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Comment by pmorici | Hacker News Reader

If you were hoping for tips on where to actually get a cheap PCB made check out OSH Park https://oshpark.com/ They are really good for a high quality 2 or 4 layer small run PCB. SparkFun.com used to run their own service batchpcb.com but they sold to OSH Park recently. Also if you are in Europe Fritzing Fab http://fab.fritzing.org/fritzing-fab is supposed to be pretty good.

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I love OSH Park. Their boards are very high quality and their design rules allow for some small traces, spaces, annular rings, and drills. Small relative to other batch-based and small-volume services, anyway... the limits are still a little too big for properly escaping common BGA packages, which is the hurdle I'm trying to overcome right now.

BGA packages are definitely a pain in the ass. Especially highly dense BGAs, which probably require more than 4 layers.

Assuming you have the PCB manufactured, would you assemble the components yourself? I recall being quoted higher for BGA components at a PCB assembly service because they needed to X-ray each BGA for inspection.

For small run assembly I've heard positive things about this place mentioned on adafruit but I've never used them looks like they do BGA

http://www.smallbatchassembly.com/faq/#What-is-this-place-

Yeah, I'd do the assembly myself. A reflow oven is not difficult to build, it can be done with standard industrial automation/process control components. I wouldn't have the quality assurance that a real shop has, but the process and resultant boards ought to be reliable enough to make it worthwhile for a hobbyist.

Yes, probably better to assemble the components yourself. It's much more expensive to get it done for you. I have no issues hand soldering 0805 or 0603 surface mount parts (for non-production), and an oven is equally as easy after a few tries. Even getting an SMT placement machine to do the work would be cheaper than dealing with BGA.

+1 for OSH Park. Great quality boards, unmatchable prices, and ordering was painless.

I'd recommend using Eagle CAD and just uploading your brd files directly.

At work (Switzerland) we use pcb-pool.com. I think it's cheaper than Fritzing and you have more options. (Multilayer etc.)

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