I’m thinking of putting together a medium-run service for geeks that have gone through the prototyping stages and now want to make a small to medium number (a few dozen to a couple hundred) of their boards.
If you think this would interest you, please let me know as soon as possible. I’d like to do the beta-run by April 4th, but that’s dependent on there being enough interest.
UPDATE: I’m doing another beta run on May 9th!
I’m also really interested in getting feedback about this offering. Anything too weird or deal-breaking? Too expensive? Hate purple? Anything I’m forgetting or leaving out? Extra features? Please email me or post a comment on this post.
Here’s what I’m considering:
- 2 Layer on 0.062″ FR4 Tg170 PCB material. This is what’s needed for lead free processing.
- 1 oz copper thickness
Lead-free HASL finish.ENIG Finish- 6 mil minimum traces and spacing.
- 13 mil minimum drill
- Top and bottom silkscreen
- Top and bottom soldermask
- US fabrication
Now, the limitations:
- The boards will be tab-routed instead of being individually cut out or given to you in a pick-and-place capable panel. Tab routing just means there might be little “tabs” hanging off your boards that easily snap off with pliers. See http://www.flickr.com/photos/laen/5375405553/sizes/o/in/photostream/ for an example.
- Any solder-mask color you want, as long as you want purple.
- Long turn times and infrequent runs. I’ll likely only do one order a month, and they’ll have a 3 week turn time with the fab.
- You’d have to order your boards in multiples of 10, and with a minimum of a 150 square inch order. So, if your board were 2 square inches, you’d need to buy 80 copies of your board. Still trying to figure out if that’s the right minimum.
I think I can offer it for $1.30 a square inch. Postage included, and no setup fee. The first “beta” run would be $1 per square inch.
Ordering
To order, send your Gerbers or Eagle brd files to “pcb-order@laen.org”. Tell me how many you’d like (remember: minimum 150 square inches and order in quantities of 10). I’ll send you a paypal or google checkout invoice.
Since this closely follows the standard prototype order, please see <a href=”http://pcb.laen.org/”>the prototype order page</a> for details.
Thanks!
Love the idea, i don’t have any thing in the immediate future that i would need it, but is a nice step between your prototype quantity and going to a board house direct
This is awesome for the sub-25-copies size, but $1/sq.in. is really expensive if you’re doing more than 50 boards. Even with tooling, PCBCart is ~$0.50/sq.in. for 50 2″x2″ boards, and you get ~2week turns, and even cheaper future runs of the same board (the above includes ~$1/board for setup).
Yeah, it definitely has a window acceptability for price/quantity. I think the window is reasonably large, though.
For me, lead-free is a requirement. That means lead-free finish, and Tg170 PCB substrate (this costs extra through most chinese PCB Fabs including both PCBCart and Gold Phoenix). With gold phoenix, that alone pushes their 155 square inch standard order to over a dollar a square inch. Looks like that doesn’t add as much to PCBCart’s pricing. _If_ you needed all the features of my order (lead free, small traces, small holes, two sided silk screen, two sided soldermask), it looks like i’m still pretty competitive. PCBcart’s setup/tooling fee really eats a lot of money, but I’ll have to look closer and see where the sweet spot would be against them.
Thanks for the feedback!
I don’t know how much I’d use such a service – I’d probably just go with $CHINESE_PCB_FAB for such a production level. They tend to be a bit below $1 / sq. inch in my experience (maybe without bottom silk screen, but I can live without it).
That’s not to say I won’t use you for short run stuff though!
I’ve poked around, and I’m having a hard time finding a chinese PCB fab that’s a lot cheaper than this for the same specs. Certainly if you can design your boards to a looser set of specs (non-lead free, silkscreen on one side only, wider traces, larger drills), there are cheaper choices, but I think I’m at least competitive for what I’d offer.
Not to mention the quality. We have _tight_ tolerances and a fab that REALLY cares about quality. I’ve pushed tens of thousands of square inches through this fab and never had a single report of a bad board. Meanwhile, Gold Phoenix only guarantees that 85% of your boards will work. That’s pretty appalling in my mind, but I suppose that’s how they keep their costs down.
I think I might also be the only medium-run PCB service in this price range with US manufacturing. Important to some, not important to others.
