Homebrew PCBs

Hi all,

I had my first circuit board made by a manufacturer instead of DIY.  This one was just a bit too tough for DIY so I thought I would try a board house. I selected https://www.protoexpress.com/home.jsp and used their no touch service.

The board I had made was a 2 layer, measuring about 4 1/2" by 11" the price ended up at $113.00 with shipping and I selected their 10 day service.

One of the reasons I choose this mfg was that I could submit gerber files and didn't have to use someone's special software. I use Sprint layout.  It took a few attempts to submit the files on-line, but once I understood what the problem was it was pretty easy.

The board shipped on time and Fed-Ex delivered on-time. It was packaged good (actually way overkill, but better safe than sorry).

Being that this was my first board from a board house, I don't really have a basis for comparison, but overall the board was good quality.

The silkscreen is a bit course, must be inkjet printed, but very legible

The solder masks are the typical green stuff and was good, and performed good during soldering (hand soldering).

The through hole plating was a bit rough in a few places.  Some of the smallest holes seemed to be plated a bit "Thick", almost closed completely.

I did find 3 shorts between pads on a surface mount chip (atmega 644P location 44 pin QFP).  Interestingly, the mounting area for the Atmega2560 chip (100 QFP, 13MM x 13MM) was perfect.  

Anyway, just thought I would share my experience.  They can do more layers and other things too, so if you find yourself with a project that is just beyond DIY capabilities, give them some consideration.

Chris

Chris, thank you very much for the review.

I must say that shorts on a professionally-made board does not sound good.
If I am paying to have a board made, I would expect to be able to depend on
it. I would not want to debug problems due to the board house screwing
things up.

That said, I do not have any experience with board houses... Does this kind
of thing happen often?

-Tolga

On Sun, Jul 11, 2010 at 1:44 PM, Chris <lcdpublishing@...> wrote:

>
>
> Hi all,
>
> I had my first circuit board made by a manufacturer instead of DIY. This
> one was just a bit too tough for DIY so I thought I would try a board house.
> I selected https://www.protoexpress.com/home.jsp and used their no touch
> service.
>
> The board I had made was a 2 layer, measuring about 4 1/2" by 11" the price
> ended up at $113.00 with shipping and I selected their 10 day service.
>
> One of the reasons I choose this mfg was that I could submit gerber files
> and didn't have to use someone's special software. I use Sprint layout. It
> took a few attempts to submit the files on-line, but once I understood what
> the problem was it was pretty easy.
>
> The board shipped on time and Fed-Ex delivered on-time. It was packaged
> good (actually way overkill, but better safe than sorry).
>
> Being that this was my first board from a board house, I don't really have
> a basis for comparison, but overall the board was good quality.
>
> The silkscreen is a bit course, must be inkjet printed, but very legible
>
> The solder masks are the typical green stuff and was good, and performed
> good during soldering (hand soldering).
>
> The through hole plating was a bit rough in a few places. Some of the
> smallest holes seemed to be plated a bit "Thick", almost closed completely.
>
> I did find 3 shorts between pads on a surface mount chip (atmega 644P
> location 44 pin QFP). Interestingly, the mounting area for the Atmega2560
> chip (100 QFP, 13MM x 13MM) was perfect.
>
> Anyway, just thought I would share my experience. They can do more layers
> and other things too, so if you find yourself with a project that is just
> beyond DIY capabilities, give them some consideration.
>
> Chris
>
> 
>


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

On 11/07/2010 13:37, Tolga Abaci wrote:
> Chris, thank you very much for the review.
>
> I must say that shorts on a professionally-made board does not sound good.
> If I am paying to have a board made, I would expect to be able to depend on
> it. I would not want to debug problems due to the board house screwing
> things up.
>
> That said, I do not have any experience with board houses... Does this kind
> of thing happen often?


With complex boards I pay for electrical testing, it saves a lot of 
trouble. PCB-Pool produces very high quality prototype boards and I've 
never had a problem with any that I've ordered from them. I think they 
use a flying probe tester, which checks the board against the file.

Leon
-- 
Leon Heller
G1HSM

Using quality (and expensive) board houses at work, errors still do occur.
Stuff like wrong drill sizes, missed holes, misinterpreted artwork, etc..

I've never had faults from poor materials or inherently bad process,
just human error or machine malfunction.
Of course I ask them to put things right if they mess up, at the
prices they charge I don't feel like accepting sub-standard goods.

They sometimes make a couple extra, and sometimes they call to ask if
it is OK to send less than the ordered amount because not all came out
well. So things do go wrong that the customers (usually) never see
because internal QC catches them.

Electrical faults (like a short or break) I haven't seen even a single
one, so I don't order electrical testing if it costs extra. The boards
are low tech enough so that this is no big risk.


ST

On Sun, Jul 11, 2010 at 5:23 PM, Leon Heller <leon355@btinternet.com> wrote:
>
>
> With complex boards I pay for electrical testing, it saves a lot of
> trouble. PCB-Pool produces very high quality prototype boards and I've
> never had a problem with any that I've ordered from them. I think they
> use a flying probe tester, which checks the board against the file.
>
> Leon
> --
> Leon Heller
> G1HSM
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> Be sure to visit the group home and check for new Links, Files, and Photos:
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Homebrew_PCBsYahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>

El 11/07/10 16:23, Leon Heller escribi\ufffd:
> With complex boards I pay for electrical testing, it saves a lot of
> trouble.
>    
All the places I use give free electrical testing for boards with 4 
layers or more. I guess the thought there is that for a prototype it's 
easy enough to fix a problem with a bit of wire or something similar, 
but for 4 layers or more it may be impossible to fix.