All,

???? The cost of Blue transfer film and etchant (including trying to
dispose of the used etchant here in New York State) forced me to try one
of those overseas discount PCB fab houses.? Many positive reviews sent
me to Smart Prototyping <

<> >.? So far,
I've had 2 revisions of 3 separate PCBs manufactured by them for a cost
of about $30 for 5 pieces each of 3 separate boards.
???? The delivery of these boards was about 2 weeks total; I paid extra
for speedier delivery, slower would have been even cheaper.
???? The quality of the delivered boards was surprising.? The only
mistakes I discovered were self-imposed.? No opens, shorts, mis-printed
silk, or unplated vias.? Truly excellent quality for what turned out to
be about $2 per 3" x 4" board.

I highly recommend them,

W2EB

All,

???? The cost of Blue transfer film and etchant (including trying to dispose of the used etchant here in New York State) forced me to try one of those overseas discount PCB fab houses.? Many positive reviews sent me to Smart Prototyping < >.? So far, I've had 2 revisions of 3 separate PCBs manufactured by them for a cost of about $30 for 5 pieces each of 3 separate boards.?
???? The delivery of these boards was about 2 weeks total; I paid extra for speedier delivery, slower would have been even cheaper.
???? The quality of the delivered boards was surprising.? The only mistakes I discovered were self-imposed.? No opens, shorts, mis-printed silk, or unplated vias.? Truly excellent quality for what turned out to be about $2 per 3" x 4" board.

I highly recommend them,

W2EB

Getting pcbs overseas is not like it was a decade ago. Before, you had to worry about shorts and opens and the pcbs would come with obvious repairs. Then, it took 2 to 4 weeks for the thing to come. Today, is has improved to the point where it is kind of foolish to not get prototypes done in China if you have a choice. All the pcbs sent usually are now error free and shipping can be a little as 3 days with turn time as little as 1 day....at a fraction?of the cost (even with enig and plating vias shut). And don't even get started with assembly...it used to take over 30 days...now it is close to around 15.
On Tue, Dec 5, 2023, 7:41?AM Joe Tannenbaum via groups.io <> <jtannenba@... <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
I've used JLCPCB serveral time and was very happy with the boards.
Joe
On Sunday, December 3, 2023 at 01:00:37 PM MST, Jerry Durand
<jdurand@...
<mailto:jdurand@...>> wrote:
We used to use PCBgogo but being in Russia they will no longer ship
to us.? So, off to another Chinese fabricator who doesn't care about
sanctions.
BOSONSTAR

<>
The first boards were on time and good quality.? As I have to be out
of the country for a while I've had them fabricate and assemble
another board and that order is on it's way to meet us in Armenia. While I'd rather not be testing boards while on the road, I need to
get these ready for a customer.
So, a good review for BOSONSTAR.? They sell other stuff too, but
I've just bought boards from them.
I've also had another Chinese vendor laser cut a stack of stainless
steel plates for yet another customer.? These checked out per my
design and the customer is happy.
China will made good stuff if you're willing to pay for it.? If you
ask for the cheapest possible... that's what you will get.
On 03-Dec-23 20:12, Bill wrote:
All,
???? The cost of Blue transfer film and etchant (including trying
to dispose of the used etchant here in New York State) forced me to
try one of those overseas discount PCB fab houses.? Many positive
reviews sent me to Smart Prototyping <

<> >.? So far,
I've had 2 revisions of 3 separate PCBs manufactured by them for a
cost of about $30 for 5 pieces each of 3 separate boards.
???? The delivery of these boards was about 2 weeks total; I paid
extra for speedier delivery, slower would have been even cheaper.
???? The quality of the delivered boards was surprising.? The only
mistakes I discovered were self-imposed.? No opens, shorts,
mis-printed silk, or unplated vias.? Truly excellent quality for
what turned out to be about $2 per 3" x 4" board.
I highly recommend them,
W2EB

I've used JLCPCB serveral time and was very happy with the boards.

Joe

The prices are ridiculously low even when you include shipping. The time it takes means I rarely breadboard on veroboard anymore and just design straight in Kicad then to pcb.
I remember in the UK when you got charged per drilled hole for pcb?s so after laying out the board I used to spend ages reducing the number of vias to get the cost down.
I still do that as a challenge but not as much as before..

Hardly ever 'breadboard' anything either.

Not to mention the quality of a circuit build on a PCB. Ground loops, stray capacitance, reduced inductance, etc.

For a large projects with a bunch of 'building blocks', it's quick enough to make new 'blocks' on a small board to allow separate testing. Low cost PCB's allow finding issues before the whole system is integrated. On a board with 1000+ part BOM, this can be a lifesaver.

Mentioning "fun" customers/managers...

There's the ones that change your BOM to make it cheaper, use regular
suppliers, or who knows why.

I designed some medical equipment which, of course, use high quality
precision parts.? Without telling me, they ordered the boards with
substitute parts.? $5 op-amps were replaced with $0.49 ones, connectors
with locking housings were replaced by non-locking ones they could get
from the local electronics hobby store, and so on.

First test on a patient (hey, maybe the engineer should look at it
first!) gave the patient a shock and apparently they saw a trippy light
show.

Next they found the cables fell off in use.? Gee, if I'd only specified
locking connectors.? Oh, right, I did.? They solved it with large blobs
of hot melt glue.

Then they decided to sell these in Japan and a company official flew
over there with a unit for approval testing.? When they did the
isolation tests, the unit went up in smoke.

Seems Japan has higher test voltages than the USA for this gear, and
nobody told me they were going to Japan.

Yes,

very VERY sad how the opinion of an engineer is worth so little. Not like we make the thing work in the first place or anything!!