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Comment by Retr0id | Hacker News Reader

It's incredible how cheap it is to get custom PCBs made at prototype scale these days, even ones with advanced features. It feels like we're living in a golden era of custom manufacturing.

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It is unfortunate hope local companies like OSH Park get love too. The marketing of companies like JLC or pcbway whenever I post a hardware project on a website like Hackaday or Hackster always reach out to me to use em. Not that it would matter so many big makers on YT use em.

Is the cost and quality comparable to the Chinese options?

OshPark's quality is high, but their prices are certainly higher too. Good to support them though if you live in the States, since that's where they manufacture the boards.

That's kind of the problem though. jlc/pcbway aren't just "cheaper", for anything 2 or 4 layer that doesn't require special coatings, thickness, or finish such as gold fingers, it's just so cheap and fast that it makes no financial sense to buy locally. You'd pay several hundred percents more to get the boards maybe 1-2 business days earlier.

In addition, china is where all the world's pcbs are made, even for commercial stuff, it's not unreasonable to expect them to deliver higher and more consistent quality than home fabs.

The gap only begins to slightly close at more complex boards, but not that much.

OSHPark is more comparable to JLC if you squeeze your design down to the absolute smallest footprint. They market to hobbyists but only in the sense that you're doing this as a side project to your regular hardware engineering job and have access to a rework station to install 0402s and BGAs (i.e. you have the skills and tools to actually design and build a tiny board). I wouldn't use OSHPark to make something the size of a conference badge unless I specifically needed it to be domestically produced or I was selling it. JLC offers purple and black soldermask too.

But, holyshit, the tariffs when ordering from JLCPCB from the U.S. this year have been astronomical.

It's interesting to me because it tries to protect American options, but for Americans only. It creates an opportunity for the rest of the world to be able to get boards printed far cheaper than the Americans can.

Maybe I'm just catching up to what people already know, but it feels like the tariffs are especially bad for parts and not just products where the U.S. market is the final stop.

> You'd pay several hundred percents more

Sounds impressive in relative terms but not quite so in absolute terms, because PCB is dirty cheap so 100% is just $10-$20.

> it's not unreasonable to expect them to deliver higher and more consistent quality than home fabs.

Actually it is the opposite, OshPark quality is consistently higher than JLC for years. Chinese manufacturers can do Apple products but also Temu craps, so don't get your hopes high. The only reasonable expectation is being cheap reduces quality.

I can vouch for OSH Park. Wonderful company, nice people, and really good quality boards. Pads lift so much easier on the cheap Chinese boards that I think it alone makes it worth it to choose local manufacturers. The price is a bit steep for bigger boards but if you're working on a project that they are interested in, they provided financial support every so often. I've gotten a few boards sponsored by them!

I rarely have problems with lifted pads or traces on Chinese boards. And if I do it is usually my own fault.

Pad lift is mainly an issue with base material and there are only a hand full of copper clad suppliers

Almost everyone is using King Board, and they are high quality

The problem with OSH Park is that they're in the US, so they're prohibitively expensive for shipping and there's no guarantee your boards will even make it to you.

I've also got concerns about the quality of American electrical products.

In the past if you didn't live in the US, OSHPark was a great option. Local fabs were very expensive, had big setup fees and even the "maker" places charged more and you'd only get HASL. Meanwhile OSH gave you 3 with ENIG and the quality has always been excellent. They nailed the automation to make group buys cost effective.

If you live in the US, it's free shipping and for breakout boards or smaller work, still a great option. Unless you're a student, I think most side projects aren't make or break if the boards cost $5 vs $2. Even $20-25 I would consider fair for a one-off side project and they also do $1/sqin medium runs if you need > 10.

Right now it's several hundred dollars to get anything electronic out of the US and into the UK, unless you're a big enough company to be able to lawyer your way out of it.

We'll see what 2026 brings, I suppose.

