Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Designing and assembling my first PCB

vilkeliskis.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 98 posts

Re: Designing and assembling my first PCB

#51

Post by willis936 »

krapht wrote: post #17
1024bits wrote: post #5

JLCPCB is often the manufacturer of choice with DIY PCBs, and the reputation is well deserved. I recommend them as well, have never had an issue with what they've made. It's a bit pricier for a one-off board given the MOC, so it's preferable to do some sort of group buy if you can.

Slight tangent: a long time ago when I was into this hobby, Oshpark was usually the go-to instead of JLCPCB. What happened to them? Macrofab too if anyone's used them.

OSHPark is bare board fab only but JLC does turnkey. I've enjoyed working with CircuitHub for turnkey prototypes. I'm not in love with the web interface (source files must be uploaded so if you have silkscreen that has dynamic parameters you need to make a ticket and the BOM parser misses stuff very often so every project needs an audit).

Re: Designing and assembling my first PCB

#52

Post by Animats »

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's a loss leader by JLBPCB to get the high-volume contract. Or so said the head of OshPark eight years ago.[1]

There does seem to be a willingness by Chinese manufacturers to deal with small-volume makers and sellers. Look at the minimum order quantities on Alibaba. That's supposed to be a wholesale market, but often wholesale starts at 2 units.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/PrintedCircuitBoard/comments/9bt5ed...

Re: Designing and assembling my first PCB

#53

Post by goodpoint »

1024bits wrote: post #5

JLCPCB is often the manufacturer of choice with DIY PCBs, and the reputation is well deserved. I recommend them as well, have never had an issue with what they've made. It's a bit pricier for a one-off board given the MOC, so it's preferable to do some sort of group buy if you can.

Their shipping costs are too high.

Re: Designing and assembling my first PCB

#55

Post by ErroneousBosh »

Legend2440 wrote: post #14
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…

What happened is that you can get a set of 5 custom PCBs for about $2. The quality is much higher and you don't have to deal with nasty chemicals. I'll never manually etch a board ever again if I can help it.

Ferric chloride isn't that nasty, it just stains everything.

Electricity costs 25 pence per kWh here. I don't have to make many boards before JLC becomes cheaper than firing up the heated bubble etch tank.

I first started using JLC instead of etching at home in early 2020, and since then I've had a small child, so yeah I'm not running the bubble tank with a 6-year-old running around. Maybe in a couple of years we'll do one by hand, drawing the tracks on the PCB with a Dalo pen and so on, because I remember doing that with my dad when I wasn't much older than my son is now.

But that is definitely going to be an Outside Toy.

Re: Designing and assembling my first PCB

#56

Post by wildzzz »

hananova wrote: post #28
bschwindHN wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OshPark's quality is high, but their prices are certainly higher too. Good to support them though if you live in the States, since that's where they manufacture the boards.

That's kind of the problem though. jlc/pcbway aren't just "cheaper", for anything 2 or 4 layer that doesn't require special coatings, thickness, or finish such as gold fingers, it's just so cheap and fast that it makes no financial sense to buy locally. You'd pay several hundred percents more to get the boards maybe 1-2 business days earlier. In addition, china is where all the world's pcbs are made, even for commerc…

OSHPark is more comparable to JLC if you squeeze your design down to the absolute smallest footprint. They market to hobbyists but only in the sense that you're doing this as a side project to your regular hardware engineering job and have access to a rework station to install 0402s and BGAs (i.e. you have the skills and tools to actually design and build a tiny board). I wouldn't use OSHPark to make something the size of a conference badge unless I specifically needed it to be domestically produced or I was selling it. JLC offers purple and black soldermask too.

Re: Designing and assembling my first PCB

#57

Post by swed420 »

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…

I still do mine at home, though I mostly only build one-offs with older style thru-hole components where tolerances are not as sensitive.

Usually I can get away with using a simple Sharpie marker mask, though I've also had good luck in the past with the toner transfer method for more intricate designs:

https://www.thompdale.com/pcb_etch/gotee_board_production/Ea...

Re: Designing and assembling my first PCB

#59

Post by jimnotgym »

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…

They are lower quality, but you actually made them yourself, and that comes with a satisfaction that cannot be gained from sending a drawing to China.

Edit: and many perfectly useful projects use through hole components. Not everything of value had a microprocessor

Re: Designing and assembling my first PCB

#60

Post by MSFT_Edging »

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.

Osh makes pretty good boards but the customer service for the Chinese fabs are on another level.

I got a few small simple boards made through OSH to test their services and their user portal basically left me in the dark for 1-2 weeks.

I'd still use them again but JLC and PCBWay are operating at another level.

Post reply on HN