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Designing and assembling my first PCB

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Re: Designing and assembling my first PCB

#41

Post by amelius »

radeeyate wrote: post #37
ge96 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is unfortunate hope local companies like OSH Park get love too. The marketing of companies like JLC or pcbway whenever I post a hardware project on a website like Hackaday or Hackster always reach out to me to use em. Not that it would matter so many big makers on YT use em.

I can vouch for OSH Park. Wonderful company, nice people, and really good quality boards. Pads lift so much easier on the cheap Chinese boards that I think it alone makes it worth it to choose local manufacturers. The price is a bit steep for bigger boards but if you're working on a project that they are interested in, they provided financial support every so often. I've gotten a few boards sponsored by them!

I rarely have problems with lifted pads or traces on Chinese boards. And if I do it is usually my own fault.

Re: Designing and assembling my first PCB

#42

Post by ipdashc »

lrasinen wrote: post #35
geerlingguy wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, and since it seems there's some competition there, the prices are decent. You can get milled metal, 3D prints, populated PCBs... crazy what you can do now and how quickly it can be turned around, if you are willing to pay. I wish there were more regional places like PCBWay and JLCPCB in US, EU, etc (with similar pricing) so shipping didn't require circumnavigating the globe.

EU has Aisler but what you win in shipping times you lose in production lead time (unless you pay for faster service). And there are probably others but with even less visibility / willingness to interact with private customers. Hell, I used to live next door to a sales office for a local PCB fab, but they never bothered to answer my inquiry about prototypes. (That's another thing the proto-friendly companies do righ…

> but with even less visibility / willingness to interact with private customers

It's honestly depressing. I could believe the theories (off vibes, since I'm not in manufacturing, just a hobbyist) that this is one of the reasons why China is overtaking the West in hardware. Manufacturers here just don't want to talk to you at all unless you're willing to buy a million units, it seems. From what I've heard, in China, it's far easier to get started (and that certainly matches my experience with jlc/pcbway).

Like, I get it, profit wise. But it's a bit of a sad state of affairs.

Re: Designing and assembling my first PCB

#43

Post by johnwalkr »

zerobees wrote: post #32
dhosek wrote: post #11

OK, so people are ordering a custom PCB from China for a one-off? Whatever happened to making them at home? I remember my brothers doing this in the bathroom sink with a board coated with copper¹, some special markers to draw the circuit on the board and chemicals to wash off the extra copper. I’m guessing they might have used our dad’s electric drill to put some holes in the board as well, but looking at the article…

In addition to what others said, home-etched PCBs are just much lower quality. We're no longer living in a world where every component has leads on a 2.54 mm grid, so tolerances matter a lot more. Also, SMD means you really need vias and a solder mask. The problem isn't that people outsource it, it's that they need to outsource to China. That's an abject failure of domestic PCB manufacturers who simply don't want to…

Exactly. Even for this small board, the IC has 0.65mm spacing of the LGA pads. It would be pretty difficult to assemble it without solder mask.

Almost everyone who has the experience of etching a board, or even using a router to automate making one, and also has the experience of ordering a PCB, never makes one by hand again.

Re: Designing and assembling my first PCB

#44

Post by Geof25 »

peter_retief wrote: post #40

I have made boards but never actually used them (the delay between need and supply is too long for me) I wish I could 3d print a board with all its components - instant gratification (which incidentally was one of my half baked projects)

It is like 1 week between order and delivery. It feels to me that if you can't wait for a week for parts and PCB then maybe project should not exist at a first place.

Re: Designing and assembling my first PCB

#45

Post by LoganDark »

jhogendorn wrote: post #38
LoganDark wrote: post #16

I've been trying to make a PCB but it's just so annoying having to sift through pages and pages of listings in order to find each individual tiny component without minimum order quantities of hundreds or more. The process of finding each component is so tedious that I gave up. (I was using EasyEDA hoping it would be easy to find components I could actually order -- nope)

So a lot of this goes away if you try to stick to jlcpcb basic parts from lcsc, and you sort of develop preferred components for things. Another trick is when in a category, for example angular hall sensors, once you have the key attributes like vin, smt, etc, sort by quantity desc to see what parts get heavily stocked, that tends to indicate what is popular in industry and likely to be a good generic fit. Out of the…

LCSC has been my problem. It's built into EasyEDA, but most search results aren't in stock, and most of the rest have high minimum order quantities.