The UK has de minimis for a while yet, and PCBs are 0% import duty. The only thing you might get shafted by is Royal Mail's handling fee if it gets checked by customs. We're talking about hobbyist PCBs here, not production runs.

> I've also got concerns about the quality of American electrical products.

American PCB fabs are far higher quality/capability than most Chinese quick-turn fabs, but good luck getting Advanced Circuits or similar to talk to you for under $5k.

That isn't to say that the products JLC and PCBWay produce aren't high-quality: they are - for what they are, but you aren't using JLC boards in your $100mm satellite.

Osh makes pretty good boards but the customer service for the Chinese fabs are on another level.

I got a few small simple boards made through OSH to test their services and their user portal basically left me in the dark for 1-2 weeks.

I'd still use them again but JLC and PCBWay are operating at another level.

While we're at it, anyone here aware of a PCB supplier and (ideally) assembly provider that is available for Europeans?

https://aisler.net/

Eurocircuits

(disclaimer: have no experience with them)

I have, only PCBs, no assembly though.

I have been ordering from them since last century and they are excellent, great customer service too.

I'll have to try OSH Park.

They don't do assembly, just the bare PCBs—and my last projects required assembly.

This and sheet metal manufacturing from Oshcut have been game changers for me

They were just on Linus Tech Tip.

To throw another in the mix, SendCutSend has consistently been a reliable and affordable option for 2D cut parts. They recently added CNC machining offerings, though I can't speak to their affordability on that.

Overseas will almost always win on price (at least in small quantities), but it's hard to beat the turnaround from local manufacturers...

> Overseas will almost always win on price (at least in small quantities), but it's hard to beat the turnaround from local manufacturers...

Overseas can work with crazy turnarounds too. Once I ordered a bunch of stuff from Digikey, and the parcel came around from the tiny village of Thief River Falls MN to rural Bavaria in less than 30 hours, picking/handling included. And free shipping, despite being less than 100€ in volume.

I was actually very surprised myself. As I mentioned in the post, I don't do that type of work so it's all new to me. This got me also interested in CAD. You can design parts and don't need to own the 3d printer, could just get parts manufactured online.

Yeah, and since it seems there's some competition there, the prices are decent. You can get milled metal, 3D prints, populated PCBs... crazy what you can do now and how quickly it can be turned around, if you are willing to pay.

I wish there were more regional places like PCBWay and JLCPCB in US, EU, etc (with similar pricing) so shipping didn't require circumnavigating the globe.

EU has Aisler but what you win in shipping times you lose in production lead time (unless you pay for faster service).

And there are probably others but with even less visibility / willingness to interact with private customers. Hell, I used to live next door to a sales office for a local PCB fab, but they never bothered to answer my inquiry about prototypes.

(That's another thing the proto-friendly companies do right: instant quotes without log-in requirement)

> but with even less visibility / willingness to interact with private customers

It's honestly depressing. I could believe the theories (off vibes, since I'm not in manufacturing, just a hobbyist) that this is one of the reasons why China is overtaking the West in hardware. Manufacturers here just don't want to talk to you at all unless you're willing to buy a million units, it seems. From what I've heard, in China, it's far easier to get started (and that certainly matches my experience with jlc/pcbway).

Like, I get it, profit wise. But it's a bit of a sad state of affairs.

It's a loss leader by JLBPCB to get the high-volume contract. Or so said the head of OshPark eight years ago.[1]

There does seem to be a willingness by Chinese manufacturers to deal with small-volume makers and sellers. Look at the minimum order quantities on Alibaba. That's supposed to be a wholesale market, but often wholesale starts at 2 units.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/PrintedCircuitBoard/comments/9bt5ed...

Their PCB service must be a loss leader, but their assembly service might be profitable. What's also a loss leader is their default configuration. Want .2mm vias? That's another 30$. Want to assemble both sides? More fees. So it gets more profitable for them not just with volume, but also with designs that require the add-on fees.

Yeah golden days for PCBs especially now the golden days for home built PCs seem to be over.

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