'm very happy using easyeda as designer and JLCPCB as manufacturer.

[Mike Harrison]

I've used JLCPCB a few times, but had some issues recently - canceled one order without telling me, reasons unclear, and another where they did email me due to it having a lot of routing. 

Trying out Allpcb currently

(Sent from phone)

>> <mailto:pa...@nixies.us>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> I've been using OSHPark to have my designs made up, and they are great,
>>> but I figure I should try a few other manufacturers and recently went to
>>> look at pcbway. So I am wondering if anyone has experience of OSHPark and
>>> any other manufacturer (but particularly PCBWay), and could give me some
>>> idea of what to Watch out for when trying to move from OSHParknto someone
>>> else.
>>
>>
>

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[gregebert]

I just got my first set of boards back from pcbway.com, and their quality for 2-layer boards is comparable to other suppliers I've used in the past. The online calculator for fab and shipping is very handy, and their website has more details about their capabilities than other places I've used.

Their response time and online fab-status is the best I've seen from any other vendor I've used. When I submitted my board, I mistakenly included an extra layer and they replied back within a few minutes. After making payment, I could see progress on their website updated every few hours. They display %complete rather than specific task, and it took just under 3 days for normal processing, and it took just under 2 weeks til I had my boards (I went cheap on the shipping). Cost is also very competitive.

I have 10mil minimum-features (0.25mm), and their standard process is 6mils, so this wasn't pushing their capabilities. All traces look sharp, and the solder-mask is accurate.

Since I'm working on a 2-board set, and they did a good job, I'll be sending them my other board as well.

[Dan Hollis]

Are there any PCB fabs who will do component placement for reasonable
price?

Just having 1206 resistor networks placed on my boards would save me a lot
of time...

-Dan

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[gregebert]

pcbway does offer assembly service, but I've never used it. I think their minimum charge was 75 USD.

How many boards are you planning to build ? It's pretty easy to hand-solder 1206 components with a pair of tweezers.

[Paul Andrews]

While I was poking around looking at generating a BOM from KiCAD, I came across this place. I haven't used them (yet). The link I sent also talks about freelance assemblers.

[Dan Hollis]

discrete 1206 components are super easy, but 1206 resistor networks are not.

-Dan

On Tue, 12 Jun 2018, gregebert wrote:

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[gregebert]

Wow, I've never seen those before. Very small footprint.

The closest-sized device I've ever tried to solder-down was a DFN-8, which is bigger than than your array, and I had a tough time with it. Never again.......

[gregebert]

I uploaded my gerbers to PCB Way (yes, they are in China) on Tuesday night, and selected standard delivery. It's Friday morning and the DHL plane just unloaded them Portland. I've never seen such quick turnaround. Even OSH Park, which is across town from me takes about 12 days.

[Terry S]

OSH Park groups together like orders to reduce costs. You can end up waiting a while until they fill a panel. That's the known trade-off with them.

[gregebert]

Even then, most of my OSH Park boards are panelized with 1-2 days

[Richard Scales]

I started out with OSH Park for some small boards but moved over to JLCPCB, that was about 30 or more boards ago. I have been completely happy with the quality and options available. They provide several panelization options which is great when making 'tube cell' PCB's. I know you can opt NOT to have their numbers added to the silk screen and their interface looks very similar to several other suppliers.

Whilst I have had DHL deliveries, I now pretty much always take the slow board postage option - which in the current 'climate' can work out almost as fast as some of the DHL options, I watched one shipment visit over 6 locations in Germany 

before finally hopping across to the UK!

Thus far I have not had any quality issues and would most certainly recommend them to anyone. I also use their EasyEDA on line design tool which I found easier to get to grips with than KiCad, it suits the way I 'work' very well.

They also offer to pre-load your boards with components at a reasonable cost. I have not used this service but a colleague has and  he was happy with the results.

I have recently been making some boards with lots of 0805 components which I thought would be easier to have pre-loaded though ultimately I soldered them myself which works out fine though I would not want to solder many more than I have done already (30) so I should give that a go some time.

- Richard

[Dan Hollis]

On Sat, 1 Aug 2020, Richard Scales wrote:
> I started out with OSH Park for some small boards but moved over to JLCPCB,
> that was about 30 or more boards ago. I have been completely happy with the
> quality and options available. They provide several panelization options
> which is great when making 'tube cell' PCB's. I know you can opt NOT to
> have their numbers added to the silk screen and their interface looks very
> similar to several other suppliers.

I have also switched from OSH Park to JLCPCB. Delivery is much faster,
prices are better, and integration with EasyEDA is a plus.

-Dan

[Erick Anderson]

I ordered my most recent batch of boards from Seeed Studio and had no complaints. A batch of ten 2"x4" boards was $5 plus shipping.

On Saturday, April 21, 2018 at 7:35:36 AM UTC-5, Paul Andrews wrote:

Hi,

I've been using OSHPark to have my designs made up, and they are great, but I figure I should try a few other manufacturers and recently went to look at pcbway. So I am wondering if anyone has experience of OSHPark and any other manufacturer (but particularly PCBWay), and could give me some idea of what to Watch out for when trying to move from OSHParknto someone else.

For example, PCBWay's base offering is TG 130-140 - is this suitable for reflow? OSHPark is TG170. PCBWay's base offering minimum hole size is .3mm, this is possibly only relevant (to me) for vias. I'm not sure how this compares with OSHPark, but it makes me want to ask if there are specific design constraints I should be aware of for other fabricators, that perhaps OSHPark has implicitly let me get away with. I've compared all of the explicitly stated design constraints of the two shops, and apart from the TG rating and the minimum hole size, it seems that PCBWay would handle boards designed for OSHPark with no problems.