Where to buy PCB supplies?

[Brian Marshall]

So far i have always built on perf board.  I'm getting sick of it, and i am about to make 10 of the same pedal.  I am thinking PCB would be much faster.  I know radio shack has the stuff, but there has got to be better stuff out there... right?

Brian

[Peter Snowberg]

If you're going to be making more in the future, think seriously about getting boards from a board house. I've used ExpressPCB a whole bunch of times and I would recommend them very highly. It comes out much cheaper and easier in the long run I think.

They have the best deals if you get 50 units. It gets pricey, but I don't think I'll ever etch another board again. Their free layout software also tells you the costs up-front and you get double sided boards with plated through holes.

If you can fit the layout in a small space, check out their proto service. I have been able to tile six small boards in their 3.5x2.8" protoboards. The shipped cost to California is $66.65.

I've never used them before, but also check out http://www.futurlec.com/SupportInf.shtml . I've heard both good and bad stuff about them. They used to have a bunch of board info on-line, but now they just have e-mail about board fabrication.

That's just my 2 cents.

Take care,
-Peter

[ExpAnonColin]

I was going to suggest Futurlec-never used them because I've never drawn out a PCB diagram on the computer, but as far as I can tell they seem decent, and it's always tempting to have professional looking boards made.'

-Colin

[ErikMiller]

There are many options. Do you want to etch your own?

I make my own, and what I use is Eagle CAD for the layout, Press N Peel for the resist, and ammonium persulphate for the etchant.

Copper clad board is available from a variety of sources, including Small Bear and Radio Shack.

Press N Peel took a few tries to figure out how to get clean transfers, but it works pretty well. I like ammonium persulphate over ferric chloride because it's not as nasty. I put the board and the etchant into a Ziploc bag for agitation. Very little mess that way.

Eventually I'd like to have boards done by a fab house, but I can't find a place that offers what I want, which is non-plated-through single-sided.

[Samuel]

For one sided boards I would advise against buying copperclad from RadioShack: it's two sided so you either have to spend time grinding the the second side off with a dremel or whatever, or you require a lot of work from your etchant as it tries to dissolve 6 or 8 square inches of blank copper...

[Brian Marshall]

so if i had 50 made at a time what kind of price do you think i would pay for a small 10 - 15 component board

[drew]

For anything more than a few (10 is way more than I would do by hand!) I would definitely have them made. I just had a boatload of PCBs made by the guys at Imagineering (pcbnet.com) and they arrived on time and were made to spec, no problems. Silkscreened, thru-hole double-sided board, solder masked boards came in about three weeks (hint: if you give 'em more time to make boards, they're LOTS cheaper) and at a decent price.


drew
www.toothpastefordinner.com

[Peter Snowberg]

so if i had 50 made at a time what kind of price do you think i would pay for a small 10 - 15 component board

I just opened up the ExpressPCB layout program and placed down 15 capacitors to take up some room.

The resulting layout was 2 inches by 1.2 inches and the cost for 50 of them was $245 for "Standard Service" which is just double sided boards with plated through holes, and tin over copper plating (so they last).

If you want to add silkscreen legends to one side and solder masks to both sides ("Production Service"), the cost jumps to $308. These prices are shipped to California with sales tax included.

For production service comparisons, I just tried 10 boards and the cost was $277. If you get 48 boards it comes to $341, 50 comes to $308 (discount threshold), and 100 comes to $369. You can see it's mostly setup cost.

The boards you end up with are really nice (much nicer than you could ever do them at home), you don't have to cut or drill anything, no toxic waste, small feature sizes if you want (the smallest traces can be .007" if you want), and best of all.... 100% of them work perfectly with zero rejects.

That's $6.16 per board if you get 50, but I wouldn't go any other way, even if I only needed 10.

Their software will tell you the costs up front, and its free to download and use. http://www.expresspcb.com/

Take care,
-Peter

[Brian Marshall]

I DL'ed it, but havne tried it yet... i'll do that next... it will be sort of wierd to design a pcb... usually on perfboard i am only concerned with makeing the distance from component to component as short as possible.  Now, it is just fit it in the smallest space possible

[Peter Snowberg]

I like to lay circuits out a few times before committing. Each time you get better.

One note about that software... The default colors are unusable as far as I'm concerned. The colors I use are:

background: black
top layer: Green (col 3, row 3 from color picker)
bottom layer: Blue (6,1)
corners, top: dk. green (3,4)
corners, bottom: dk. blue (6,4)
silkscreen: white
edges: yellow (2,2)
selected items: red (1,2)
grid: purple (8,1) {really, try it }

Take care,
-Peter

[Brian Marshall]

I tried it out.  looks like the best deals are to put 8 or 12 on one board, and order 4 or 6 of them.

[Peter Snowberg]

Try a bunch of combinations. I've looked at tileing all sorts of layouts and was fairly surprised by the totals.

If you can fit two of your circuit in a "proto service" board (2.5 x 3., then two proto runs gets you 12 boards for $134 (incl. tax, shipped to Calif.). If you use "standard service" you can pay twice as much and get five times as many boards with them doing the edge routing. (I hate fiberglass dust)

When you tile, I would suggest leaving 0.2" between tiles for cutting. I have used a jig saw, table saw, hack saw, file-n-snap, and tin snips. The table saw was by far the best. A belt sander with fairly fine paper works great to polish the edges. Tin snips were the worst.

Take care,
-Peter

[Brian Marshall]

ive always had an easy time cutting perf board with with just scoring and bending it.