PCB pricing - some advice please?

[Andi]

Hi chaps. I am very seriously considering my own PCB making setup. Having had little joy with Press N Peel (my own fault I am sure) I am considering various alternatives. Most of these are too expensive, thinking sensibly, to buy just for me, so I was considering also offering a service to others. Having looked at the market it seems that being able to offer short runs of boards at a sensible price would actually open up rather a lot of potential business - most places seem to be very expensive if you only want 1 board.

I was therefore thinking of doing PCBs for a flat rate per unit area plus postage and packing at (or very close to) cost. Obviously I need to ensure that I'm covering the cost of the blank board and any consumables, but could anyone suggest what they think would be a sensible rate for good quality boards - they'd be done to a very fine resolution - single sided, drilled and tinned? I'm not (yet) considering solder masks or screenprinting, just the ability to have a very high quality prototype of a board made at a sensible price - no setup fees, no small order surcharges and so on. I would probably insist on Gerber or EAGLE files, and the boards would be made on a "we make what the file says" basis. I'm not trying to set up a business empire but it'd be nice if the work going through covers the costs of the equipment over some sensible period of time.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

[GVC]

I would like to reply and bump this with an addendum.

I have tried the PnP and drawn by hand route, it is a PITA.  But, this writer is right in that it is expensive for one offs.  I purchased a bunch of boards from GGG a while ago and the price seemed ok (the product was very nice) but in order to make economic sense you have to buy a lot. 

I am interested in a solution as well because I am coming to the end of my stock and have quite a few projects lined up and I would prefer to order boards rather than make them myself if they make sense.

consider this a RFP (request for proposal) based on GGG (if the owner of GGG wants to contact me glenn_cohen@hotmail.com)

two prices:

A   

2* Ge booster
2* 69 Fuzz
2* Rat clone
2* Green Ringer
2* Nurse Quacky
2* BSIAB2

B

4* Ge booster
3* 69 fuzz
3* Rat clone
6* Green Ringer
3* Nurse Quacky
2* BSIAB2
2* Big Muff

[Fp-www.Tonepad.com]

Keep in mind that:

A. You can't make boards that are from GGG, Tonepad, or other copyrighted material for comercial use without explicit permission from the copyright owner.

B. Buying the boards from GGG, Tonepad helps support the development of more projects.

C. Making boards for sale is not an easy task, it requires quite an investment if you want to do it right.

D. The price of the boards at GGG, Tonepad is fair and even low, so just buy the boards from the readily available sources.

E. If you don't get a license (which I'm quite sure of in the case of GGG, Tonepad) for making boards for sale, designing your own layouts (from scratch, otherwise it's a copyright violation), will be an incredible amount of work.

This has been my experience. Take it for what it's worth.

Fp

[GVC]

At first I did not understand what you were talking about, but then I read my message over again.  I changed my mind mid post and never went back to edit.

I am not posting a RFP for GGG boards, this would obviously be a copyright problem.  I am looking for GGG boards. I know the owner is around hear somewhere and I would like a quote. 

This is a part time hobby for me, I love GGG (no experience with tonepad) and would like to support new projects ( 70s fuzz  )

However, ordering 4-5 of the same project is a little bit overkill. So what do you do with the leftovers (friends or one off sales are a PITA sometimes)   

[jrem]

Go to cadsoft.de and download Eagle Lite.  Learn how to draw the scematics by adding parts, wires, etc.  Switch to board layout, populate the board, and Eagle does all of the routing/board artwork.  Then you can upload the gerber files to Olimex or Advance Circuits etc, and have pro quality boards made.  Or you can do the laser toner transfer and etch yourself.  There is a decent learning curve, but the boards are worth it. 

[Fp-www.Tonepad.com]

Good advice, jrem.

GVC, you don't need to order 4-5 of the same project... why would you do that? (unless you want to support the website you're buying from)

Fp

[GVC]

Good advice, jrem.

GVC, you don't need to order 4-5 of the same project... why would you do that? (unless you want to support the website you're buying from)

Fp

Because that is what I was told to do in order to avoid paying ten dollars for a 8 component board,  how else are you going to get quantity discounts (and I am not being sarcastic)?  If tonepad or GGG would like to offer discounts regardless of project... I am listening!

[Andi]

Obviously I wasn't clear. I need to have PCBs made for my own pedals - these are "original" designs (in that, at least, they are not copies of anyone else's circuits or layouts as far as I am aware). I would like to do it myself rather than have to rely on anyone else. Given that I am considering buying a relatively serious setup to do this, I am enquiring as to whether anyone has any opinion as to a sensible price to charge for other people to use my excess capacity.

For what it is worth I have a full, registered version of EAGLE (though I'd never use the autorouter for audio work) and have been doing my own PCB layouts for several years. I would not be seeking to make boards based on anyone else's layouts, but instead to offer a service to other hobbyists so that they could have boards of their own design made up in very small quantities without the price being prohibitive - the approach I have in mind would mean that a board would have the same unit price as each of 50 identical boards - no setup charges, just a flat rate + P&P.

Put it this way; suppose you come up with a design for an overdrive; it's nothing wildly innovative, but requires a particular set of components so you can't just mod an SD-1 and don't want to put it together on stripboard. What, currently, are your options? Imagine if you could send off the EAGLE or Gerber file and get just one (or maybe 2) of your boards back in a week or so, made to a high quality level with the tracks tinned and for a price based solely on the total area of the board(s) you have ordered.

