* KiCAD has become a great tool for designing boards, even fairly complex ones. And it's completely free, both in terms of freedom and money. Don't get locked into EAGLE, which is becoming increasingly obsolete (development is glacially slow) and will suddenly become quite expensive to use once you want a certain board size or a number of layers.
* There are multiple PCB services in China, itead.cc, seeedstudio (both use the same PCB factory), pcbway.com and more. All offer great prices.
* For small boards, OSHpark.com is actually cheaper. Also, their boards come with ENIG finish by default, which you really want for SMD work.
* The companion OSHstencils.com is a fantastic resource: every board I order gets a stencil made.
Use this tool to choose the cheapest PCB option. It takes into account many different Shenzen PCB houses and picks the best one for the board size/color/etc specs you choose.
I just jumped into this thread thinking "man I really hope he did something clever and made a 6 layer board with vias, awesome grounding, and low dielectric constants at home" rather than him just firing the board off to a house and getting some standard FR4 back. KiCad post-CERN is great, nearly Altium 16-levels of good (arguably better in some cases).
For some DIY goodness -- Paul Carlson's method[1] is still my favorite home method for making what-I-consider-really-almost-production-grade boards. Also throwing my hat in the ring for OSHPark as being the community/my vendor of choice as well.
Has KiCAD improved their schematic/footprint library management? Last time I tried to use it (2 or 3 years ago) it drove me crazy with how difficult it was to use.
I've used Diptrace, KiCad, Altium, and Cadence Allegro and KiCad was by far the worst of these for handling parts.
> Has KiCAD improved their schematic/footprint library management? Last time I tried to use it (2 or 3 years ago) it drove me crazy with how difficult it was to use.
It's pretty bad. Lots of quirks, I still haven't guessed the right incantations for it to notice libs you added, managing library paths is a mess, and you have to do most of that work for every project.
But then again, coming from EAGLE, I'm used to this stuff being incredibly crappy. I don't know — do other tools get this right?
Cadence Allegro PCB Designer is a right steaming pile. The whole issue with path's are a problem. You don't have libraries like you do in Altium or ancient ORCAD, you have directories of files that define pads and parts.
Lately poking about with Altium. I think it's fairly good.
I still have a copy of the old ORCAD circa late nineties, was 'okay' Or put it this way, needed to layout a PCB in 2005 and tried Eagle and... dug out and installed ORCAD from 1998.
Altium does an amazing job with their integrated libraries. You create an integrated library, add a schematic library and a footprint library to it, and compile it like any other design project. You can also use supplier search to import part parameters from distributors.
I believe so, yes, though the degree to which this is true depends on whether or not you were using the beta at the time. The latest KiCad stable is worth a look if you haven't tried it in a while
pcbshopper.com is an excellent comparison shopping tool for prototype PCBs. Enter the specifications for your board and it will quote prices from dozens of board houses.
Anyone considering doing similar in the UK, try ragworm [1]. Low cost (and cool orange) PCBs. They are trying to position themselves as the community PCB provider who you should go to for low-volume jobs e.g. kickstarter prototypes, hobbyist projects, and presumably are hoping that those early prototypes grow into big orders for them.
Turnaround is 10 working days because they presumably combine lots of people's orders at once then cut them out.
I've had good experience with them but the big downside is that the front-page prices are for two-layer only. Also, obviously if you need them faster then try someone else. Their website is a bit odd too.
Worth pointing out that PCB Train is business cheap, not hobbyist cheap. You'll easily pay upwards of £50 for a "short" turn around board from PCB Train (10 days) and you'll have to pay extra for things like ENIG.
A 1 square inch board, 2-layer standard finish, 2 day turnaround is north of £300. You don't need to pay much more to get multiple quantities though, so this is largely setup cost.
Note that you'll also pay for wasted space, unlike OSHPark - a 100mm square design also costs about £330.
Yes but I was talking about their prototypes (no solder resist or silkscreen legend) which are a lot more affordable, and quicker. (seems ca. £37 for 100m2)
They are about 3x the cost of OSHPark. I get OSHPark orders in about 2 weeks delivered to Europe, so 7 business day dispatch isn't particularly competitive.
edit: ah, I didn't notice their pricing scaling, they meet OSHPark when the quantity increases. That's a little annoying actually, is there any pricing information or do I have to look at the site every time?
Not at all. There's a whole slew of companies with different arrangements of pcb/fab/express in their names. They've all done 5 boards for ~$50 for a very long time. Granted, they're simple two-layer boards. If you need anything more, then, yes, I agree.
