Fusion – One-stop prototyping service for PCBs
seeedstudio.com
seeedstudio.com
We did have one major production issue where a critical part was substituted for an out of spec part without authorization and without anyone at Seeed knowing about it. [1] That was very frustrating. But once I came up with a software fix, Seeed had their local rep Erin (who is amazing) take the 3000 boards I had, set up a programming station I provided in her basement, and run a 30 second programming and calibration routine on each one. The boards work now.
So yeah. Even with as easy as Seeed makes it, production issues happen. But I'm sticking with Seeed for future production runs.
Seeed if you're reading this, can we get an option for silkscreen color on your fusion service? Thanks!
[1] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/flutterwireless/flutter...
This is great if you're running a small prototyping lab or doing some one-off or freelance work, since it'll be much easier to get these multi-layer boards in small enough batches.
I'm sure there are many services you can use that would let you do this. The only other time I've had PCBAs made in China was through GoldPhoenix and I was very unhappy with the quality of soldering.
All I can say is Seeed has worked for me.
Anyone interested take a look at https://go.aisler.net, if you'd like to participate in our beta assembly just drop me a line at patrick@aisler.net
I believe there is a lot that can be done to reduce the cost of electronics assembly and I'm very happy to see something happening here in Europe.
【FusionPCB11】
Every one use this coupon code in Fusion will obtain a 20% off discount. The coupon code is valid before November.
co-founder of paddi91 here. What your are saying is essentially what has driven us to start investigating into this.
We come from the Open source hardware and hobby electronics world, and have backgrounds in mechanical engineering and information technology. So we wondered how we can add a European flavor to it: Lots of high quality manufacturers here in (central) Europe, but with a focus on High-End High-Scale series production, both for PCB and PCB assembly. We collaborate with them, automate most of the production process for them, and thus are able to offer competitive prices for low quantities.
We started investigating into this because we want every OSHW project to be reproducible by others. So that if you are an author and publish your designs with us (we synchronize with github if you want), other people (and the many others that are not able to design or assemble the project) can receive a copy of the current version. And since not everyone can assemble by themselves, we try to make it as simple as possible which is the reason for the PCB Assembly pilot. Here we use similar tools to automate everything. It should therefore be affordable to re-produce any project on-demand. Seriously, if you want to help make open source electronics more accessible come and join us with your project for the assembly beta, the more projects, the better, as it improves the test-suite ;-) feel free to either send an email to patrick via patrick@aisler.net (my co-founder) or contact me directly via felix@aisler.net
By the way: the cost parameters for assembly would be the following: cost of the pcb x 2 + cost of parts. no minimum quantity required. All boards come with green soldermask, white top and bottom legend, and will have ENIG surface plating. We only use high-class FR4, 1.6mm TG150 material.
If your price is comparable to DirtyPCBs, you have a new customer.
We noticed that a platform for OSHW without making the actual hardware available is kinda useless. That's why we started to thinking about, how do we make these projects available cheaply?
I wound up going with pcbway.com on the same gerbers and have used them many times since.
I had sent my prototype gerbers to two places. Pcbway was better quality and cheaper. As a result, I gave them the rest of the production order.
If you can live within their parts library there is no reason not to use it.
Board assembly service is even harder to find. It's here: [1] The list of stock parts they can assemble, the Open Parts Library, is a dead link. It's actually at [2]. although there are several versions and I'm not sure which one is what they actually stock.
[1] http://www.seeedstudio.com/propagate/app/service/ [2] http://statics3.seeedstudio.com/assets/file/fusion/Seeed_OPL...
And then of course, signal count and density. Many FPGAs have a thousand or more pins.
But for complex digital boards, 16 (or more) layers is common.
If you use any kind of BGA you will want to start with 4 layers just for signal integrity.
They are also great for smaller sizes, but as soon as you get bigger than a few square inches, they get expensive in a hurry.
The benefit of the budget board houses is when you need a small run of boards for prototyping. OSHPark is great when you want a few 2layer boards under say 6 sq inches. DirtyPCB is great for 2 or 4 layer boards under 15sq inches (10cmX10cm size). You can get ten 4-layer boards at 10cmX10cm for $50, where as pcbcart has that for $250
From TaylorAlexander in sibling comments, who has used both services.
Of course today they are still magnitudes more expensive so generally such a high layer count means you are routing evil high frequency signals..