I may, of course, have been completely wrong in thinking that the idea was of any interest to anyone else on the board; if that is the case my apologies for bothering you.

[Processaurus]

As an alternative to buying an expensive machine, there are a lot of online places that do nice custom PCBs (fiberglass, sockets, double sided, solder mask, silkscreen, etc.)  They're a little expensive, like $66 for 2 identical pcbs.   Officially they don't  do compound boards, but you can fool them if you connect your circuits with a bunk trace (if you can forgive yourself).  You can even make prototyping areas like perfboard for mods.  With something like stompboxes you could fit like 6 unique circuits on the maximum size cheap board  (around 8"x10").  You just need a way of seperating them.  Thats looking to be $5.50 a board.

Saw this place haven't ordered from them, but it looks like a good deal:
http://www.pcbnet.com/ad8defaultguest107.asp

[Andi]

But that's my point. If all you want is one or two small boards there doesn't seem to be a cheap source at the moment. I thought that if that was a problem I'd faced that maybe someone else here might have too, or that someone might have a suggestion for pricing.

[Paul Perry (Frostwave)]

Check the Olimex prices, they look pretty cheap, even for two's. But, I gotta say, it would be a pretty unpopular board for a person to only want two of them!!!
There is a hidden UPSIDE to going to factory boards, and that is, if you get a solder resist screen, it makes it hella easier to avoid shorts. Plus if you have a parts overlay, that makes it a lot harder to screw up assembly. If your time is worth anything at all, this can be a big saving, in the long term.

[Andi]

Well, most of what I make are one-offs - someone says "can you make a box that..." and I work out how to do it. Doesn't anyone else knock up a circuit and work out a layout themselves? Does everyone else just build from a GGG or Tonepad layout?

[H.Manback]

I hear you, I've got a design I want to build, but I don't really like the idea of etching it myself.

Unfortunately, I don't think there are a lot of people in my position, and I don't know how long it will take before I cave and etch boards myself. The way I see it, most of the people cooking up their own (complicated) designs are already etching for themselves. As much as I would like to see a service like this become available for a good price, I doubt if there is enough of a market for it.

I hope there will be enough response to prove me wrong so you can still go ahead with your plan though!

[R.G.]

This is one of those things where if you think about it, you already know the answer.

If it was commercial feasible to make one-off PCBs at a cheaper price, they would already be here. There are many PCB shops that have the equipment, and presumably the motivation if it were profitable. The problem has to be that for it to be profitable, the cost is high.

I have personally been trying to get PCBs made in ones and twos for at least thirty five years, and I can tell you that with all its warts, Press-N-Peel is a marvel. You can do a single PCB at moderate precision for a low price without precision equipment (aside from the laser printer). I have pestered PCB houses for this for decades.

I actually found several places that would do smallish orders at cheap prices along the way. They all went broke for one reason or another.

I personally originated the current climate of easily available PCBs for clone effects. I came up with PNP layouts ready to iron on by mail order, and produced the first readily available effects clone PCBs for mail order sales. So yes, I do a lot of my own designs for circuits and my own layouts. Making PCBs other than by PNP is still a problem.

I went down the same road you're considering. In my garage is a 12" PCB shear, a UV photo exposure setup, developing and etching chemicals, a jeweler's drill press and a batch of solid carbide drill bits, as well as a homemade drill microscope. It works well, but I'd never consider doing PCBs for hire. My time is too valuable. My "excess capacity" is spent doing the rest of my life.

You may be considering buying one of the PCB milling machines. If so, get one that also drills. Drilling holes is much worse than eching. If you get one like that, you might be able to pay for the machine in a year or so.

As to prices - you'll have to sort that out yourself. I can tell you that people won't buy things much more expensive than the GGG or tonepad stuff. If you can get a custom designed PCB made and sold at a price that pays for your materials, labor, and wear and tear on your equipment for $10 for a typical effect board, super. But do factor in the wear out and interest on your capital investment.

The good, comfortable, easy market niche is to do a layout that will sell many boards, get them made for a couple of bucks each at a commercial house, then hope you sell enough of the 50 or 100 you had to order to get them cheap to cover the outlay you had to make for the 100 boards. That works, but you have to have a design thay you know will sell and the several hundred bucks to get the initial batch made.

[Andi]

Cheers, RG - I am indeed considering a CNC router/milling system. It drills, profiles and cuts isolation contours. At this point I'm probably going to buy it just for my own use, but it seemed a sensible idea to offer out the excess capacity (though I certainly hear what you say about the rest of your/my life!).

I'm looking forward to being able to make PCBs when I need them, and I gather it makes double sided boards a realistic proposition at home. It's probably also a factor that I'm in the UK, so the GGG and Tonepad and so on boards aren't nearly as affordable for me as they are for the US based forumites.

[Paul Perry (Frostwave)]

Well, most of what I make are one-offs - someone says "can you make a box that..." and I work out how to do it.

My philosophy has always been, if ONE person wants something.. then at least a dozen other peopel , somewhere, will want it. The other thing is, if you are making the same sized PCBs, you can get a lot of differetn ones, on a standard prototype PCB. Which makes it cheapish, even at proto rates.

If you made 'too many' boards, I'm pretty sure you could sell them here.