Not really much of an article is it, could be summarised as 'How I ordered a cheap PCB by choosing one of the many companies offering to build cheap PCBs'. I was expecting a little more DIY from the title.
Same here! But I think that is the point of the article. The best way to make a cheap PCB is to just buy one. And he's probably right.
There are definite advantages to etching a PCB at home - if you make a mistake that you only discover on assembly, you can make a new run in hours instead of weeks - but soldermask, small vias, and small features are much easier at a real plant. And you won't beat the prices.
He recommends http://dirtypcbs.com/, I personally have had a lot of success with https://oshpark.com/ - local support, you only need 3 boards (not 10) for prototypes, and they do 2-layer in 12 days for $5/sq inch and 4-layer in 2 weeks for $10/sq inch. Once you need a production run, take it to Gold Phoenix.
My soldering skills are approximately good enough to do 0.1 inch pitch pins about 90% of the time, which isn't really good enough for surface-mount, and most modern microprocessors don't come in anything else.
You don't need to have great soldering skills for surface mount components. The easiest way to solder surface mount is the "solder stencil + solder paste" method (for want of a better term). You create a solder stencil to match the pin layout, place it over the PCB pads, apply solder paste, place the component on top then melt the solder (if you'd be doing multiple batches it's easy enough to modify a toaster oven to do this).
Solder stencils are also easy enough to create, especially if you have access to a laser cutter.
Cheap PET stencils are available from OSH Stencils and SMT Stencil. For small boards, it's not difficult to dispense solder paste by hand with a syringe. The application doesn't need to be precise if you're using a board with a solder mask - surface tension does the hard work for you.
What do you cut your stencils from? I've spent a lot of time mucking about with various plastics and never gotten particularly good results - 0.5mm pitch pads tend to start melting together into a mess. The good stuff is meant to be Mylar, AKA PET. I've bought plastic advertised as Mylar which has not been particularly good, and I suspect it may actually be PE rather than PET, as apparently the two are often confused.
You should try Fusion PCBA service[1] from Seeed. You have to use theiir Eagle library and if you happen to use other components they'll manage to find themselves with no charge
How do you feel about using a toaster oven? I've had some success using a DIY reflow oven and pick-n-place by hand. Haven't tried 0201's, but 0402 resistors and 5mm QFN packages go pretty well.
I think the hate for lead-free solder is either a bit much, or outdated. I've used nothing but lead-free for both hand-soldered PTH and toaster-oven-reflowed SMT and get reliably excellent results. This is with cheap solder, dodgy HASL PCBs and a consumer toaster oven.
I don't know about cheap solder - I have done rework on lead-free boards that required an absurd amount of heat - but I love working with Sparkfun's special blend of 96.35% Sn, 3.0% Ag, 0.5% Cu, 0.15% Sb (Antimony): https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10243
Just don't use crap solder, actually... There are some good lead free solders available on the market now. Nihon Superior SN100C, for example.
The biggest problem I see with hand soldering is people not using enough flux (get a no-clean flux pen, they're amazing) and then just blaming the solder when they can't get it to flow... Reflow will do similar if you let the flux dry out (keep it in the fridge - I often put it in a zip-lock bag to try and really keep moisture out also).
I've never actually used them but their online tooling is impressive, they have reasonable prices for low quantity assembly, and they've manufactured and fulfilled a few kickstarter projects.
Hi there! I am the founder of MacroFab, and I'm happy to answer any questions. Quick summary though: we do US-based (in Houston, TX) assembly, we offer low-cost prototyping options along with production quantities all with real-time quoting down to the component level, build-box assembly, programming, testing, inventorying, and fulfillment. We have APIs to allow direct integration and we have a number of integration partners coming online this year.
If you pay DirtyPCBs some more money for decent shipping you can get your board in about two weeks. A week for fab, a few days for shipping. $14 for the boards, $14 for the shipping. It's still very cheap for very good boards, and even cheaper if you can batch up a few projects and combine shipping.
Well, it is listed under "Ramblings". I don't think it was written as an article, it's just a blog post that could help out someone looking to do the similar.
My issue was with the word 'made'. If I see a title for 'I made x' I expect a little more than 'I ordered x'. I'm not going to make an article about 'How I made an iPad' if I just ordered one from Amazon.
True, was probably mostly a case of misunderstanding. I was hoping to see an article about making PCBs as in making them at home. If the term used was 'assembling a cheap PCB' I'd probably not have overreacted.
I work in electronics manufacturing and if I said "we made a new board for this project", I would mean we laid it out and sent it out to be fabricated.
