Interesting fabbed PCB service (Taylor - This might interested you)

[aziltz]

check it out, http://www.dorkbotpdx.org/wiki/pcb_order

from talking to Taylor, it seems like getting that first prototype board fabbed and tested can be expensive, but these guys advertise a "group" buy where they will combine 3x of your design with a bunch of others and save money.  $5 per square inch seems like a deal for small boards, no?

edit:  the $5/sq. inch INCLUDES 3 boards.  So 3 pieces of a 2 square inch board is $10.

[bean]

Thanks for the info. I just submitted something to try it out. Could be cool!

[Paul Marossy]

Huh, sounds like a very reasonable price for prototype PCBs. I might have to take advantage of this if I don't hear any horror stories about this service.

[aziltz]

if someone gets to it before me, please let us know. I'd like to try it out as a "toe-dipper" in fab'd boards.

[Taylor]

Yeah, sound very good. Price is about the same as BatchPCB, but (if you order right before the deadline) you get your boards much faster than BatchPCB. I wonder how often they do their runs? If it's every month, and you happen to submit right after a deadline, you'll be waiting a long time.

[Laen]

Yeah, sound very good. Price is about the same as BatchPCB, but (if you order right before the deadline) you get your boards much faster than BatchPCB. I wonder how often they do their runs? If it's every month, and you happen to submit right after a deadline, you'll be waiting a long time.

Yeah, don't do that.   The idea is that since it's scheduled (unlike batchpcb which waits until the panel is full, however long that takes), you can plan towards the order date, then you can test and iterate your design over the next month.  I know it's certainly helped me, since it's a pseudo-deadline that gets me off my rear.

Right now we're doing them once a month on the last Monday (next one is May 31st). If we get enough interest, we'll push it up to every two weeks, but we're not quite there yet.

Today's order actually won't be going out until 2pm Pacific, if anyone has anything they want to add!

-Laen, the guy currently doing the Dorkbotpdx order

[Steve Mavronis]

Interesting but the only PCB design formats are Eagle .brd or a set of Gerbers. Unfortunately I use ExpressPCB .pcb format right now for layout design, and I haven't used their mini-board service either BTW because I have someone in the family who can make me mine until I learn to do it myself. But this sounds like a good deal though.

[bean]

My three boards came out to $7.80 total, which is certainly great for prototyping. It's a pretty small design, maybe 1.25"^2.

[aziltz]

Yeah, don't do that.   The idea is that since it's scheduled (unlike batchpcb which waits until the panel is full, however long that takes), you can plan towards the order date, then you can test and iterate your design over the next month.  I know it's certainly helped me, since it's a pseudo-deadline that gets me off my rear.

Right now we're doing them once a month on the last Monday (next one is May 31st). If we get enough interest, we'll push it up to every two weeks, but we're not quite there yet.

Today's order actually won't be going out until 2pm Pacific, if anyone has anything they want to add!

-Laen, the guy currently doing the Dorkbotpdx order

Thanks for chiming in Laen.  I need to do some homework on double sided boards v. single sided, but I think I'm going to shoot for the May 31st deadline.

[Laen]

bean-

Your boards went out on Saturday, so you should have them by Tuesday at the latest.  Hope you like 'em!

Our next board order has actually been pushed up to May 17th (at 8am Pacific) in order to accommodate a local electronic art show, should anyone have anything they want fabbed.

-Laen

[mth5044]

Hey that is great, thanks for the update.

Laen or anyone else who knows - do you charge a fraction of the $5 if you use only part of the square inch? For example, if I had a PCB that was 1 x 1.1, would I still get charged $10? or would it be $5.50?

[aziltz]

Does anyone have any info or tutorials on designing double sided boards vs singles? 

[Taylor]

Does anyone have any info or tutorials on designing double sided boards vs singles? 

The basic difference is that you aren't as much a slave to the traces - in a double-sided board, you can put the parts pretty much where you want them and then make it work, as opposed to a single-sided board where you have to let the traces influence where your part go more.

I don't consider myself an expert, but here are some quick double-sided boards tricks I can think of:

Power: I usually do a ground pour, and then attach each part to ground with thermal isolation pads. Then I run a 30 mil +9v trace around the edge of the board on the top layer, and either VREF or whatever other significant power rail there might be (i.e. the tap tremolo and Echo Base boards have 9v running around the top edge and 5v running around part of the bottom edge). This way you don't have to snake the power and ground traces all around the board - you can usually run a trace just to the edge or to the ground pour. I don't make the power trace connect all the way around - it goes around the board but there's a gap where the trace would connect to itself. I don't know if this is really necessary, but I have heard some mention that such a trace could become an Rf antenna. It's probably one of those things that makes no difference because of the frequency response and size of our circuits, or it could be bunkum all around, but I do it just in case. Seems to work.

If you're doing a ground pour, try not to do too many traces on that layer, and make sure that you don't break the continuity of the ground pour.

If you have parts of a circuit you want to isolate, do separate ground pours and then connect them only at the point where the ground wire enters the board.

[defaced]

Hmm, these prices aren't bad at all.  I've been using BatchPCB, and really like it, but you'll get 15 bucks tacked onto every order because of shipping and their setup fee. I also like that they provide you the cam and dru files for Eagle.  That stuff was a pain to get setup when I first started doing "real" boards. 

[bean]

Got my boards in today. They look great! I'm completely satisfied, esp. considering the price. The only thing I could complain about is that the silkscreen included both the values and names of my components, whereas I would have preferred just the names (it's kinda unreadable the other way). Other than that, all is good.

Thanks, Laen!

[defaced]

You should be able to change that in your layout program, or not process it in the cam processor - both are very easy to do if you're using Eagle.  For instance, I don't have values enabled in my cam job, so when I make Gerber files, the values are omitted from the Gerbers. 

[Taylor]

Yeah, I'm assuming they just put your Gerbers through exactly the way you sent them. There's another reason to always check your Gerbers in an external program (or gerber-viewer.com) before sending them.

[Laen]

You should be able to change that in your layout program, or not process it in the cam processor - both are very easy to do if you're using Eagle.  For instance, I don't have values enabled in my cam job, so when I make Gerber files, the values are omitted from the Gerbers.  

Yeah, when someone sends Gerbers, they go on the panel just the way I received them, but when people send me an Eagle brd, it goes through my CAM processor, and the one I'd been using puts the values on the silkscreen layers.  It seems that violates the principle of least surprise, so I've disabled that for future orders.

Laen or anyone else who knows - do you charge a fraction of the $5 if you use only part of the square inch? For example, if I had a PCB that was 1 x 1.1, would I still get charged $10? or would it be $5.50?

Naw, it's fractional, so 1.1 square inches would indeed be $5.50.

-Laen

[Laen]

Oh, next order is next Monday (June 14th) if anyone's interested!

[Taylor]

I had some boards made by DorkbotPDX, and am quite happy with the results.

Really sweet purple soldermask, and I'm guessing ENIG (gold colored) plating. Perfect quality boards. In the past I've had similar panelized boards where the drill file seemed to be a little off from the copper - not the case here. Very quick, an the price is ridiculously affordable.

Their pricing scheme is so good for small PCBs, that IMO it would be worth doing even if you just want a single board for your own DIY project. For big stuff it becomes fairly expensive, but for the average effects board it's great.

Anyway, I'm pleased, and in the future I will be getting my proto boards from these guys whenever the timing works right.