Anyone know of a PCB manufacturer that can approach the price levels charged by JLCPCB, but will review the boards before payment ?
A 10cm x 10cm board is currently $5 and JLPCB and for that price the quality is very good.
Unfortunatly they have now removed the option to review boards before payment. If they can find a problem in the review they will refund the cost of that board, but if you still want the board made you will now face another carriage charge, and they have been rising fairly steeply of late.
So anyone out there with JLCPCB price levels who will review boards before payment ?
UKHeliBob:
How do PCBWay deal with the situation ?
No idea. never used them, might join them and see.
You might think I am a cynic, but I assume that the carriage charges made are at cost + a profit so its possible there is an incentive for a PCB manufacturer to find a minor problem and reject a least one boards in an order.
srnet:
Anyone know of a PCB manufacturer that can approach the price levels charged by JLCPCB, but will review the boards before payment ?
A 10cm x 10cm board is currently $5 and JLPCB and for that price the quality is very good.
Unfortunatly they have now removed the option to review boards before payment. If they can find a problem in the review they will refund the cost of that board, but if you still want the board made you will now face another carriage charge, and they have been rising fairly steeply of late.
So anyone out there with JLCPCB price levels who will review boards before payment ?
I'm just trying to understand the problem here in case I also face it.
You pay for boards and carriage (delivery). They find a fault and refund the money. That bit I've got. But how do you lose the carriage charges ?
Have they excluded your board from a larger order on the grounds that its design contains errors ? That means that you receive a partial order but the item containing the error would have to be shipped separately ? Or what ?
6v6gt:
You pay for boards and carriage (delivery). They find a fault and refund the money. That bit I've got. But how do you lose the carriage charges ?
I did not say you lose the carriage charge.
When a single board in an order (of several boards) has a 'fault' they will dleiver the other boards.
But ......... you then have to submit another order and pay another carriage charge, if you still want the 'faulty' (after the problem is fixed) board.
The effect is to raise the cost of having your original quantity of boards by $25 or more.
srnet:
When a single board in an order (of several boards) has a 'fault' they will dleiver the other boards.
Can you specify in the order to contact you if a fault is detected, before proceeding with the remainder of the order? Or to simply cancel the entire order if there is a problem with any of the boards?
OK. I see. I use allpcb.com. When I made an error with one board ( I made a last minute alteration to the design without rerunning the design rules check which, as a side effect in kicad, redraws the ground plane etc.) they contacted me and held up that board. I was able to resubmit the gerber file set. I did nothing explicit to suspend the entire order and it did not even occur to me that they might have split the faulty board away from the main order. I may have been lucky that I acted quickly enough.
That’s what running DRC (Design Rule Checking ) does.
Can not agree more Basically that's all they do as a check as well.
Other option is dirtypcbs.com, they basically just don't check anything But don't think they do lead free but I don't know why you ever want crappy lead free anyway...
david_2018:
Can you specify in the order to contact you if a fault is detected, before proceeding with the remainder of the order? Or to simply cancel the entire order if there is a problem with any of the boards?
They used to allow you to do this, you could submit the a set of boards in an order for approval and when approved you would get an email to pay for them. If one failed their checks, you were told what the problem was and could re-submit the corrected board.
Now, although clearly they have to do these checks anyway, you have to pay for all the total order in advance and when they do their checks (done anyway remember) they refund the cost of the a board that fails. Hence the double carriage charge problem.
The old method used to work just fine, you would be notified any problems in a couple of hours, and you could sort them out.
srnet:
I know, I have been using DRC (on Eagle) for years as well and it does miss things sometimes.
KiCad user myself but that's not simply because you didn't set up the DRC rules according to the specs of the fab house? Default DRC rules are pretty generic but they may not be correct for every fab house.
septillion:
KiCad user myself but that's not simply because you didn't set up the DRC rules according to the specs of the fab house? Default DRC rules are pretty generic but they may not be correct for every fab house.
Not as simple as that.
I have had boards rejected for something that passes DRC but does not 'look' correct.
I had one panelised board rejected as it was too small for the V score machine, there is a minimum dimension here of 70mm, which at the time was not mentioned in their capabilities (not checked recently).
The point to be made here, is that they check the boards anyway, generating the refund probably costs them more in system time than accepting a corrected board.
Basically that's all they do as a check as well.
But don't think they do lead free but I don't know why you ever want crappy lead free anyway...