PCBway Ordering Experiences

[mplafleur]

I have used PCBWay for a couple of small batch builds (10 boards each) and found them to be very fast and the quality very good. So much so that we are using this vendor now at my daytime job for small batch and prototypes.

 

[wrenchone]

My first PCBway order should be arriving tomorrow. I'll let y'all know how it works out. The second is in process.

 

[nigelwright7557]

I have had 4 orders with PCBWAY now and all have been fast delivery and an excellent price.

 

[SGK]

I have now had 7 jobs done by them, including 4 layer boards. All have been good.

BTW if you live in the UK ship via HK post. It only takes a couple of days longer and you are unlikely to get whacked with VAT. If you use a courier they take pleasure in charging a £15 or so administration fee just to collect a few quid for HMRC.

 

[tfboy]

I have now had 7 jobs done by them, including 4 layer boards. All have been good.

BTW if you live in the UK ship via HK post. It only takes a couple of days longer and you are unlikely to get whacked with VAT. If you use a courier they take pleasure in charging a £15 or so administration fee just to collect a few quid for HMRC.

^--- THIS!

Last time, I used another Chinese supplier who offered normal postage. Took just about as long, but came through the letter box by Royal Mail. No charge at all.

With DHL, not only do they charge a stupid admin fee, but every time they've calculated completely the wrong duty and charged me a massive amount. In one case, the total DHL charges were more than what I actually paid for the boards including DHL shipping!

In my experience, using normal post is a double saver - they don't charge as much for sending it, and you're unlikely to get clobbered by admin and import duties.

 

[Cresnet]

I had to switch to a new PCB manufacturer, as I used to work with PCB way.

China PCB?PCB Prototype?Fast Prototype PCBs, Aluminum PCBs, Custom Printed Circuit Boards in China

Little less price, higher quality, specially the silk screen.

 

[doctormord]

Because silkscreen quality is the most important parameter in pcb manufacturing.

 

[wrenchone]

Got my first lot of boards from PCBway today. Silkscreen is crisp & clean, esp. good considering I had to reduce the font size somewhat in order to fit a densely packed board. Next order will possibly show up this week.

 

[nigelwright7557]

I have now had 7 jobs done by them, including 4 layer boards. All have been good.

BTW if you live in the UK ship via HK post. It only takes a couple of days longer and you are unlikely to get whacked with VAT. If you use a courier they take pleasure in charging a £15 or so administration fee just to collect a few quid for HMRC.

They use DHL for my orders and I have only paid £4 import duty.
I do pay the duty online and no DHL staff are involved so maybe thats why its so cheap?

 

[stephengarfield88]

Yes, I understand your feeling about PCBWay, because I also had bad experience there. Instead, I find a good fab in China recently-PCBWin(China PCB?PCB Prototype?Fast Prototype PCBs, Aluminum PCBs, Custom Printed Circuit Boards in China). My business partner recommends this fab and their website to me and I had a try recently. I must say that their quality and service are both excellent, believe me. Anyway, it is worth trying this house. Hope this information could help you.

 

[SGK]

I do pay the duty online and no DHL staff are involved so maybe thats why its so cheap?

Interesting. Maybe. When I have used them I receive an email from them saying VAT etc is due and when I pay online there is also the administration charge due...

What's the smallest silk font size people have had success with?

 

[OlegSh]

What's the smallest silk font size people have had success with?

I frequently use 1 mm size. Works fine in 99% of cases with PCBWay. They actually recommend not to go lower than 0.8mm font size.

 

[SGK]

I have used 40 mils and ratio 15% in Eagle, and when it comes to running the silk generator script I set the minimum wire width to 6 mils. I have wondered if I can go smaller/finer.

 

[OlegSh]

I use 8% and 10% ratios in Eagle. I also have 6 mils minimum trace width set in design rules but I am not sure if it affects the silk screen generation.

 

[SGK]

But I understand the ratio is a % of the font size... So 8% of 70 mils isn't the same as 8% of 40 mils. I use a ulp for silk generation I picked up from here:

http://www.rpc-electronics.com/eagle.htm

One of its settings is minimum wire width.

 

[OlegSh]

I use gerber generation scripts and design rules from seeed studio with a couple of minor modifications. I never bothered digging deeply into the settings since it works nicely as is.

 

[doctormord]

They are able to do labeling as small as 0.6mm (X/Y) with 0.125mm line width.

 

[OlegSh]

Now I have something to say about my experience with PCBwin. Today, after it has been mentioned here in the thread, I went to their web page which looks suspiciously similar to that of the PCBWay and has similar prices except lesser delivery options. But this is not the most interesting. I did not leave any personal information there intentionally, but right after I visited their web page I've got an email from them! So they managed to somehow access my private information (may be they know how to read the PCBway cookies where I have a stored account details?). I do not like such intrusive service! So be warned!

 

[doctormord]

The post from stephengarfield is pure advertising. His first and only post.

 

[OlegSh]

The post from stephengarfield is pure advertising. His first and only post.

spotted it too but have been following earlier post from an old diyaudio member...