PCB service in Europe?

[Fancy Lime]

Hi there,

does anyone know a good, reasonably priced PCB production service in Europe? Requirements: Single or dual layer, small batches (10-100), includes drilling of through-hole parts, custom board shapes.

EDIT: I found many suppliers, but got annoyed quickly by having to click through pages upon pages of options before the web form tells you that they only do batches of 1000+, or have no hole drilling option and so on. So I opted to bug you guys instead. Sorry for being lazy.

Also: is there any such thing for fully populated SMD boards? I mean: I send them the PCB plans and parts list and all and they send me PCBs with all the parts soldered on to them. I assume that this sort of thing should be possible, since it is all done automatically and just a matter of loading plans into a machine. I just have never seen it advertised.

Cheers,
Andy

[Rixen]

Pick and place is the automatic populating of PCB's, but is only economical for large runs as all the parts reels need to be loaded and set up in the machine by a skilled operator. It also requires reels of all parts which may require whole reel purchases of parts which are not kept in stock. There's an interesting vid somewhere on how Sparkfun assemble boards. A lot are done by manual assembly.

I can only suggest a couple of Chinese suppliers, JLPCB and PCBway.

[Ice-9]

JLPCB now do pick and place but it is China.

[PMowdes]

Dino and I had a bunch of diode boards assembled for our Synthi Hifli project by Elecrow.  They were WAY cheaper than the UK fab house I asked to quote for the same job.  The boards were still horribly expensive though compared to normal pcb fabrication.

I've heard JLPCB are quite cheap but only if you choose from a limited stock of parts.

[vigilante397]

I go to JLCPCB for PCB fabrication, but I pay an extra $7 to get a stencil for my SMD boards. Then I stencil on the solder paste and throw the parts on myself. It really doesn't take very long for pedal-sized boards. Then I have a cheap ($200) reflow oven I got for my birthday last year, and it takes about 7 minutes to flow all the solder, few minutes to cool down, so total it takes me maybe 30-40 minutes to get a batch of boards stuffed, much of which is just watching youtube while waiting for the oven to finish.

[chbeer]

I'm a big fan of https://aisler.net/ although they may be a bit expensive. Very good quality. But no pick & place.

[Fancy Lime]

I'm a big fan of https://aisler.net/ although they may be a bit expensive. Very good quality. But no pick & place.

Hi chbeer,

thanks! That looks like the sort of thing, I am looking for. The whole Pick and Place thing was more of an extra info I was asking for, not something I necessarily want or need any time soon. And the do offer masks and parts, do even SMD prototyping should be possible with Aisler, if I understand their webpage info right. Perfect. Can you give me some examples for pricing ("normal size" effect sort of stuff)? They are a bit terse on that on the webpage.

Cheers,
Andy

[chbeer]

A PCB at around iPhone 5s size (they don't show the sizes  on the mobile web) is around 6€ each, with a minimum of 3. I think they add stencils for free now

[ElectricDruid]

I've used TechnoService in Poland quite a bit. More expensive than China, but the difference isn't huge since you don't pay the import duties. They do small runs happily enough. I think they do assembly too, but I've never used that service.

https://pcb-technoservice.eu/en

You might need a VAT number - it's getting increasingly difficult to do business in Europe without one. Most European countries don't have the VAT-exempt status for small businesses that the UK has, so they get confused without a VAT number.

Anyway, talk to them. I've found them responsive and willing to answer queries.

[steveyraff]

Following. I definitely need to work out some PCB layouts and get small runs of about 50 for a few models.

[Ice-9]

Following. I definitely need to work out some PCB layouts and get small runs of about 50 for a few models.

Nice Studio Steve