My experience with a Chinese fab was different: I got all the PCBs shorted, and because they were quite cheap their customer support was good enough to never admit that the problem was on their side, so I didn't bother because... it was a really cheap one off.
I suspect the problem was with their support of the Gerber files generated by KiCad, but I don't know for sure.
I used OSHPark in other cases and, even not being dirty cheap (they're USA based), they're still quite cheap and so far the quality of the boards have been excellent.
Nice, instead of supporting the PCB business 5 miles away, send it to China. The copper not on your PCB is probably floating down some Chinese river, hence "Dirty PCB".
The PCB business 5 miles away has US labor and associated costs. Compare the Chinese board to Advanced Circuits in the US - http://www.4pcb.com/ - you can't get anything without spending over $100.
4pcb is $33 each min 4 total $132 for 60 sq inches per board times 4 = 240 sq inches or 1548 sq cm for $132
dirtypcbs is $14 for qty 10 of 25 sq cm boards or 250 sq cm total. So 1500 sq cm of boards from dirtypcbs would cost about $14 times 6 or $84.
Note that ethically, outsourcing to China is the modern version of handing syphillis blankets to indians. "Well, they're warm blankets, and they did ask for it, and anything is morally acceptable if the victim is tricked into accepting it, if you're really screwed up ethically". It only costs $50 more not to participate in something as ethically distasteful as Chinese manufacturing and you get the product in a day not a week without trashing the environment and while treating human beings like humans, even if they are not white.
Also, if you live on the west coast, you and your kids are breathing the airborne pollution from those Chinese plants for the rest of us.
> It only costs $50 more not to participate in something as ethically distasteful as Chinese manufacturing
So, you don't own any recent electronic devices either, I presume, like smartphones, computers, home appliances? And who do you think manufactures the components for your not-Chinese-made electronics?
60 square inches per board is enormous, but they don't care because the material is cheap and the labor is about the same regardless of the board size. If you use their regular pricing that takes the area into account, it's still incredibly expensive.
If people in China are willing to work for a lower labour standards I don't see why I shouldn't buy from them.
They are already making huge sacrifices working in terrible conditions because they weren't lucky enough to be born in the US or western europe et al. Chinese workers are very smart and hard working, so their position in life is not based on their ability but simply bad luck (relative to people born in the US etc.) The least I could do is buy their labour so that they may improve their lives. If I bought from a US companies most of the money would go to a rich 1% new yacht and new iphones for his daughters. I would rather feed a poor chinese worker family and send a youngster to school.
That US PCB manufacturer is also sending his kid to school, paying state and federal taxes, SS, healthcare for employees, and probably allot for hazardous waste service. What makes you think the Chinese PCB manufacturer is not in the 1%; just assumption the US manufacturer is.
So what we're all really saying is that our current concept of 'money' and how it is generated and moved about is fucking up the world and we really need to work out a better way of managing society and balancing our needs against those of the environment.
>That US PCB manufacturer is also sending his kid to school,
that's great. but chinese schools are way cheaper than US schools so if somebody asked me to give up $100 to educate 100 chinese kids or half a US kids for x amount of time I would have to say the chinese on utilitarian principle since I can hardly justify that a US person is worth 100x a chinese person.
>paying state and federal taxes
a lot of which is going to welfare i.e. hands out for people not doing anything productive, which again is a very bad way to spend money.
>SS, healthcare for employees,
same arguments ditto
>and probably allot for hazardous waste service.
This is great. However, china is kinda too poor to have good hazardous waste removal. Thus money spent on china makes it richer and more likely to have hazardous waste, thus more likely that less people will be exposed to hazardous waste.
>What makes you think the Chinese PCB manufacturer is not in the 1%; just assumption the US manufacturer is.
because US is a wealthier country therefore all else being equal the probability of the US manufacturer being rich is higher than the same prob. for the chinese
Nothing personal to the americans of course. It's not their fault either than a bowl of noodles in US is 10x the price of the same thing in china so an american has to make way more money than a chinese to survive but i like to spend the least amount of money possible.
What makes you think the money you spend on Chinese goods isn't mostly going to the rich 1% in China? China has their own billionaires who mostly make their money off the backs of the Chinese poor, just like it happens in the US.
That's an overly hostile comment - and unrealistic - I'm guessing you're probably not in the electronics industry?
In many places there's only one reason a small company (let alone an individual) would buy a short run of PCBs locally - you desperately require it in two to four days and are willing to pay six times the price to get it.
