That's great to see, as much as many seem to crap on the Chinese, they have taken pcb design/prototyping to another level as far as affordability, quality of service and product. many designs-> products would not be economical, using on shore pcb fab. I'd say >50% of the components I buy from Mouser show COO of CHN as it is 
I crossed what I consider a milestone at jlcpcb, design #300 submission, one design was on is on its 5th rev, basically all to deal with parts obsolescences, necessary design/pcb changes etc.
Its fun to take your design and quote it using some of the higher performance substrates, like now they have Rogers and teflon, where's John Curl, we can proto in teflon now Last time I saw flex and a teflon pcb's was at Motorola for some RF device
FR-4=$2.68CDN
FLEX=$21.41
Roger=$128.04
PTFE=$63.82
Aluminum=$5.35
Anyone make an Aluminum? I assume they are single sided designs with no plated holes?
I crossed what I consider a milestone at jlcpcb, design #300 submission, one design was on is on its 5th rev, basically all to deal with parts obsolescences, necessary design/pcb changes etc.
Its fun to take your design and quote it using some of the higher performance substrates, like now they have Rogers and teflon, where's John Curl, we can proto in teflon now
Last time I saw flex and a teflon pcb's was at Motorola for some RF deviceFR-4=$2.68CDN
FLEX=$21.41
Roger=$128.04
PTFE=$63.82
Aluminum=$5.35
Anyone make an Aluminum? I assume they are single sided designs with no plated holes?
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Rookie question here : Why would I want to render my design down to a multipliity of Gerber files and other associated files when I can simply send my Protel *.pcb file to pcbway.com and they produce excellent boards every time. I DO NOT CARE if they sell my obscure widget designs to the Russians, Martians or anyone else.
This is actually one area where the Chinese are AHEAD of the US - in PCB/laminate fabrication. Todays cell phone designs would not be physically possible without it. Multilayer designs with very tight spacings (and controlled impedances), thousands not hundreds of pins on ICs which are flip chip mounted to it. For pennies. Literally pennies for each one of these boards that goes into said phone. Several dollars with of chips on it, but the boards are next to nothing, made by the millions.
The military has finally started getting interested in this interconnect technology (they always lag) and have trouble getting suppliers to deliver it. Why? They are all in China. The US board houses haven’t figured out how to miniaturize stuff like that yet, can’t reliably deliver, and are stuck playing catch up. Boards that would be pennies apiece sold to Apple would be several hundred dollars each. Then they get them and they don’t meet spec. Or it takes six months instead of two weeks. “Programs are in place” to address this but they are 20 years behind and they have their work cut out for them.
JLC probably doesn’t do anything that advanced. But I’m sure they’re applying everything they know at Subtron making cell phone laminates to make the old school 5 mil line/5mil space FR4 stuff… cheap and fast. They’ve got to get a factory moving very smoothly to do either.
I'd agree the Chinese are ahead at this moment, but to say they were always ahead of mil is a bit of a reach. I'd call it more a passing of the baton. I worked in the VHSIC program in the 80's. Just a few of the commercial effects were EBEAM photo tech, X-Ray litho, VHDL(also spawned verilog), multi-chip package, PGA, wafer scale/redundant module methods, built in self test(scan), ATPG, photo resist tech, better thermal package design, SCS came up with GDT/LSIM(a multi-mode simulator), hierarchical design/verification methods, ADA and I am sure I am missing many others. It was a very large program with multiple contractors including IBM, Mot, Hughes, Perkin Elmer(MEBES if you've heard of that) to name a few. The CAD industry in particular was pushed hard by the VHSIC contractors for better tools. In the 80's TRW was doing thick and thin film modules for defense. The real problem was volume was needed for all semi to make it cost effective. Here the military failed, because it is not a high volume biz. Single parts could be 5-10 thousand in the 80's. So most of what was done ended up in the commercial world where it was further advanced as volumes came up. The mil fabs closed. Just think about the average number of transistors a household had in the 80's in all their devices versus today. Hundreds versus hundreds of billions. It is a problem though. The secure-ness of building a part outside of your control is a problem.
Too late for that.
Rather than worrying about a few random designs which might get stolen, the MAIN problem is that the WHOLE Electronics Industry has been relocated to China.
Blame Sharp for being lazy and cheap and not building those ovens themselves.
If you put some steak on the table and leave the room, don't blame your dog or cat for eating it.
For safety, at the same he very minimum split the job to different unconnected OEM suppliers.
An early case was that of Digitech, US designer and manufacturer of multi effect Guitar pedal boards.
A Chinese factory made them, without a ROM chip containing proprietary DSP programming, which was later inserted in US.
Predictably, one year later a "mystery brand" clone appeared on the market.
