I've been learning Kicad and have ordered a few batches of PCBs from JLCPCB in the last few months. Some of my thoughts: Getting PCBs made is shockingly cheap

I've been learning Kicad and have ordered a few batches of PCBs from JLCPCB in the last few months. Some of my thoughts: Getting PCBs made is shockingly cheap. For a single PCB for an 8hp module to go into a modular synthesizer, it was about $8 for 5, or about $9 for 10. For 100 it would be around $20. (That's for 2 layers, lead-free HASL.) Included in the price is someone does a manual review of the board and will email you with questions and/or manually do small fixes to the file if they spot something wrong. ENIG (gold) plating adds a lot to the cost in small runs, but for bigger runs it's maybe less of an issue. The shipping costs can easily exceed production costs for small runs. If a U.S. company wants to compete with JLPCB for U.S. customers, this is the one area where they could gain a huge advantage. I just ordered a board that uses their pick-and-place service, which should show up in about a week. Parts are surprisingly cheap. I'm not sure, but it seems like their prices are lower than equivalent parts from Digikey or Mouser. Probably some of this is attributable to being located close to where many of those parts are manufactured. The medium and high-value parts, though, aren't necessarily all made in Shenzhen. BOM costs add up fast. Designing around low cost parts really pays off. The existence of something like JLCPCB seems like a huge boon for everyone, especially China for whom it's a major economic strategic asset. It leaves me wondering if all that CHIPS act funding might have been better spent on lowly domestic board manufacturing services rather than high-end fabs. It seems like China is good at recognizing that if you make something that's cheap and good enough you end up with most of the customers while the other advanced economies are off chasing shiny things (which is what they've done with solar panels and batteries). Kicad + JLCPCB is a powerful combination, but the user experience could be smoother for trying to get Kicad to work properly with their assembly service. I just learned recently that you can get 10uf ceramic capacitors these days in 0603 format. What a time to be alive. https://jlcpcb.com/partdetail/97651-CL10A106MA8NRNC/C96446 https://jlcpcb.com/partdetail/97651-CL10A106MA8NRNC/C96446