So i am getting some boards made with PCBway they are a board manufacturer in China that offer a whole lot of professional services, but also cater for the home brewer. So I thought i would document my experience with them from start to finish.
They offer 10 boards upto 100mm x 100mm in size for $10 US. Which is great for me as most of the projects I build will fit on that size board really easily. The project i was getting build is the board I designed for the Arduno VFO with SI5351a Synth. I designed up the board in Sprint Layout, exported the gerber and excellion files, put them in a zip file and uploaded them to PCBway.
Once a day they have someone check the uploaded files meet with their specifications for track size, drill sizes, board dimensions etc and that you have the correct amount of gerber files etc. About 20mins after uploading i checked and they came back that I was missing the soldermask files. Well the files were in the zip but for some reason I stuffed up something and they contained no data, no big deal, i re-did the files, this time checking for myself that the soldermask contained data by loading them up in Flatcam, and then resubmitted. About an hour later, I got confirmation my files were OK, I could then pay for the job and have it put in the process cue.
This is one really good thing about PCBway, they do not take your money until they have confirmed and checked that they can process your job. Unlike some of the other places that want money without even checking your job is appropriate.
So the rest of this is really just a timeline of how quickly they process the job.
My order date and time was Order time & date: 11/20/2016 6:28:30 PM, from there the job was put in the process and It proceeded as follows.
| MI (Manufacture Instruction) |  |
11/21/2016 9:55:02 PM |
| Board Cutting | |
11/21/2016 10:25:30 PM |
| Drill | |
11/22/2016 4:01:02 AM |
| Plated Through Hole | |
11/22/2016 5:39:16 AM |
| Circuit | |
11/22/2016 8:25:54 AM |
| Etching | |
11/22/2016 10:04:25 AM |
| AOI | |
11/22/2016 2:42:58 PM |
| Solder Mask | |
11/22/2016 7:16:54 PM |
| Silkscreen | |
11/23/2016 12:30:48 AM |
| Surface Treatment | |
11/23/2016 1:58:30 AM |
| Double Drilling | |
11/23/2016 5:58:25 AM |
| Routing | |
11/23/2016 5:58:35 AM |
| Testing | |
11/23/2016 7:18:08 AM |
| Package | |
11/23/2016 8:41:50 AM |
| Delivery Ready | |
11/23/2016 11:48:54 AM |
You can follow online on the website the process of your job as it proceeds through each manufacturing process. All up, from when I booked the job to when it was put in the post, 4 days. Super fast, and when you take DHL as the postage method, a few more days and you will have the boards in your hand. So after receiving the email confirmation that my job has been posted, I checked the tracking number on the DHL website and it shows the job has been picked up, so i expect i will have boards in my hand some Friday this week. So I am estimating, a total of 7 days from order to receipt of the boards. One cannot complain at that.
I will upload this post with pictures of the boards and my thoughts on the quality once I have them in my hands. So far, so good though. Cant wait to see the boards.
Quality of the boards is certainly high. I cannot find any flaw other than the once I made in the design. Its not like PCBway can read my mind, understand my project and fix those things for me HAHAHA.
The board kind of assembled.
And thats the final assembled board. I am one happy customer, and will be going back to PCBway very soon to have more boards made, for some other projects i have in the works. 10 boards, 100mm x 100mm for $10. WIN.
