Greetings All,
I am rushing to get a project done and wondering if anyone on here knows of anyone who can produce me a PCB including assembly in a couple of days? Nothing special, 2 later board, doesn't even need solder resist and silk screen. About 200mm X 100mm board, 40 components to place and 80 vias.
Really needs to be UK based so shipping doesnt add delays.
Umm, 2 days? Look locally then. Phone book, web, whatever, but don't expect miracles. Who's doing the PCB artwork? Is price a concern? Will you drive to pick it up? The timeline is difficult.
You are asking for a commercial business doing thousands of boards a day to stop all operations and just do your boards. Most places that assemble boards send the artwork to another business to actually create the board and they will have to stop work just to make you boards. Not going to happen!
What will you do when there is an error in your board or bill of material or parts for your assembly are a long lead time?
Typically the fab and assembly are done by different companies or one company might sub-contract the other.
One place I used to work would frequently pay a premium for 1-day turnaround on the assembly but I don't remember if we could get boards fabricated in one day.
Considering that the bare boards have to be transported to the assembly house, that would probably be a 3-day process at best.
For the assembly they had built the boards, or a different version of the board previously. There can be a lot of time in set-up, especially for a 1st time run. It usually takes more than a day just to get a quote. It would help if you can get the documentation to them in advance.
I wouldn't be surprised if it costs $1000 (or Pounds) or more for one board or a few boards! One time we were in a rush and we used a "new" assembly house that was withing walking distance to build one board. The stupid boss didn't want to wait for a quote... I don't remember how much it cost but when we got the bill I said, "We could have hired a technician for a week".
Another time they were in a rush and they paid our regular assembly house for one-day turn- around. It was a new board (or a new version of the board) and somehow the data bus got left-off of the board and since there was "no time" to check before assembly, we got a small batch of useless fully-assembled boards.
So that's another thing to think about - I'm not a PCB designer but I've worked in electronics for a long time and maybe once I saw a board that was "perfect" on the version... There are usually some mistakes. Sometimes the board can be made to work (with "cuts & jumps") but usually it needs one or more revisions to get it right.
I recently made my 1st "computer designed" PCB for a hobby project. It was simpler than yours, but it had a couple of mistakes and I had to go to revision-2 which was good. I REALLY TRIED to get it right the 1st time and I thought it was OK but wasn't really shocked... Just disappointed.
I'm really curious about all this. I hope the OP has an interesting tale to tell, saying what it is all about and how it became so urgent. Also, of course, if a good solution is found.
If you find references to one-day-turn-around, the will only be available to long-time, very high volume repeat customers. My company sometime did that when hand assembly could be done and someone was available to do the work.
You need to actually learn the steps required to actually produce a new circuit board and the steps required to find and place all the parts you require.
Thanks to everyone who has responded on this, some very interesting feedback.
Few points to hopefully enlighten you all:
The reason for wanting it urgently is because I am playing around with a few sensors on a data logging board just for fun but with some holiday coming up I'm thinking... Can I get this turned into a board before my holiday( it's at breadboard stage but all drawn up in Eagle PCB) I thought it would be an impossibility but where else could I get that confirmed? Thanks community!
Also, I was wondering if anyone had a voltera and were offering a print on demand service just like some of the early adopters of hobby 3D printers did?
There are also prototyping services that use a routing process to produce one-off and small quantity boards; if you have a layout, they might actually be able to produce what you want in that timeframe. Without a completed PCB layout, you're out of luck, IMHO.
Thanks @camsysca do you know of anyone in the UK that might offer this? I have googled but nothing like a recommendation.
No, don't even have a current Canadian reference. For all I know, they've gone the way of the dodo bird, but there was one in Toronto circa 2015, I talked to them quite a bit at an expo fair sort of affair in Ottawa. Most people I know are going the Chinese route, with 2-week turnaround and drop dead cheap prices, if you do your own assembly.
Are you sure you need a double sided board? That time for drilling and plating for vias will add at least another day to produce a board. Vias are always done using a CNC machine. so creating the program is a big step for one or two boards.
Furthermore, making one or two boards means having to combine several low volume projects to fit a single panel. More delay time. That is why cost is so great.
If you're making one, that's a circuit that's entirely do-able on protoboard or breadboard. Why the fixation with an unattainable PCB?
Of course, that may be jumping to conclusions, as we've seen neither PCB layout nor schematic.
At my last job we sometimes used Sierra Circuits
They are very good and extremely fast, but definitely not cheap. You can sometimes get 24-hour turnaround.
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