If I ever needed that many copies of a board, I would surely want a solder stencil to go with it. Kapton solder stencils are nice, but I don’t think I want to mess with their flexing upon removal. I always tend to smear the paste as I lift the stencil up from one edge. I probably should make a simple jig that lowers & lifts PCBs to register against the stencil. Forr this to work well, I think the stencil would need to be metal.
This is very good news.
I’d like to see 1.0mm and 0.8mm boards as well if possible.
The specs for the boards look good, most of the projects I have built would fit into those requirements. The price may be a little higher than some but worth it for the specs you’ve listed and I’ve heard you offer good customer service. I’ve used Gold Phoenix PCB a of couple times and they worked fine, but I can’t say they are anything special.
Don’t know if I love the purple, but I’ve not seen a purple PCBs before so maybe we could push to make it the color of choice for open source hardware.
Open Source Hardware = Purple
I’m glad you’ve heard good things about my service!
Have you seen the purple in person? I think it’s really striking, and provides a good contrast for the white silkscreen.
Interesting idea. Can I use multiple designs to reach the 150 in^2? And, perhaps your fab has an overseas partner they could recommend (for this timeframe/qty)? A 100% US-only fab is a very strange beast these days.
I’m thinking multiple designs would be just fine, as long as each one was ordered in sets of 10.
I’m not really interested in offshoring the PCB order. It might be a little cheaper, but a lot of that is because of different environmental and labor standards, and I wouldn’t feel good about running it under those conditions.
very interested in this. Sounds like a great way to get 10+ of each of my designs.
This is a great idea if you can find a way to make it work. I have something that I’m working on now that will hopefully be something that I can turn out in the few dozen a year and this seems perfect. Especially since I am looking at 8+ square inches on many of these boards and there are several boards in this device. All I would need is two layer.
I would request a list of the standard size drills to make design easier. I know they have been very flexible with the other service, but it is still good practice to know what sizes are used so that the holes are correctly sized whenever possible.
I can not make the beta run, I’ll be lucky to get all the parts in and make the design by the 21st to get a short prototype run made to tweak the design and build a device to try and spur interest. But I may very well be ready for the May run. Got any connections with machine shops to get simple panels cut out? Lots of 12mm squares to cut in each device.
Seems cool, so if my board is 1.63 sq in. Then i need to fill 150 sq in so i need to make 92-93 boards. But since i need to order in multiples of 10 i need to buy 100 boards correct?
$100 for 100 PCBs isnt too bad, the 3 week wait would suck. Are you serious about the purple solder-mask only? Would be nice to be able to pick since spending more. I understand it would be hard since its lots of orders from different people but how about having it BLUE or RED. These colors seem to be in demand more now. Even WHITE.
Just my thoughts.
I like the idea very much. Even though I don’t have immediate need but I agree with mitpatterson it would be a perfect intermediate step for board production.
Are the 6mil tr/sp and 13mil drill the smallest this PCB house can do ? This should be good bough for most applications and its fine, but in my last board I could use smaller vias/traces.
if i get to a point where i can use the volume, i personally don’t mind paying a bit more for keeping it in the US w/ the quality of these boards – they are excellent boards and always work. i have seen some boards from other places that may be a bit cheaper, but many of the boards are useless w/ holes being way off, soldermasks covering pads, etc – just poorly made boards.
keep up the excellent work and i hope to be able to do some volume soon so i can get in on this , but i can’t by the 21st :(
Black circuit boards might be neat, hard to see the traces but neat .
I used black before and it’s pretty hard to solder compared to other color.
This is a nice idea. I have run a few boards with you and the quality has been great. I personally don’t like purple because it is hard to see the traces due to the low contrast with the board, but that is less important with a production run like this. The price seems competitive. Will there be extra cost for complex routing, such as cutouts for mid-mount USB connectors?
What exactly do you mean by “open source hardware?” Does that mean anyone gets a free license to my PCB designs? How would they get access to them? Is your plan to offer a store where people can order copies of submitted designs?
Thanks – I’m interested in a US-sourced service. Used BatchPCB and was VERY happy, but …
Open Source Hardware makers are my primary audience, but it’s certainly not limited to them. Your board files remain secret unless you choose to share them.
It is my intention to provide a place for people to share their designs (coming soon! :) but that’s purely opt-in.