It was "exact same" but .... effects were Cr*p 😎
If you ever look to repair a household appliance yourself, it turns out the search for parts and or service manuals leads to finding out the models of microwaves, dishwashers, clothes washers, refrigerators, etc., are nearly all made by a few manufacturers and then sold under different labels.
Edit: pretty generic microwave service manual attached for your reading pleasure.
Don't worry about the Russians... aren't they using washing machine and coffee maker boards in their missiles? 😄😄😄
Thanks for the manual, I just need to repair mine, "mystery brand".
As on "10% of factories make 90% of anything" fully agree.
See it all the time.
The exact same amp is being packaged inside Acoustic or Kustom guitar amp cabinets, with proper graphics, colours, knobs, etc. , and Musicians think they are buying either one or the other iconic US amp used by The Doors or Creedence Clearwater Revival.
Same with TVs, notebooks, DVD players, etc.
In this video about a monster coffee maker, pressing iron and electric grill Factory (18.000 employees, the size of Monaco), when they show the packing section you can see all kinds of brands (Philips, Oster, etc.), many of them European, printed on cartons.
All come from the same (monster) assembly line.
Funny thing is, they have since left China ("too expensive") for Vietnam
There is a general sequence of countries that products destined for the USA either have (or will) progress through based on the type of skills required, labor costs, and trade incentives. I vetted factories for years, and the sequence was roughly the same every single time based on product line. The companies that sit at the "top of the food chain" and either own the factories or run the contracts are few and far between (relatively speaking).
For products destined for our shores, our federal government (and to some extent governments of the manufacturing locations) controls where things are made for a lot of large-volume manufacturing. They do this through trade policy as a fairly reasonable rule of thumb. Of course there are exceptions... I am speaking VERY generally.
You can also (again, generally) see which countries industries move toward first as those target countries emerge from agrarian or otherwise subsistence / non-manufacturing-based economies toward more skilled manufacturing. The US still (somewhat) shapes where and how raw materials move throughout a world supply chain. The duty rates for certain products even within a broad "product line" might fascinate some... and infuriate others. The USA's HTS (Harmonized Tariff Schedule) is just as much a joke as our federal tax code. It is part and parcel an incentive package.
China's government through their "silk road" process is chipping away at a rate unseen in quite some time. They will be / if they are already not the controlling factor in the world supply chain for (my guess) over 50% of consumer goods world-wide.
The number of 'stable' countries toward which manufacturing can be moved is diminishing...
Branding has long since taken over in the USA vs. manufacturing.
Sorry for the OT... A passionate topic (for me anyway).
Depending on where you are in the world, the perspective can differ vastly.
For products destined for our shores, our federal government (and to some extent governments of the manufacturing locations) controls where things are made for a lot of large-volume manufacturing. They do this through trade policy as a fairly reasonable rule of thumb. Of course there are exceptions... I am speaking VERY generally.
You can also (again, generally) see which countries industries move toward first as those target countries emerge from agrarian or otherwise subsistence / non-manufacturing-based economies toward more skilled manufacturing. The US still (somewhat) shapes where and how raw materials move throughout a world supply chain. The duty rates for certain products even within a broad "product line" might fascinate some... and infuriate others. The USA's HTS (Harmonized Tariff Schedule) is just as much a joke as our federal tax code. It is part and parcel an incentive package.
China's government through their "silk road" process is chipping away at a rate unseen in quite some time. They will be / if they are already not the controlling factor in the world supply chain for (my guess) over 50% of consumer goods world-wide.
The number of 'stable' countries toward which manufacturing can be moved is diminishing...
Branding has long since taken over in the USA vs. manufacturing.
Sorry for the OT... A passionate topic (for me anyway).
Depending on where you are in the world, the perspective can differ vastly.
I've looked at it in the past. Yep. Single layer. No plated holes. Thin FR-4 with an aluminum substrate. Assembled using the normal reflow process. Aluminum boards work well for heat transfer, but I seem to recall that the dielectric breakdown strength was on the low side. 50 V or something. Don't quote me on the exact number. It was too low for my needs at the time.
I'm generally not a fan of supporting the Chinese manufacturers if I have the option not to. I have my boards made in the outskirts of Toronto, Canada. The boards cost more but also include gold plating and a full electrical test of every board before it leaves the manufacturer. They're maybe 15% more expensive than boards from the Chinese manufacturer I used to use.
With the Chinese fab I used to use I did have a couple of board defects even though I hardly push the process. One board had a hole that wasn't drilled all the way through. It looked like the drill snapped halfway through and they didn't notice or didn't care. I had another board with a broken trace, which is remarkable since the skinniest trace was 15 mils wide on that board. I've put a lot of boards through my Canadian manufacturer and have yet to see a defective board.
