Inexpensive One-Off Board Houses?

Does anyone know of any boardhouses that will do one board for cheap in the US?

Thanks,
-E

or in the EU, Australia, or other places ? :?

http://www.pcbnet.com

http://www.pcb4less.com

https://www.barebonespcb.com/!BB1.asp

To name a few...

Peace!
Charlie

in europe:

http://www.pcbpool.com

http://www.olimex.com (really really really cheap)

http://www.pcbtrain.co.uk


only problem is actually populating the boards. For suface mount stuff (which i'm more interested in i'm afraid) doing it at home can be done, but it's a pain. I'd rather have a board company put them on for me

Anyway - for my net project, i'll probably try olimex.

chrz

R

Does anyone remember the name of that PCB fab house based in Canada, but send the PCB designs to China? China then sends the finished PCB back to you... I remember it being cheap.

Never mind... found it.

http://www.myropcb.com/

Owel

It'd be interesting to find out their minimum order. One of our local fab houses will send designs to China, but a minimum of 20 sq metres.....

Peter

On the website,

1 layer prototype print circuit boards only $19. ea.
2 layers prototype print circuit boards only $20. ea.
4 layers prototype print circuit boards only $39.99 ea.
6 layers prototype print circuit boards only $72.99 ea.
# No min. order require, max. 25 sq inch for 1 layers boards. $0.56 per sq. inch charge over 25 sq. inch.
# Min. order is 4 PCs for 2, 4, 6 layer boards, max. 30 sq. inch for 4 and 6 layers boards.

This is for prototype one-off boards.

NOTE: I haven't used these guys but planning to.

Anyone who sends an original design off to China is just asking to be ripped off.

Hi!

Thanks for all of the cool links.

Just one question - how will a design be ripped off if you only send the board layout? How will they now what goes in the holes!! Do you always have to send off schemos as well for error checking?

Is it really that dodgy?

Cheers Tom

Dave, I've thought about that.

But on my schematics, I don't have any part values. Just R1, R2, Q1, Q2, etc...

Mine's not original, so they'll be ripping off a ripoff design.

Piracy is a REAL big problem with China. If you're just building a clone, though, I suppose it's a non-issue.

I'd rather keep the money and the work here in the States, rather than contribute--even in such a small way--to the continued erosion of our electronics industry. But hey, that's just me...

when they stage their land invasion of the US, in the bombed out tanks and shit we find, we are gonna see 1272 clone amps in the COM and were all gonna be like, WTF?

dave

What is it that you need, and how fast do you need it ?

I wouldnt mind donating a single production panel to our hardworking admin as a thank you for hosting this place. I just have to much to get it thru quickly these days, would be 3-4 weeks. PM open.


Gustav

oh and soundguy. Was in the cinema with my small siblings this weekend. At one point a cat suggested shaving a donkey. I thought of you for some reason.

Gustav

The price can be a lot lower if you can pour the used etchant down the drain instead of disposing of it properly like you have to here.

Anyways, I'm in Canada and I tend to use http://www.apcircuits.com for double sided plated-through boards, for anything simpler, I etch them myself using a positive photoresist process and transparency film.

I've been looking at a bunch of these sites and so far I've gotten the cheapest prices from PCB Pro: 100 6" x 4" double-sided, double silk-screened boards for <$7/piece (versus an average of about $15 anywhere else).

DO recheck your quote before you buy, though...

Peace,
Al.

EDIT:

Actually, scratch that... if you only do a few boards (10 or less), the price shoots up way over their competitors...

Peace,
Al.

I've looked at them... but 100pcs isn't exactly considered a "prototype run". It's more of a production run.

I have a PCB design, I've etched it manually and it works. I want to do one professional prototype board. If I'm satisfied with the text, layout, quality, etc... I'll do a production run of 25 or 50 boards for my initial batch.

It's doing that single prototype "demo" board that is very costly.

After shipping, setup fees, minimum quantity order, the quote is anywhere from $75 to $150 for that prototype board.

And again. PM me if you need larger quanteties of something fabbed.

Gustav

In Germany:
http://www.gsel.com/

JH.