UK PCB Fabrication

[Ian Bell]

What do you use to generate the schematic and netlist ?

Graham

Currently nothing. The design I am doing are very simple tube circuits
so I draw the schematic by hand on a piece of paper. Then in FreePCB I
create the board outline, place components then attach them to nets that
I name as I go along.

FreePCB does recommend TinyCAD I think but I have not tried it.

Cheers

Ian

 

[Ian Bell]

Yes, I've used Screenbond too , and not being far I can even collect the boards as soon as they're
ready.

Graham

So you are near Baldock? I used to live in Litlington.

Cheers

Ian

 

[Ian Bell]

One of my recent orders through PCBCART was for 100 of a *tiny* D/S board only
1200x750 thou. In USD, tooling was $37.80, boards $51, shipping via FedEx $20
or so (seems a minimum charge). Tooling is a once-off charge, so repeat orders
are far cheaper.

If import duty/VAT/GST are levied on the shipped value it would have been $51
out of ~$110.

To date - and maybe I have been lucky - we have not been hit with any import
costs despite orders being up to $A450 or so. Maybe our regime's rules are more
tolerant than UK.

Just so you can do a quick comparison, one job that is about to head to PCBCART
is for 40 boards that are 3000x2000 - D/S PTH and SM. Tooling $34.74, shipping
$29.54, boards $70 - total $US134.29 or about $A155 - less than $A4 apiece in my
hands 12 days from order. And their delivery is on the contracted day, every
time.

Don't misunderstand - I'm not pushing PCBCART (or anyone's barrow for that
matter). But as another poster pointed out, *many* so-called domestic board
fabs are simply front-offices for Chinese fabs, as it is virtually impossible to
compete with them on a cost basis, and with comparable or better quality.

I checked out my board on their site. 20 boards, 12 day turnaround,
double sided, tota1 order came to 191USD including shipping and tooling
which at current exchange rates is about 117GBP. I know I am going to
pay 8GBP VAT handling which make thes total 125GBP. The Tecbridge quote
for the same board is 139 GBP. So PCBCart is cheaper but not by much and
as I said before, if it all goes wrong, at least I can beat up an
Englishman about it.. I expect PCBCart will be more competitive at
higher volumes.

Cheers

Ian

 

[Scott Dorsey]

I am just having some PCBs made here in the UK using Tecbridge Circuits

http://www.tecbridgecircuits.co.uk/

Never used them before but their on line calculator gives pretty much
the best prices I have seen in Europe without the hassle of exchange
rates. I uploaded the files and emailed an order this afternoon. A
couple of hours later I got a phone from them with a couple of minor
technical queries and my order was placed - and they'll start work
before I have even paid.

They use, and in fact prefer, files created with FreePCB which is great.
So far, customer service has been excellent. I'll let you know what
the boards are like when I get them.

A lot of the outfits that do small prototype jobs today will take a large
number of individual customers' boards, put them all on one board, and have
it fabricated off-shore. Although the Chinese manufacturing folks have some
pretty severe problems, the one thing they are doing right and have down
very well is PC board manufacture. I highly recommend this approach if you
can wait a couple weeks and don't have money to waste.
--scott

 

[Ian Bell]

A lot of the outfits that do small prototype jobs today will take a large
number of individual customers' boards, put them all on one board, and have
it fabricated off-shore. Although the Chinese manufacturing folks have some
pretty severe problems, the one thing they are doing right and have down
very well is PC board manufacture. I highly recommend this approach if you
can wait a couple weeks and don't have money to waste.
--scott

Agreed. I first started using Chinese electronics manufacture in 1987
and although they have problems from time to time with various aspects
of it, the one thing we never had a problem with was a PCB. That said,
we were only using mostly using double sided and the occasional 4 layer
board. Cannot speak for very dense boards or more layers.

Cheers

Ian


Cheers

Ian