Looking for someone to do small quantity of PCB's from 80's docs

I'm looking for someone to do small quantity of PCB's. I have original design films and slightly crude engineering drawings from the 80's but no gerbers. I want to find somebody who will take what I have and do whatever it takes to make me 12-20 PCB's with minimal input or instruction from me.  I can provide a sample PCB.

I realize that setup time is a big factor for a small quantity like this and will add cost. That's ok.

Any suggestions? Thanks in advance.

You could try posting this in the Jobs Available board. It would probably help a lot if you also post a schematic. As long as it's not terribly complicated, it shouldn't be difficult for someone to do schematic capture and layout and make gerbers that you can send to whomever. My only concern would be that if the drawings are not crystal clear, there will be a few mistakes that will require another revision. Even simple designs usually have a mistake or two. So you should create one set of 2-3, try one out and then do another revision of 12-20. If they're just line cards or something simple, you might get lucky on the first pass.

Hi David

Sent you a PM

-Nathan

Thanks for the replies. I guess I wasn't clear, but my thought was to find a commercial shop that would do the whole thing themselves. I'll consider the suggestion, but having an individual do the prep and then forwarding instructions to a fabricator, I'd be concerned about added lead time, miscommunications, and who would take responsibility in the event of a problem.

Nathan, I don't see a message from you yet, but will keep checking.

Thanks again.

You are pointlessly vague. Just post the stuff right here and we'll comment if there is anything worth while.

David Kulka said:

Thanks for the replies. I guess I wasn't clear, but my thought was to find a commercial shop that would do the whole thing themselves. I'll consider the suggestion, but having an individual do the prep and then forwarding instructions to a fabricator, I'd be concerned about added lead time, miscommunications, and who would take responsibility in the event of a problem.

Nathan, I don't see a message from you yet, but will keep checking.

Thanks again.

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Just resent it. I accidentally hit the "Preview" button.  ;D

Kingston said:

You are pointlessly vague. Just post the stuff right here and we'll comment if there is anything worth while.

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I'm really not sure what you mean, or what other info you think I should have posted here. But if it helps, these PCB's are for replacement modules for a somewhat famous line of studio effects units that I've serviced for about 15 years. They are about the size of a cigarette pack and as I said, house 4 IC's plus about 20 small resistors and capacitors. The PCB's are double sided. I'm looking for a PCB fabrication place that can work from original photographic negative films (which show the foils and holes) and blueprint type drawings from the original run back in the 1980's, plus a sample PCB, and do a short run for me.

I'm not looking for help to vet a design idea. I'm seeking a recommendation for a shop that can do small runs like this and work from vintage, pre-CAD documentation.

I have an NDA with the original manufacturer, so cannot post schematics or other proprietary info here, unfortunately.

Marshall Time Modulator?

Try contacting some of the more popular PCB houses.  They may offer such services on-site.  A few that Ian mentioned in another thread are:


https://www.seeedstudio.com/

https://www.pcbway.com/

http://www.allpcb.com/

More listed here: http://www.ladyada.net/library/pcb/manufacturers.html

David Kulka said:

I'm really not sure what you mean, or what other info you think I should have posted here. But if it helps, these PCB's are for replacement modules for a somewhat famous line of studio effects units that I've serviced for about 15 years. They are about the size of a cigarette pack and as I said, house 4 IC's plus about 20 small resistors and capacitors. The PCB's are double sided. I'm looking for a PCB fabrication place that can work from original photographic negative films (which show the foils and holes) and blueprint type drawings from the original run back in the 1980's, plus a sample PCB, and do a short run for me.

I'm not looking for help to vet a design idea. I'm seeking a recommendation for a shop that can do small runs like this and work from vintage, pre-CAD documentation.

I have an NDA with the original manufacturer, so cannot post schematics or other proprietary info here, unfortunately.

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Getting small PCBs made in China are crazy cheap... but they do not use photographic transfer process, pretty much everything is done from digital Gerber files.  (I haven't used film since the 80/90s)

There are freeware PCB layout systems for boards that small that could generate the CAD design files, but you would have to input new circuit data into the design software.

4 ICs and 20 passives seems a simple enough circuit to reverse engineer (of course you need to take care to be accurate).

There are many people here who could do this, even you could do it (not rocket science), but you would have to learn a few new secret handshakes to operate the layout software (and invest some time).

I doubt you are going to machine assemble the boards, so you do not need an identical physical duplicate, just a functional equivalent  (same size, same attachment points, same I/O connections. )

Good luck

JR

PS: I see PCB design service offered in the "available for hire forum" and you might make you request in the "jobs available forum". Before contracting out your PCB design task perhaps ask for evidence of the quality of their work.

David Kulka said:

I have an NDA with the original manufacturer, so cannot post schematics or other proprietary info here, unfortunately.

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I see.

I have traced an old pre-cad PCB and had a small batch made here on the forum.  Didn't bother with laying it out on KiCAD because I didn't want to reinvent ground return paths of this old design. I did it with Corel Draw but the free open source Inkscape or the popular Adobe Illustrator will do just the same.

You scan the old film, blueprint or crappy photocopy and open the bitmap in your vector graphics software of choice - one of the three above basically. And retrace the thing with vector drawing.

Then hand the resulting PDF over to someone who still does classic PCB work. Not the chinese, but something like Gustav if he is still around.

Moden CAD layout can make fluid traces that look like they were made with film transfer. Eagle CAD has a line style that makes partial circles and seems like it would be perfectly effective at replicating the look of a film transfer.

Of course the trace edges will be perfect and the boards will be glossy so it won't fool anyone. But it might be a nice compromise.

I remember this guy from years ago.  He mainly sells items for the Ham radio hobbyists, but also does custom boards from film negatives.  Note that the double sided boards are NOT plated through.

https://farcircuits.net/#Custom%20boards

Bri

Kingston said:

I see.

I have traced an old pre-cad PCB and had a small batch made here on the forum.  Didn't bother with laying it out on KiCAD because I didn't want to reinvent ground return paths of this old design. I did it with Corel Draw but the free open source Inkscape or the popular Adobe Illustrator will do just the same.

You scan the old film, blueprint or crappy photocopy and open the bitmap in your vector graphics software of choice - one of the three above basically. And retrace the thing with vector drawing.

Then hand the resulting PDF over to someone who still does classic PCB work. Not the chinese, but something like Gustav if he is still around.

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Be careful about trying to make accurate IC footprints with a manual drafting system, spacing matters... 

JR

JohnRoberts said:

Be careful about trying to make accurate IC footprints with a manual drafting system, spacing matters... 

JR

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Modern vector graphics software is pretty far from a manual drafting system. It's the same as any CAD, just that it probably makes it easier to deal with a whole bunch of scan import options to get the original source (reference) in there. Maybe autocad or some open source variant has all the same options but I've no personal experience.

Hi David

i sent you a PM with local man info.
Duke

Thanks everyone for all the helpful replies. With all those good suggestions I'm sure I'll be able to find a place to take on this project. Much appreciated.