Chinese Pcb Manufacturer Reccomendation.

+1 for Sitopway. I use them all the time. Great quality and the best price I have ever seen.

Is Sitopway cheap for small quantity prototyping?

Let's say 2x3", 10 pcs. Any idea what that would cost?

See the attached. We got 5 of these prototypes made. Total cost, including boards, all parts, assembly and shipping the completed units back to us was $163. They are 4.2" x 2.8". The cost for the 5 boards only was $48.

Just off comparing to iTead. The price is pretty much the same. These boards exceed the 10cm limit and there was and extra charge of $10 for the red, so it prices the same as iTead service would be for the same board. The difference for me is that iTead will not do the parts sourcing and assembly.

As for specific pricing, you'd have to send off your gerber files to Kevin.

I know their price plummets with even moderately higher volumes. We had one PCB bare board we designed for a local school. It was 7cm x 5.5 cm and the cost for 50 boards was $79. iTead's price for that same order would have been $120.

db2db:
Is Sitopway cheap for small quantity prototyping?

Let's say 2x3", 10 pcs. Any idea what that would cost?

not sure, you would have to contact then i will try to find direct contact email, they were the cheapest direct chinese pcb house, i contacted at least 15. 7 day turnaround amazing DHL, just about to place another order again, soon to make a 100 order.

im with BillO, on largeish numbers the price just gets ridiculous cheap

yky_sws@163.com thats a direct email for kevin, very very helpfull and friendly

I have sales@sitopway.com as Kevin's email.

I've been using PCBCart.com since 2007.... have placed bulk orders and re-orders totaling a couple thousand boards with them over last 5 years for several projects. Never had any problems with my boards/products.

On your 1st order, you pay the setup fee.
On your re-orders, you just pay the per PCB cost.

typical 4.5" x 6" PCB is about $3.50 (re-order), with Rohs, Gold Fingers, routed cutouts, routed edges (card connector), and your choice of solder mask color.

Shipping back to the US is about 3 days, via Fedex. Package is on my doorstep the morning of the 3rd day. :slight_smile:

For QUICK PCB prototypes, 3-5 days turnaround ( i.e. final check before I send the gerbers to PCBCart for bulk orders), I use PCBFabExpress.com. Yes, a bit expensive, but the quick turnaround time is great. Typically $90-$100 for (5) boards (any size).

I've used PCBcart as well. Very good and they take Altium files so no gerber mistakes which I like. They even spotted a small mistake once and because they had the CAD file they could fix it.

That said, from what I've heard here I may give Sitopway a go next time, PCBcart's setup fees are a bit steep so the first prototype run is a bit expensive.


Rob

I'll probablly give Sitopway a try too. Digging around their website, I see they do PCB Assembly too (which PCBCart doesn't). And with small minimum orders too!

Yeah, PCBCart is a no-go for first prototype run, but for bulk orders of a proven design, it's great.

Another good company (based in Canada), but PCB manufacturing/assembly done with their partner in China, is Myro.ca
Prices just a tad bit higher than PCBCart, but quality seems also better.... I love their gold plated pads option (but unfortunately, they don't do large areas of gold, like card edge fingers).

I see they do PCB Assembly too

Of particular interest to me at present.

I see they do PCB Assembly too

I wonder what the setup cost is though. I'll certainly be enquiring when my prototypes are debugged.


Rob

Setup cost is just one part... I would estimate approx. $130 (if they're matching other China PCB manufacs out there).

soldering fee (for total TH pad, or SMD part)
Package material fee
Initial/Setup fee
Programming Fee.

If you want them to buy the parts (i.e. you're not shipping them your own parts), there's

Parts Cost
10% Purchase & Exhaust cost (of your total Parts Cost)

  • shipping back to you.

vasquo:
Setup cost is just one part... I would estimate approx. $130 (if they're matching other China PCB manufacs out there).

soldering fee (for total TH pad, or SMD part)
Package material fee
Initial/Setup fee
Programming Fee.

If you want them to buy the parts (i.e. you're not shipping them your own parts), there's

Parts Cost
10% Purchase & Exhaust cost (of your total Parts Cost)

  • shipping back to you.

When you say programming fee, do you mean programming microcontrollers / PLDs or some other type of programming? The reason I ask is my thinking is not to have them program it at all because that requires you to deliver the unencrypted object code to them which creates risks for you. Have appropriate headers as part of the design and do the programming yourself and lock it down. Or am I missing something?

