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There's a lot of negativity here, and I think I understand where it's coming from. A lot of you sound like you do this sort of work for a living. I am getting

by kicat 6y ago

There's a lot of negativity here, and I think I understand where it's coming from. A lot of you sound like you do this sort of work for a living. I am getting into small electronic projects in my limited free time. Things I care about: * Board fabrication AND final assembly * Quick turnaround time * Small minimum order size (preferably 1) * Help choosing components Things I DON'T care about: * Getting the absolute cheapest price * Being locked into a vendor for a particular project * Tight tolerances on things like thermal management or AC signal integrity. I just want to have a custom board for my PIC-based project, or my one-off guitar pedal circuit. I haven't tried this service, but I will. If anyone knows of other similar services, I would love to hear about them as well.

osamagirl69 6y ago
The web interface of the chinese fab houses directly is way better than what these guys offer. For example JLPCB https://cart.jlcpcb.com/quote?fromDemo=yes https://cart.jlcpcb.com/quote?fromDemo=yes You first order is $10 including parts and assembly for 5 boards with 4 day turn (1 for pcb fab, 3 for assembly). Typically the boards I have done (comparable to complexity to an arduino) are about $20 for 5 copies including fab and assembly. They also have a free cad tool called easyEDA https://easyeda.com/ https://easyeda.com/ but I would really recommend kicad. It takes like 5 clicks to go from layout in kicad to boards at jlpcb https://support.jlcpcb.com/article/44-how-to-export-kicad-pcb-to-gerber-files https://support.jlcpcb.com/article/44-how-to-export-kicad-pc... PCBway has a lot more capability, but is a bit more expensive https://www.pcbway.com/orderonline.aspx https://www.pcbway.com/orderonline.aspx
buescher 6y ago
There's a bunch of them. Companies like this one have been offering free basic Windows design tools locked into their service for about 20 years now. I think they are where unsuccessful "value EDA" software goes to die. I used ExpressPCB for a small project back when all these tools were very expensive and there weren't any good free ones. I found it very easy to use. If I did not have professional tools available today, I would use KiCAD or TinyCAD + FreePCB and pick my board vendor independently.

by kicat 6y ago

osamagirl69 6y ago

The web interface of the chinese fab houses directly is way better than what these guys offer. For example JLPCB https://cart.jlcpcb.com/quote?fromDemo=yes https://cart.jlcpcb.com/quote?fromDemo=yes You first order is $10 including parts and assembly for 5 boards with 4 day turn (1 for pcb fab, 3 for assembly). Typically the boards I have done (comparable to complexity to an arduino) are about $20 for 5 copies including fab and assembly. They also have a free cad tool called easyEDA https://easyeda.com/ https://easyeda.com/ but I would really recommend kicad. It takes like 5 clicks to go from layout in kicad to boards at jlpcb https://support.jlcpcb.com/article/44-how-to-export-kicad-pcb-to-gerber-files https://support.jlcpcb.com/article/44-how-to-export-kicad-pc... PCBway has a lot more capability, but is a bit more expensive https://www.pcbway.com/orderonline.aspx https://www.pcbway.com/orderonline.aspx

buescher 6y ago

There's a bunch of them. Companies like this one have been offering free basic Windows design tools locked into their service for about 20 years now. I think they are where unsuccessful "value EDA" software goes to die. I used ExpressPCB for a small project back when all these tools were very expensive and there weren't any good free ones. I found it very easy to use. If I did not have professional tools available today, I would use KiCAD or TinyCAD + FreePCB and pick my board vendor independently.