Trying a new board house is always an adventure. Of course I use BatchPCB for small scale prototyping. But for an upcoming project I needed some higher quantity of boards for a cheaper price. So some ‘real’ board house must be found. There are so many options, that I do not try to list all those different services. I choose MakePCB to fabricate my PCB:
The results were good, but not without some odd details. Read on after the break.
There was also one review on the AVR Freaks Forum, which made me quite confident, so I gave them a try. As you can see from the picture above: The PCB quality is good. I have not seen any production errors, and optical inspection lead to general satisfaction. It was not been tested yet. But I am not expecting much problems.
Ordering
Ordering from BatchPCB is a bit odd. You create an account, enter all your PCB details on the web page, upload your design, add your shipping cost and pay (Paypal only – which is fine for me). After some minutes you get an order confirmation. That’s it. Easy and direct.
Processing
There is no status for your order or any information about the processing. I had some question if everything was OK. My gerber viewer showed very odd drill positions, but I processed everything strictly after their description. After some days I got an email back: They have not heard of any problems. A confirmation that everything is OK would have sounded a bit different.
The processing took a very long time. Even though I wrote several emails to get a status I got back only some vague answers. But after about 6 weeks the boards arrived safe and sound at my door step. The packaging was excellent, yet economic: A small package with vacuum sealed bubble wrap (never seen this before), directly from China.
Bottom Line
I will do some final testings with the boards (e.g. assemble them). If everything goes right and no serious amount of unwanted shorts show up I will order my production run through them. They are really cheap – to be more specific the cheapest I found. I could even afford to get some extras (like white solder mask – perhaps next time I will take black ones – much easier to photograph properly).
But you have to be patient. They do not seem to be the quickest and their service is (from my perspective) not up to date (especially if you are used to the great service of BatchPCB). But if you compare this to the price – it is worth it.
I am quite happy until now. If you got any additional or different experience, leave a comment.
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
Sunstone Circuits just recently announced ValueProto service. It’s priced similarly to BatchPCB, and they guarantee to ship in 10 days or less. High quality boards, at a good price, on a predictable schedule
Thanks for the tip. Can you provide some link?
Update: This service seems to be US only.
I hope that more prototyping tips come in! It is some kind of advertisement – but if we collect enough it is fair again.
I like the look of the black ink on white mask — who makes those without killing you on price?
MakePCB
I was searching for white PCBs for a reasonable price. Therefore I ended up at MakePCB. But Gold Phoenix just wants 20$ extra per panel.
I recently tried to order 20 pieces, 160 * 100 mm. More than two business days have elapsed, and I am till waiting to the paypal order which is the starting point of the delivery time. If I do not receive news today I will try another supplier because it will probably be the same matter to receive pieces
Yeah I had to nag them, to send me an invoice in my last order – let’s see if and when they ship.
Good to hear you had a good experience with them. I have been using PCB Cart (http://pcbcart.com/). I have had good results from them but if something goes sideways I now have another cheap alternative.
I’ve ordered from MakePCB before. However, during my experience I found their quality to be suspect. The bow and twist was nearly 1.5x of general standards and holes were drilled inaccurately causing the boards to be scrapped during assembly. Note: they did not replace the boards but offered me a discount on a subsequent order which I did not make.
A friend of mine recommended PCB International (http://www.pcbinternational.com). They are a “real” fabrication house and their quality has been exception with around 12 orders I’ve placed with them thus far. I think they might be the best value on the market today. 100 square inches goes for around $100 with a lot of standard features including e-test. For 4 layer 100 square inches is around $180-$190, this is just unbeatable.