No.
I meant, the PCB assembler, programming their machines (stencil, P&P, oven) to assemble your boards.

It may look like nickel and diming us, but truth is, even with all these fees and shipping from China, it's still cheaper vs. having a US based company manufacture and assemble the boards.

I've sent inquiries to US based companies. They're very arrogant!

  1. They freaking don't respond to you.
  2. If they respond to you and find out you're a small scale business, you never hear from them again.
  3. If they do continue to talk to you, it seems they freakingly almost rob you when they give you an assembly quote... their quote estimate is the equivalent of "here's your ridiculous high quote, now go away."

I tried to give jobs to US companies but they don't want to deal with a small potato like me.
Fine with me... it's going to China.

do sitopway need pick and place files from the design to do assembly, or can they do without them?

I have never had to supply them.

vasquo,
Have you looked at cbas-usa.com in CA?
They've done small runs of boards for me.
Set is $350 or so pick & place programming & stencil creation, then $4-8/PCB for assembly.
Shipping back to you on your FedEx account (simple to setup, FedEx then bills your CC).
Small company, needs payment via check prior to return. They don't do turnkey, you supply the material.

Thanks. Will check them out.

JoeN:
That looks nice. What CAD package did you use? I am going to have to teach myself a CAD package because I am getting mighty tired of soldering wires on pad-per-hole boards, which is how I do it now. If turnaround is 7 days on these things, I think I am going to do a project that I am planning in a month on a professional board like this.

I don't see a way to automatically send them the Gerbers and make an order on their site. A lot of shops have completely automated systems these days.

My first post here as I am just getting into Arduino, but I have designed a few boards. My favorite PCB CAD package for the the hobbyist/small-medium business user so far has to be DipTrace. It's not perfect but it's powerful and very intuitive to learn. I tried Eagle and a few others, this one was by far the easiest to go from knowing nothing to making boards. Just follow the included tutorial (its actually REALLY good). The number of good points is almost too long to list. Things like intuitive interface, easy to use, auto-router (which actually I seldom use but its good for beginners), 3D rendering of the board, logical fair pricing*, etc.

The biggest drawback that I have seen is their libraries. They are organized kind of weird, the library search function (which is a bit odd to use at first) really helps. From the interactions I have seen on their forum and via their reps on other forums (yes the developers actually read the forums and respond to users feature requests and bug reports), it seems they are starting to tackle that issue. They have started making more standard general libraries like (before things were grouped more by manufacturer). Making your own component libraries is about as simple and logical as you can get. I have made several dozen custom parts and many take almost no time at all. It's about as easy as making a PCB layout.

*They have both non-profit versions and for-profit versions. Their limitations between versions are based on number of pins and signal layers (not including ground and power planes which you can make unlimited of), unlike others which limit based on board size. So if you have a 1meter by 1meter board with just 10leds and a battery its fine. For the hobbyist, they have a free Non-profit version that allows two layers and 500 pins (my last project had 48 pins, an arduino board has well under 500 pins I think). Their definition of non-profit says you can't make a profit but selling a few boards for your hobby is OK.

After seeing this I thought I'd email Sitopway for a quote.

Just received it and they quoted me 50USD for 10pcs 100mm x 100mm dual layer, red soldermask, top/bottom silkscreen on 16mm FR4.

That's 20USD more than Elecrow, so looks like I'll be sticking with them.

The OP said 5.2GBP for 130mm x 140mm, so I wonder if that was just per single PCB, ie 10 pcs was 52GBP? That would make more sense at about 80-90USD for 10 pcs 130mm x 140mm, based on what they have quoted me.

Other price comparisons to consider:

10 pieces 100mm x 100mm is $24.90 from iteadstudio, plus $8-10 shipping, something in that range.
Soldermask color is more, I don't bother.
Top & bottom silkscreen is standard.

5 pieces of up to 15cm x 15cm would be $66.20,
10 pieces $132.40

I try and get my designs in the <= 100mmx 100mm size to keep the cost down.

In my case it's EAGLE's limitation of 100mm by 80mm routing space so I never go beyond 100mm*100mm. Seeedstudio offers free shipping on $50 or more so I always order at least three different boards or one board with 50-100 pieces and some prototypes with 10 pieces for the free shipping.