Hacker News Reader

Comment by LarsDu88 | Hacker News Reader

It's a shame there aren't US manufacturers who can manufacture custom PCBs as cheaply as JLPCB or PCBWay.

These types of lasers might be a stopgap if tariffs make buying from those companies inordinately expensive, however the extreme cost, and the need to do a bunch of cleanup kind of makes me suspect there needs to be another iteration of this tech.

View on HN

OSHpark and sunstone are pretty good. circuithub is serviceable for turnkey assembly (though they might outsource fab overseas, uncertain).

Right, but OSH Park competes on quality not price. In fact the other day I came across a reddit post from the owner of OSH Park explaining that e.g. JLC is selling their finished products below his material cost. Add on to that the subsidized shipping and of course they're going to be well below what any US based company can offer.

https://old.reddit.com/r/PrintedCircuitBoard/comments/9bt5ed...

They don't really compete on quality even. Quality is high in some ways. Their soldermask is tougher. But for instance alignment between drill/copper/mask/outline accuracy is no better. And all the chinese fully route the board outline, you have no cleanup to do. oshpark leaves panel tabs at random places all around the board that you have to grind down yourself. A big deal if the pcb is a special shape to fit into something else. I have one that is under 1/2" square with a funky dog bone or T shape. Not only do they allow it, they route the whole outline. idk how they can even hold onto the board physically to do it.

oshpark puts panelization tabs right in the middle of a row of castellated edge contacts.

And they often take longer to ship to me in NJ than Elecrow, a shop that's even cheaper than jlc or pcbway, without even using DHL, just the cheapest shipping.

Never mind the lack of features. I have a board that needs 1.2mm pcb. Well on oshpark I guess I can make 0.8mm work. 3d print a filler plate or something. But what I really need is 1.2, and all the chinese shops have it, not even special extra cost, or maybe barely.

15 years ago oshpark was great.

I got a PCB from JLPCB and I was shocked at the quality. I even put a little silkscreen graphic of a silly cartoon on my PCB, and it was amazingly detailed in the final print.

I’ve had good results with jlcpcb and I push their manufacturing limits a little bit now and then to get the miniaturization I need. 0402, 5mills, tight vias, small BGA no bad boards yet (n~1000). Tried pcba too, worked, but a small sample size. Even in HASL they work and their stencils are dead-on.

And $2.10 plus shipping for 5 boards, $7.50 for ten (4layer FR4, HASL, small boards) is crazily subsidized for prototyping. It’s like free prototyping boards. Even 6 layer and flex boards are cheap. They also have crazy cheap CNC and 3DP, but I haven’t tried that yet.

Also the integration of the free design tools (easyEDA pro , DFM review, etc) is unbelievably efficient with one-click to order parts or boards lol

I have had a great customer experience so far, but I do suspect they are either subsidized or use a lot of loss leaders to pull people into the ecosystem.

Other companies may offer better quality, but I’m fine with Toyota, I don’t need Rolls Royce for what I’m doing.

That post is 7 years old and JLC has changed a lot since then. It would be interesting to hear his current impressions (presumably they're still doing competitive comparisons).

This was my issue too. Maybe pricing has changed, but 2 years ago it was $150 to get 10 small boards made at OSH Park vs $20 to get them from JLCPCB. I was on a tight budget, so getting them from China was a no-brainer.

The general population of the Western world has no idea, or even a reflexive reaction to deny, the fact that Chinese companies in “strategic” industries are intentionally subsidized to the point that their competitors look ridiculously expensive in comparison.

Its not just the subsidies. JLPCB is literally physically connected to LCSC electronics. This makes their margins for pick and place add-ons really good. And most of their sales are loss-leaders.

Even without subsidies this company would have structural competitive advantages over US PCB manufacturers. Its silly to think a US PCB manufacturer would be competitive in the same way without having something like the digikey warehouse and associated manufacturing chains right next door.

Exactly. And LCSC is Digikey, but far younger (2012 vs 1972), more agile, more vertically integrated, benefiting from state subsidies, heavy automation, most components physically produced nearby, etc etc. Chinese businesses are so impressive because of the whole enchilada, not just a few relatively small factors like labor cost or environmental regulations that people like to bring up in discussions like these.

There are 100.000’s pcb fabs in China, why would JlC be strategic?!

The industry is strategic. jlc and all those others exist because China has decided it wants them to exist, and did things to see to it that they exist.

There are 1000's of corn farmers in the US, because the US has decided it was strategic and sees to it that there is always a lot of corn production capacity, even if it means buying the corn itself or artificially disposing it in some other way like making a law to use ethanol.

Facts. But this has been the case for almost 70 years.

I don't see how the time matters. The original comment wondered what makes JLC strategic when there are 1000's of them.

The point was that JLC are not strategic because they are unique. The cause & effect goes the other way. JLC are not unique because their industry was strategic.

Is this really unique to China? I thought that the problem was that prices become more arbitrary and subjective than representative of cost of labor, with inter-continental trades.

... wait, does this also explain apparent advantages in software as well as disadvantages in hardware that the US has?

CircuitHub founder here. Most fab by order volume is in the US, but for now, at least, we do have to source some fab from overseas for various reasons.

Without assembly, I'm not sure how I'd use OshPark for practical purposes. We need a non-China vertically-integrated setup.

I've had problems with Sunstone since they got bought by a company in the Midwest. It may just be corporate integration pains, but still.

Specifically we had issues with added graphics not in my GERBERS, and some through hole plating issues.

Yeah that's fair. I don't use them very often. They're in a similar bin as Advanced in that regard.

In the 90’s we ordered them from TX

Reply on news.ycombinator.com