How I Made a Cheap PCB
keacher.com
keacher.com
* 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.
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.
I've used Diptrace, KiCad, Altium, and Cadence Allegro and KiCad was by far the worst of these for handling parts.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
I wonder if this low unit cost for small number thing is a recent development.
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.
Solder stencils are also easy enough to create, especially if you have access to a laser cutter.
Are there any hackerspaces near where you live?
http://www.popsci.com/article/diy/build-diy-soldering-stenci...
https://www.sparkfun.com/tutorials/59
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.
https://www.oshstencils.com/pricing.php http://www.smtstencil.co.uk/
Just don't use lead free solder.
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.
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.
It doesn't even say, but I assume (from the picture of the unpopulated board) that the OP also soldered the board, which is even more "doing".
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.
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.
If only.
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 workers have any other choice? They're not "willing" if it's wage slavery.
What makes you think the people injured by pollution are willing? When exactly did they give their consent in this transaction?
(the knee-jerk response to both is "government regulations", but those are so thoroughly captured/corrupted that no real consent is transmitted)
>If I bought from a US companies most of the money would go to a rich 1% new yacht and new iphones
This seems equally likely in China.
that's like saying we are all physics slaves because the universe imposes the laws of physics on us...
slavery means a specific thing. when a person is owned as property and has no right and must obey his master on pain of death.
don't stretch the word
>What makes you think the people injured by pollution are willing? When exactly did they give their consent in this transaction?
Im still waiting on the my nuclear reparation money from the USA for all the extra exposure from all those atmospheric nuclear tests
nobody in the world has a legitimate pollution compensation scheme
>This seems equally likely in China.
well since im paying less for stuff from china im definitely paying less for a 1% yacht
My answer is: I can't afford US goods costs. I can afford Chinese costs.
I'm not a company whose decisions are to move away from the US for an extra $1 billion profit. My choices are : Get it from China, or Don't get it.
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.
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?
I don't see why he should support somebody who charges 5x the competitor.
Im not gonna pay $20 for a jar of peanut butter because the factory owner lives 5 miles from me.
Locality matters. Love thy neighbor, because they may reciprocate and their neighbor, surprise, is you.
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.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
[1] PCBShopper http://pcbshopper.com
[2] DirtyPCBs http://dirtypcbs.com
[3] DirtyPCBs FAQ http://dirtypcbs.com/about.php
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.