4 ms·

Pricing is dynamic depending on the exact specification of your circuit board. We extract hundreds of parameters from your design and use them to figure out how

by seddona 13y ago

Pricing is dynamic depending on the exact specification of your circuit board. We extract hundreds of parameters from your design and use them to figure out how much it's going to cost. We should probably do a better job of explaining this on the homepage though!

phaer 13y ago
A few examples could also be helpful to get a better impression of cost without uploading a finished design.
- seddona 13y ago
  noted, we'll get on this. thanks.
- GregBuchholz 13y ago
  I've uploaded an Arduino Uno here: https://circuithub.com/projects/gbuchholz/arduino_uno https://circuithub.com/projects/gbuchholz/arduino_uno ...it's telling me to check back later for the pricing.
  - seddona 13y ago
    The trouble here was sourcing of the ATMEGA16U2-MU part. If you check back now you'll see we suggested the ATmega32U2 as a substitute. Now that we've learnt the substitute it will happen automatically for all other projects in future.
    - GregBuchholz 13y ago
      I did change that to do-not-populate, so you might what to have that not hold up the whole process. Also there should be a way to ignore or delete the autodetected BOM items (which were extracted from the Eagle schematic). The fiducials were detected, and I think I made them "cosmetic" to continue the process. It's not 100% clear what "cosmetic" vs "normal" vs. "accessories". A similar thing happened for a couple of other items, which I simply placed 0-ohm jumpers to short-circuit the process so-to-speak. Also, is there a way to tell circuit-hub what attribute the manufacturer's part numbers is? That wasn't obvious. And you should think about adding the reference designators to the BOM display.
      - seddona 13y ago
        noted, thanks Greg! The whole reconciliation process is something we'll be improving a lot over the coming weeks.
        GregBuchholz 13y ago
        Also, it seems like on your landing page that you'd want to emphasize the "instant" nature of the quote. I didn't realize that until user 0xdeadbeefbabe above kind-of mentioned it. I really didn't give it much though, but I'd assumed you were like every other contract manufacturer, and one you upload something, they'll have someone get back to you in a week. When I realized that wasn't the case, I then went to upload something just to see how it worked. Also, I'd make the "quote breakout" in the lower right corner the default option, and someone could hide the details if they don't like it.
        seddona 13y ago
        Yep we need to do a much better job of explaining that! Thanks for the feedback.
gregsq 13y ago
One of the things I've been seeking out are the PCB capabilities. I have two boards I need to make, one 4 layer and one 6 layer, the 6 layer having 0.4mm pitch BGA's if I can cost benefit justify it. I'm not finding that information easily so it's a barrier to me getting past the intro. Are there links to this as well as a component library FAQ? Very useful idea though.
- GregBuchholz 13y ago
  Yes, and if they support blind/buried vias, etc. they'll also need to have various options to select enig/hasl, lead/lead-free, board outlines, cutouts allowed, soldermask colors, etc.. And presumably they've got the price baked in for various combinations of through-hold and smd components on both sides of the board. And 16 days of lead time seems like not necessarily a rush job, but some things can take longer, and I won't care, but it might be an opportunity to save money. I assume this will be coming in the future?
  - seddona 13y ago
    Most of the parameters are contained in the EDA files, so we extract track/gap, pcb height, via config etc. This is pretty cool as you can make sure your design file is the master for all this info. Unfortunately there are a few things most tools don't support yet, like finish and solder mask colour, so we will be adding GUI to change them.
    - gregsq 13y ago
      Nonetheless it would be useful to know whether you can service requirements like sub 0.1mm track width, HDI, sub 0.2mm hole size and so on. I'll experiment and put something small but tricky through and see what comes out.
      - seddona 13y ago
        The super high end board spec's will have delayed quoting for now (probably an hour or two). But each time we quote we learn from it, over time all specs will be instant.

by seddona 13y ago

phaer 13y ago

A few examples could also be helpful to get a better impression of cost without uploading a finished design.

seddona 13y ago
noted, we'll get on this. thanks.
GregBuchholz 13y ago
I've uploaded an Arduino Uno here: https://circuithub.com/projects/gbuchholz/arduino_uno https://circuithub.com/projects/gbuchholz/arduino_uno ...it's telling me to check back later for the pricing.
- seddona 13y ago
  The trouble here was sourcing of the ATMEGA16U2-MU part. If you check back now you'll see we suggested the ATmega32U2 as a substitute. Now that we've learnt the substitute it will happen automatically for all other projects in future.
  - GregBuchholz 13y ago
    I did change that to do-not-populate, so you might what to have that not hold up the whole process. Also there should be a way to ignore or delete the autodetected BOM items (which were extracted from the Eagle schematic). The fiducials were detected, and I think I made them "cosmetic" to continue the process. It's not 100% clear what "cosmetic" vs "normal" vs. "accessories". A similar thing happened for a couple of other items, which I simply placed 0-ohm jumpers to short-circuit the process so-to-speak. Also, is there a way to tell circuit-hub what attribute the manufacturer's part numbers is? That wasn't obvious. And you should think about adding the reference designators to the BOM display.
    - seddona 13y ago
      noted, thanks Greg! The whole reconciliation process is something we'll be improving a lot over the coming weeks.
      - GregBuchholz 13y ago
        Also, it seems like on your landing page that you'd want to emphasize the "instant" nature of the quote. I didn't realize that until user 0xdeadbeefbabe above kind-of mentioned it. I really didn't give it much though, but I'd assumed you were like every other contract manufacturer, and one you upload something, they'll have someone get back to you in a week. When I realized that wasn't the case, I then went to upload something just to see how it worked. Also, I'd make the "quote breakout" in the lower right corner the default option, and someone could hide the details if they don't like it.
        seddona 13y ago
        Yep we need to do a much better job of explaining that! Thanks for the feedback.

gregsq 13y ago

One of the things I've been seeking out are the PCB capabilities. I have two boards I need to make, one 4 layer and one 6 layer, the 6 layer having 0.4mm pitch BGA's if I can cost benefit justify it. I'm not finding that information easily so it's a barrier to me getting past the intro. Are there links to this as well as a component library FAQ? Very useful idea though.

GregBuchholz 13y ago
Yes, and if they support blind/buried vias, etc. they'll also need to have various options to select enig/hasl, lead/lead-free, board outlines, cutouts allowed, soldermask colors, etc.. And presumably they've got the price baked in for various combinations of through-hold and smd components on both sides of the board. And 16 days of lead time seems like not necessarily a rush job, but some things can take longer, and I won't care, but it might be an opportunity to save money. I assume this will be coming in the future?
- seddona 13y ago
  Most of the parameters are contained in the EDA files, so we extract track/gap, pcb height, via config etc. This is pretty cool as you can make sure your design file is the master for all this info. Unfortunately there are a few things most tools don't support yet, like finish and solder mask colour, so we will be adding GUI to change them.
  - gregsq 13y ago
    Nonetheless it would be useful to know whether you can service requirements like sub 0.1mm track width, HDI, sub 0.2mm hole size and so on. I'll experiment and put something small but tricky through and see what comes out.
    - seddona 13y ago
      The super high end board spec's will have delayed quoting for now (probably an hour or two). But each time we quote we learn from it, over time all specs will be instant.