That said, nothing prevents anyone from following Mark's procedure with any of the US manufacturers, including OSH Park and Digikey DK Red. I generally find that the manufacturers are able to follow KiCAD's file naming conventions so as long as you provide a .zip file with all the relevant layers you're likely to find that it's a simple upload, approve, pay process.
Tom
Keep in mind that PCB layout has been around since before Protel. The standard flow is to submit Gerber files for the copper and silk screen and Echelon files for the drills. That's just how the world works. It's a tried-and-true workflow. It's also agnostic of footprints and such, so all you're sharing with the PCB manufacturer is aperture flashes which reduces the probability of errors.
But as you say, some PCB manufacturers accept project files, including Protel, KiCAD, etc. I imagine this is a relatively new feature. Not long ago if you shared a project file without also sharing the footprint libraries you would get "missing footprint" errors when you tried to open the file. So with this workflow you would run the risk of having boards made without footprints for some of your components. That's maybe not a huge deal if you're paying less than $10 for a handful of boards, but I would be rather upset if my $1k board order was missing parts.
Gerber files are also handy if you're having the boards assembled. Multiple identical boards are commonly combined into a panel. Figure a chocolate bar where each square is a board with a waste rail on all four sides. The waste rail is a piece of PCB material wide enough to allow operators to handle the panels without touching any of the components on the board.
When I submit a board for manufacturing I draw the panel layout in the .fab layer. My PCB manufacturer then puts multiple copies of my board into that panel layout and put whatever structures (fiducials) they need in the waste rail. The PCB manufacturer then provides me with the Gerber files for the panel and I then provide those to the assembly house. They use them to determine the amount of copper in the board which lets them fine tune their solder reflow process. I highly doubt this would work with project files...
But for the hobbyist it makes little difference. But the manufacturers cater to other folks than hobbyists.
Tom
Hi Tom and others, hope you had a nice xmas and a happy new year to you.
Who exactly Tom in the GTA? Back in the day, we used PCWorld, and a few others locally.
When I worked for HP, for a short while, they had a pcb organization, (PRCO) one in Loveland,Co and the other hi-tech fab in Böblingen. I still have the design guides and capability matrixes from ~1994? IIRC it was 4/4mil and 10 mil finished hole, At that time Organic coat was being made available.
You are a manufacturer so that is a whole lot different than a DIY effort, consisting of a proto set of 5 pcbs to try out your new design.
I find its not the cost of the pcb as much but the setup/engineering fees are high. Its okay if you order hundreds+, as the set-up costs gets spread out.
FYI, related to jlcpcb
1) States that they do flying probe test on all FR-4 pcbs. I have not had one pcb that I rejected for an open, seen a few that have minor deficancies but nothing that was no-op. If you look closely at the pads you can see the probe indentations in the pad plating proving that it was probed.
2) Aluminum core specs state: 3000V breakdown; thickness 1.0,1.2,1.6mm; 1oz Cu.; thermal conductivity, 1W? , what ? 1C rise per W, optional flying-probe test is a BIG cost adder, where random test is the same ? as no-test, which means to me they perform random testing std?
I have a design in mind to try out using this process. It is great and intended for LED designs, white solder mask only, no purple
Cheers Rick
Can you reveal the fabs name? Cause with JLC I have never ever heard something similar.
I was a chip supplier to "Tandem Computer" in the late 1980s. Tandem was proud that their in house PCB shop could do "three between", i.e., route three signal wires between consecutive pads of a conventional DIP packaged chip. DIP pads are 50 mils wide at 100 mil spacing, so 50 mils of empty room between pads. To get 3 signal wires between pads you need 3xWidth + 4xSpacing and making the conventional assumption Width=Spacing, that means 7.1 mil traces with 7.1 mil spacing. Woo baby.
Tandem is dead and gone; their real estate was eventually purchased by Apple. It's where Apple's new headquarters building "The Spaceship" was built.
Tandem is dead and gone; their real estate was eventually purchased by Apple. It's where Apple's new headquarters building "The Spaceship" was built.
Heh. Yeah. How times have changed. These days it seems you don't start paying extra until below 5/5 mil trace/space. Good luck routing out of a tight pitch BGA with that.
Gold Phoenix PCB Co. LTD. They were recommended here some 10ish years ago. It looks like their 155 square inch prototype service has actually come down in price since I last used them. They'll nickel & dime you to death if you want anything other than green, lead-based HASL, 1 oz copper, though.
Many assembly services either require or prefer gold plated boards because they're much easier to clean and because the gold is more level than HASL.
Once assembly is included, the Chinese outfits - or at least Gold Phoenix - look even less attractive than Western manufacturers. They ordered the parts from Digikey (or so they said) and charged me dearly for shipping the parts from Digikey to their facility. Then charged me even more to ship the boards to me.
Tom