I needed a lot of different resistor, capacitor, etc values so each and every one needed me to go through that search.

Re: Designing and assembling my first PCB

#46

Post by rcxdude »

LoganDark wrote: post #16

I've been trying to make a PCB but it's just so annoying having to sift through pages and pages of listings in order to find each individual tiny component without minimum order quantities of hundreds or more. The process of finding each component is so tedious that I gave up. (I was using EasyEDA hoping it would be easy to find components I could actually order -- nope)

Part selection is often the bulk of the work in a PCB design, yeah. What tools were you using, though? In general the parametric searches on digikey, mouser, etc are pretty good for the standard components. For stuff like resistors it's generally easiest to find a particular range and pick from those. You might find most of those have a MOQ but they're cheap enough it's usually not a major issue.

Re: Designing and assembling my first PCB

#47

Post by rcxdude »

LoganDark wrote: post #36
stephen_g wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of part? I use Octopart for a lot of things, like ICs (sometimes some variants are available in low quantities but others aren't and only in thousands). For stuff like passives it's usually easier to use Digi-Key or Mouser and you can filter by MOQ so you only see things that are available individually.

the most annoying was stuff like resistors or capacitors. They tended to have huge minimum order quantities, there were hundreds of results for any kind of query and most of them were always out of stock. I wanted to stick to JLCPCB's platform so that I could order the boards pre-populated, but I didn't want to be stuck ordering far more components than the board actually needs. I always feel anger or something when…

Were the MOQ for the resistors a major contributer to cost? Usually they're super cheap so even buying 100 is not a crazy problem. Also most PCB assemblers will have a generic component library for common resistor and capacitor values and footprints, which they encourage you to use anyhow because it's less hassle for them (they're often not even charged per part).

(And if you're assembling them yourself, then you can also buy kits of the common ranges to save the hassle and cost of having to maintain a stock)

Re: Designing and assembling my first PCB

#48

Post by ErroneousBosh »

ge96 wrote: post #10
Retr0id wrote: post #2

It's incredible how cheap it is to get custom PCBs made at prototype scale these days, even ones with advanced features. It feels like we're living in a golden era of custom manufacturing.

It is unfortunate hope local companies like OSH Park get love too. The marketing of companies like JLC or pcbway whenever I post a hardware project on a website like Hackaday or Hackster always reach out to me to use em. Not that it would matter so many big makers on YT use em.

The problem with OSH Park is that they're in the US, so they're prohibitively expensive for shipping and there's no guarantee your boards will even make it to you.

I've also got concerns about the quality of American electrical products.

Re: Designing and assembling my first PCB

#49

Post by throwaway219450 »

ErroneousBosh wrote: post #48
ge96 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is unfortunate hope local companies like OSH Park get love too. The marketing of companies like JLC or pcbway whenever I post a hardware project on a website like Hackaday or Hackster always reach out to me to use em. Not that it would matter so many big makers on YT use em.

The problem with OSH Park is that they're in the US, so they're prohibitively expensive for shipping and there's no guarantee your boards will even make it to you. I've also got concerns about the quality of American electrical products.

In the past if you didn't live in the US, OSHPark was a great option. Local fabs were very expensive, had big setup fees and even the "maker" places charged more and you'd only get HASL. Meanwhile OSH gave you 3 with ENIG and the quality has always been excellent. They nailed the automation to make group buys cost effective.

If you live in the US, it's free shipping and for breakout boards or smaller work, still a great option. Unless you're a student, I think most side projects aren't make or break if the boards cost $5 vs $2. Even $20-25 I would consider fair for a one-off side project and they also do $1/sqin medium runs if you need > 10.

Re: Designing and assembling my first PCB

#50

Post by hdbsbdbejj »

radeeyate wrote: post #37
ge96 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is unfortunate hope local companies like OSH Park get love too. The marketing of companies like JLC or pcbway whenever I post a hardware project on a website like Hackaday or Hackster always reach out to me to use em. Not that it would matter so many big makers on YT use em.

I can vouch for OSH Park. Wonderful company, nice people, and really good quality boards. Pads lift so much easier on the cheap Chinese boards that I think it alone makes it worth it to choose local manufacturers. The price is a bit steep for bigger boards but if you're working on a project that they are interested in, they provided financial support every so often. I've gotten a few boards sponsored by them!

Pad lift is mainly an issue with base material and there are only a hand full of copper clad suppliers

Almost everyone is using King Board, and they are high quality

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