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Comment by emcrazyone | Hacker News Reader

cool project.. I'm curious about your experience working with China PCB manufacturer. The costs seem low from my experience ($10 for 10 boards + $25 shipping). Was the quality there? How fast was the shipping? Did you attempt any homebrew PCB etching?

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I'm not the author, but I've etched my own boards. My graduate thesis project contained a couple dozen homebrew boards by the time all was said and done.

I used a photo-resist process based on transparencies that I made in the department Xerox machine.

The biggest improvement in moving to real manufactured boards was plated-through holes. For that reason alone, I wouldn't go back. Not only are boards easier to route with PTH's, but they are also more robust -- it's harder to lift a pad off the board when removing a component.

Solder mask is a boon as well, especially for surface mount.

Dirtypcbs[1] did a bang up job with amazingly fast turn around. Even got 4 extra boards; we used them for our alienflight[2] builds.

[1]: http://www.dirtypcbs.com [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LCuZCmttIQ

I have ordered from them 3 times and each time they arrived in ~1 week to Australia. Takes 2 or 3 days for them to be made and then another 3 or 4 days to be delivered by DHL. I have not had problems with any boards so far. I have never ordered from anyone else so I have no idea how they compare to others but for a home project with simple designs they are just fine. You can combine orders for several different boards into a single postage so it becomes even better value.

I ordered several times from shenzhen2u. I had a few questions and some issues at first with their store. I always got a friendly (and useful) answer within 24 hours. Actually better answers, than what I got in Europe (some of them very expensive in comparison). Quality for my requirements was always better than expected. E.g. I made several boards for a Raspberry Pi and the through holes were all fine (on all boards). I had zero issues to put them on top of the 2 x 20 header of the Raspberry Pi.

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