It's not that people aren't willing to support local PCB manufacturers, it's just that the manufacturers know there's very money in cheap, small volume work outside China and focus on the profitable niches (like really fast turnaround), which usually makes them unaffordable for hobbyists.
Hostile? Hardly. I am in the industry. I have been doing RF circuit design for 20 years, and order several PCBs per year, although these are expensive PCBs of RF laminates. For inexpensive though, some places will queue up 2/4 layers G10 laminates for 2 week delivery (i.e. eprotos.com). Then again, I have a PCB router at home, and a vacuum UV exposure box, so I don't order many hobby PCBs.
Copper is a valuable commodity. No Chinese board house will be foolish enough to waste it. With modern processes, it's simply a case of neutralising the etchant and filtering out the precipitated copper.
"Dirty PCBs" are so named because they're not great quality. The solder mask and silkscreen aren't perfectly aligned and the minimum trace width is eight mil.
>Copper is a valuable commodity. No Chinese board house will be foolish enough to waste it. With modern processes, it's simply a case of neutralising the etchant and filtering out the precipitated copper.
Except that motivation will only results in removing just as much copper as it's economical to extract. They'd still discharge the remaining copper once it reaches concentrations too low to bother extracting (but plenty high enough to cause damage to biological systems).
This also ignores all the other stuff in the etching and rinse baths, which isn't exactly benign.
Ok, you aren't, but I might. And others too: witness the popularity of otherwise ineconomical farmer's markets, for instance. It supports local industry, which "keeps money in the family" to a large extent (and protects from predatory pricing down the road), and connects with the local industrial community more. You never know when they might know the person that can help you out with whatever glitch. Except when they're on the other side of the world: then you know. You know it won't happen.
Locality matters. Love thy neighbor, because they may reciprocate and their neighbor, surprise, is you.
I would argue that part of the farmer's market is the experience of the setting and the fact that the food is (usually) fresh - much more than anywhere else.
Edit: My point is that I go to farmer's market for the experience, not to support the local farmers. It just so happens that the locals are the best are providing that experience. I do have to admit though that wanting to support the local farmers may have bootstrapped the farmer's market - or it may have survived through the rise of grocery stores.
And even with all that, going to farmer's market is splurging for me.
Farmer's markets are popular because the food is higher quality. The reason for this is simple: it's fresher. You're buying it right after it was picked, and it was allowed to ripen fully before being picked. A lot of produce from grocery stores isn't like this: it's produced in other countries, or using methods to artificially ripen it after picking, so that it'll look ripe in the store.
It's simple biology and physics: if you want freshly-picked fruit, you have to get it nearby, unless you're going to pay $$$$ to have someone ship it to you by overnight shipping (and it's not economical to ship food that way).
How is some local farmer going to "help me out with whatever glitch"? He's busy running his farm. He doesn't live next door to me, he lives 20 minutes away. He might as well live across the country. But his food is probably going to be fresher and better quality than food at the supermarket that was shipped in from Central America.
PCBShopper[1] lets you compare prices and shipping times between ~20 Chinese vendors.
On a separate not I'd highly recommend DirtyPCBs[2], not only because of how funny their FAQ[3] is, but also because of the the reasonable quality boards. They also allow panelized jobs without any extra charge, which is rather unique. Typically that is bit more you have to pay extra for that.
Typically you'll find that you pay 14USD for 10 5x5cm boards. Delivery time ~30 days.
They have a very reasonably priced parts purchase and assembly service. Basically you give them your design, BOM and money, and they send you back complete assembled boards.
I used a very old version of PADS for board layout, but it doesn't matter- they build from gerbers, assembly drawing and pick & place file.
Anyone here use expresspcb.com and their own software? I've tinkered with Eagle and considered KiCAD but I am intrigued by the co with the software built into their design process.
I've used it an age ago. Don't bother. The software wasn't terribly sophisticated. The library support was OK at best. And the only thing it really does is make ordering a little easier. It's only slightly more work to use a FOSS tool and generate output which can go to and board house.
* KiCAD has become a great tool for designing boards, even fairly complex ones. And it's completely free, both in terms of freedom and money. Don't get locked into EAGLE, which is becoming increasingly obsolete (development is glacially slow) and will suddenly become quite expensive to use once you want a certain board size or a number of layers.
* There are multiple PCB services in China, itead.cc, seeedstudio (both use the same PCB factory), pcbway.com and more. All offer great prices.
* For small boards, OSHpark.com is actually cheaper. Also, their boards come with ENIG finish by default, which you really want for SMD work.
* The companion OSHstencils.com is a fantastic resource: every board I order gets a stencil made.