Found a place for cheap pcb manufacturing

[CrossRoads]

itead delivers to me in eastern US in about 3 weeks. 2 weeks of that seems to be clearing customs, shipping, and clearing customs.
Total time to Australia has been reported as 2 weeks.

[wwbrown]

I have usually gotten my boards back from Itead in a month

[KirAsh4]

Normal shipping from iTead to me has been roughly 3 weeks-ish.  Expedited shipping came back in a week.

[usms123]

OSHPARK  has become even more affordable. I ordered 1.25 inch x 1.25 inch double sided PCB for $7.80 for 3 pieces (We need to order in triplets) making each PCB for $2.60. The price was including shipping. Its awesome price. I am still at prototyping stage so this price is quite good. I ordered on 2nd July , expected delivery is by this weekend. I'll keep you'll posted as to how much time it took. And this was my first time ordering PCB with them.
I do want to know if I can lower price of each PCB to under a dollar as I may need about 50 of them. Any ideas?

[danb35]

iTead or Seeedstudio are both $10 for 10 pieces, up to 5 cm square, or $40 for 50 pieces.  If you want to get clever, you could panelize 9 of your designs onto a 10x10 cm board, $25 for 10 pieces.  You'd need to cut them apart yourself, but that would give you 90 boards for $25, or $0.28 each.  I've only done one board with them, but I was entirely satisfied with the quality and turnaround time.  http://www.seeedstudio.com/depot/fusion-pcb-service-2-layers-p-835.html

Even OSHPark will do $1/in^2 with a minimum order of 150 in^2.  For your board, that would be $1.56 each.  Less than the small-run option with them, but quite a bit more than shipping it off to China.

Edit: That price from seeedstudio isn't exactly comparable to OSHPark, as it doesn't include the ENIG (gold plated) finish on the boards--that adds $16 to the order (and that looks like a flat amount--it doesn't seem to depend on the number or size of the boards ordered).  And, of course, they don't have the purple solder mask, though a number of other colors are available.

[Coding Badly]

Possibly of interest...

http://hackaday.com/2012/09/11/bed-of-nails-and-accuracy-in-pcb-manufacturing/
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/paulstoffregen/teensy-30-32-bit-arm-cortex-m4-usable-in-arduino-a/posts/305527

http://www.meatandnetworking.com/resources/cheap-prototype-pcb-comparison/

[Jack Christensen]

Possibly of interest...

Indeed. I have to believe that iTead and Seeed use the same fab. The prices and offerings are identical, as are the specs, last I checked. I've used both and the boards look identical. For some reason, I get faster (and more consistent) turnaround time from Seeed, just over two weeks. From both, I've had drill hits that I thought could be centered better and the silk screen on my last order was thin. There is definitely some batch-to-batch variation, but I've never had a board not work. I don't suppose my designs are pushing the limits very hard though, in fact I make efforts not to. I've also used OSH Park, their boards are super, obviously superior in several respects.

[Leon Heller]

My last ITead order was accepted on the 11 September. ITead received the boards on the 18 September and I received them via DHL on the 20 September.

[remon404]

Hi,
Sounds very interesting and helpful! Thanks for sharing Electronics hobbiest .Nice price about PCB, i have doubt about their Quality and Reliability, i have been using PCB from a
PCB manufacturer since 2010. initially First time i was started my Electronics works by using cadSoft, now i'm Producing some electronic products thats why lots of PCB demands in every week. I'm delighted about their Quality PCB, reliabilities etc.
Thanks

[Coding Badly]

i have been using PCB from a
PCB manufacturer since 2010.

What is the shipping cost from Anaheim, CA, USA to Dhaka, Bangladesh?

Given your proximity to China, why would you have your boards manufactured in the US?

[dannable]

I cannot see any prices so I'll stick with the likes of Itead and Elecrow.

[PaulS]

Dear All,

I am happy to announce that I am

crossposting all over the place.

Some constraints apply for penalizing

Yep. We should be penalizing you. I suspect that panelizing is what you meant, though.

Your suggestions, inputs and comments are most welcome.

Stop hijacking other threads. Stop crossposting.

[pcbfreak]

I've been using http://www.pcbway.com recently. They have very low prices and the quality so far is very good.
They are based in China. Usually they need 4-5 days for manufacturing the pcbs and about 20 days to ship to europe. (they can ship with EMS or DHL by request)
One their website you can get an instant quote about the cost of your pcbs depending on the specs you want.

for these specs:

Layers:  2
Substrate:  FR4, 1.6mm
Solder Mask Colour:  Blue
Silk Screen:  White
Copper thickness: 1oz
dimensions: 36X72mm
quantity: 50 pieces

The price was 62$ (including shipping)

check the photos on the attachment.

[audioreal]

I've checked out this manufacturer that fellow "pcbfreak" mentions above and it sure is very cheap indeed. I've never tried them before but I am plannning to do so for my next mini-project.
I also saw that they have a big range of available pcb colours that are pretty affordable.

Concering the quality and the durabilty of the pcb:
I usually experiment on my circuits and this process many times I need to disassemble and remove soldered parts and solder new ones. I need to have a good quality pcb for the pads not to be damaged after 2 or 3 component removals. Did you try to disassemble any of your completed circuits? Was the pcb intact after that?

thanks in advance

[pcbfreak]

The pcbs that I got are pretty durable. I've been making soldering and de-solderings during experimentation and I got no problem with any of them. Just be sure to have the right pad-dimensions on your design.