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Comment by edoo | Hacker News Reader

Pro tip: There are enough PCB shops now that small designs like this can just be done in free EDA software in minutes, 10 boards in your hand with a stencil 9 real days later for less than $50 shipped. The stencil lets you paste the board all at once, you place parts and hit it with a heat gun until everything sets. For audio stuff you get the advantage of keeping everything nice and tight with lower noise. I barely bread/proto board anymore since it is so cheap and easy to get boards made now.

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> 10 boards in your hand with a stencil 9 real days later for less than $50 shipped

Or I take my perfboard or solid copper base material and be done with it in one afternoon, without waiting 10 days and spending less than $50 shipped.

> For audio stuff you get the advantage of keeping everything nice and tight with lower noise.

IME it is way easier to do low noise / high bandwidth circuits on base material compared to making it work on a PCB layout. This is because the base material gives you a huge, continuous ground plane, and because you use all three dimensions, instead of just two (+- two component layers). Of course, semi-modern components require steady hands.

I hate to admit I only got into this after the EDA software and PCB fab services and Youtube soldering demos really hit the scene. I am a long time software engineer and it took the current ease of things to surpass my laziness barrier. I wouldn't be doing this at all if I was etching myself. Typical PCB prices are $5 per 10 two layer boards and an extra $15 per stencil. Most the price is shipping so if you order multiple projects at the same time the cost really goes down.

You make a good point about noise. If you are going to have a mixed board you better maintain separate digital and analog ground planes and perhaps even test a couple different layouts.

His pure analog schematics would be well suited to a 2 layer with one side being a ground plane and if any traces did have to be routed on the ground plane side it would be easy enough to ensure they were out of the way of any return paths.

Oh with base material I don't necessarily mean etching yourself. I rarely do that, I mostly use it as-is constructing my circuitry floating above it, suspended by its ground connections. It's somewhat similar to the Manhattan Style. It's also very easy to built custom shielding enclosures this way (all you need is a somewhat powerful soldering iron).

Pro tip: I can make a circuit board for this in my apartment in about an 2 hours, starting with refreshing myself on PCB routing software I haven't touched in a few years, finding the bottle of ferric chloride deep in a storage closet and procuring a tiny piece of copper-clad board from somewhere. If I'm ramped up on things, substantially faster.

Sadly, all the european PCB shops seem to have starting prices of 10€ per piece, it's quite annoying to have to wait for chinese vendors but for prototyping 10€ the piece is way to expensive and I can't handle chemicals either.

My latest hope is that Laser4DIY is gonna make progress, being able to laser the PCB entirely would make life so much easier.

Any recommendations for the US? All the circuits I’ve ever made were breadboarded, this could be a fun direction to take.

China is the 9 day shipping component. I use JLCPCB most and SeedStudio because depending on the features each has their own pricing benefit. If you are comfortable with a paste syringe and the component count is small you can skip the stencil and order multiple projects at the same time to seriously save on shipping. Youtube has great videos on stencil pasting and reflow soldering with a heat gun. If you aren't familiar with EDA software you can start at Fritzing or EasyEda and move on to Kicad. Altium is the standard at big businesses.

Here is an example of an MCU based tilt sensor I made earlier this year. I have about 12 hours total into it including inception/design/layout/soldering. It would have taken me 12 hours to breadboard it with components I couldn't use in production. I do this a lot so my process is rather streamlined. I made about 25 boards this year, mostly small test circuits. https://imgur.com/a/XJxp0tO

Go with OSH park instead of China. Their support is gnebuinky amazing, and the service in general. Is 5 days for a 2 layer board with 5 dollars per square inch of design for 3 boards, and free shipping.

The company is active on Twitter and its founder is awesome based on interviews he gives with various electronic podcasts.

I’ve been using OSH park for the last few projects. Way easier to get started (they take Eagle files and supply design rule files), quick shipping, amazing support.

In the past I've used AP Circuits (https://www.apcircuits.com/home.aspx) and E-Teknet (https://e-teknet.com/) with good results from Eagle CAD pcb files. It has been a few years though, so YMMV.

I used to use BatchPCB and LOVED the service. When Sparkfun shut it down I couldn't find any decent alternatives and pretty much just quit making boards.

It looks like Osh Park has a pretty decent offering these days, but I'm curious who you're using with 9 day turnaround time? That's amazing!

I use PCBway and generally get all my designs within an 8 day turnaround time.

JlcPCB do a similar batch-of-customer-boards thing and deliver in about a week from China to California

In the U.S., OSH Park is 5 day turn. Order on Monday, ships Friday.

(This is using their Swift service on two layer boards, which is surprisingly only $10/sqin per set of 3, compared against the usual $5. Plus they're made in the U.S. so it's local shipping.).

(Note: I haven't used Osh Park in awhile, but they were great when I did use them and I've seen people still recommend them recently.)

EDIT: Though it looks like Osh Park doesn't do stencils.

I ordered some from jlpcb on a Monday and by Friday they were here. Express shipping brought it to $19 shipped for 10 boards. I’m sure most places like that are similar in lead times.

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