How long do PCB fabs take to deliver?
December 31, 2022 4:57 PM Subscribe
I need to order some PCBs. Very simple. Two layer. Nothing exotic or unusual. For the sake of planning, I'm wondering what is the typical turnaround for places like PCBway or JLCpcb. A few days? A couple weeks?
Best answer: Don’t for get to allow another double the time for your second rev with big enough holes for your parts or whatever dumb thing seems to go wrong (At least if you’re me)
posted by aubilenon at 5:10 PM on December 31, 2022
posted by aubilenon at 5:10 PM on December 31, 2022
Best answer: My partner uses OSHPark, but in case that's useful intel, he says he usually finds it takes about 2 weeks to get a regular order or 10 days for a rush order. He's been really happy with their work and results.
posted by Stacey at 5:39 PM on December 31, 2022
posted by Stacey at 5:39 PM on December 31, 2022
Best answer: Typical, 10-14 days in my experience. Some services have a quick ship in 4-5 business days, 2 day, even 24 hr.
posted by at at 8:24 PM on December 31, 2022
posted by at at 8:24 PM on December 31, 2022
Best answer: Yeah, honestly for me the distinction between OSHPark and JLCPCB is less "how fast will I get it" than "do I need more than three copies" or "is the board inconveniently expensive at OSH's pricing" because it used to be sort of equal time between OSH and the Chinese fabs.
Looking at my email, I ordered a fairly normal 2 layer 75x75 board from JLCPCB on 2021-09-08, it was shipped on 2021-09-10 and I had it in my hands on 2021-09-14, for something like $20 all up. My most recent OSH Park order was accepted on 2020-09-27 and was shipped on 2020-10-06 and I think I got it on 2020-10-08, according to my package tracker's archives. But that was only a $2.70 order, so I was content to wait for it to arrive when it arrived. But in years past, I certainly had Chinese fabs sit on my order for a week, or it spent a long time on the dock waiting to ship or similar, but it feels like they've mostly figured out the maker market since then.
That said, OSH was legitimately the only place that seemed to do a relatively decent online preview of your board so you knew if you'd screwed up your gerbers for the longest time. Everybody else in the small maker space seems to have caught up in the mean time, though.
So maybe the other way to look at it is - once you're comfortable with your designs and have confirmed that you're using chip designs for hand work and not solder paste and bulk production, and you need more than 1 or 2 of something, or you start designing bigger boards? Chinese fabs can be both great _and_ fast. But while you're learning and likely to make mistakes and don't want to sink $20 into each round's shipping, and you're making 1-2 repeats for trial purposes? OSH is great, but maybe slow. Maybe slow enough that you'll have multiple revisions in the mail at the same time.
posted by Kyol at 8:26 PM on December 31, 2022
Looking at my email, I ordered a fairly normal 2 layer 75x75 board from JLCPCB on 2021-09-08, it was shipped on 2021-09-10 and I had it in my hands on 2021-09-14, for something like $20 all up. My most recent OSH Park order was accepted on 2020-09-27 and was shipped on 2020-10-06 and I think I got it on 2020-10-08, according to my package tracker's archives. But that was only a $2.70 order, so I was content to wait for it to arrive when it arrived. But in years past, I certainly had Chinese fabs sit on my order for a week, or it spent a long time on the dock waiting to ship or similar, but it feels like they've mostly figured out the maker market since then.
That said, OSH was legitimately the only place that seemed to do a relatively decent online preview of your board so you knew if you'd screwed up your gerbers for the longest time. Everybody else in the small maker space seems to have caught up in the mean time, though.
So maybe the other way to look at it is - once you're comfortable with your designs and have confirmed that you're using chip designs for hand work and not solder paste and bulk production, and you need more than 1 or 2 of something, or you start designing bigger boards? Chinese fabs can be both great _and_ fast. But while you're learning and likely to make mistakes and don't want to sink $20 into each round's shipping, and you're making 1-2 repeats for trial purposes? OSH is great, but maybe slow. Maybe slow enough that you'll have multiple revisions in the mail at the same time.
posted by Kyol at 8:26 PM on December 31, 2022
Best answer: I've variously used DirtyPCBs and PCBWay for at least eight years now, and I've had them on my workbench within two weeks nearly every time. 3, maybe 4 days from the design being accepted to out the door, then it's shipping and customs. As I'm outside the US OSHPark would neither be cheaper nor faster.
And about checking the layout, they both have an automated design check stage where you get to see each of the layers: top, bottom, drill, masks, etc., so that you can spot possible errors. Of course that needs a bit of experience interpreting each layer image and mentally translating it back to the resulting PCB, but I've spotted several errors that way. Those design checks aren't flawless; the DirtyPCB drill and router mask for a PCB that has a few air gap slits shows two of those slits having a large triangular error (which disappears if I straighten out a bend in those slits a bit), but the actual board is fine.
For design I use Eagle 7.7, and even with libraries provided by random users I've found few errors in parts footprints. But I replace package footprints with ones from a set of reference packages provided with the standard install anyway through a bit of Python scripting.
posted by Stoneshop at 1:20 AM on January 1, 2023
And about checking the layout, they both have an automated design check stage where you get to see each of the layers: top, bottom, drill, masks, etc., so that you can spot possible errors. Of course that needs a bit of experience interpreting each layer image and mentally translating it back to the resulting PCB, but I've spotted several errors that way. Those design checks aren't flawless; the DirtyPCB drill and router mask for a PCB that has a few air gap slits shows two of those slits having a large triangular error (which disappears if I straighten out a bend in those slits a bit), but the actual board is fine.
For design I use Eagle 7.7, and even with libraries provided by random users I've found few errors in parts footprints. But I replace package footprints with ones from a set of reference packages provided with the standard install anyway through a bit of Python scripting.
posted by Stoneshop at 1:20 AM on January 1, 2023
Best answer: My experience with fab houses was back in 2019.
I agree with Kyol that OSHPark has the best online previews ... and I was sometimes scummy enough to use that to check designs and then not order with them.
I wanted to love OSHPark, but didn't. They were uniformly slower than the Chinese fabs, AND lower quality. My first board was great, but my next ~4 orders all had less sharp silkscreening and an uglier color of soldermask (still purple, just muddy). And unlike the Chinese fab I used, they leave mousebites on the edge of your board.
PCBWay was a pain -- I used them for a weird art design on flexible PCB, and they "fixed" my gerbers in a way that actually totally messed the project up (without checking with me!), so I had to go back for revisions. To be fair, they did redo the boards for free (except shipping), but the process was a bit drawn out because their customer service wasn't fluent in English.
Elecrow was my favorite for a 2 layer board -- fast, cheap, and pretty. From the 3 orders in my email history, I had boards in hand on the US East Coast 8,9 and 13 days after ordering. Pay for the DHL shipping!
posted by Metasyntactic at 7:36 AM on January 1, 2023
I agree with Kyol that OSHPark has the best online previews ... and I was sometimes scummy enough to use that to check designs and then not order with them.
I wanted to love OSHPark, but didn't. They were uniformly slower than the Chinese fabs, AND lower quality. My first board was great, but my next ~4 orders all had less sharp silkscreening and an uglier color of soldermask (still purple, just muddy). And unlike the Chinese fab I used, they leave mousebites on the edge of your board.
PCBWay was a pain -- I used them for a weird art design on flexible PCB, and they "fixed" my gerbers in a way that actually totally messed the project up (without checking with me!), so I had to go back for revisions. To be fair, they did redo the boards for free (except shipping), but the process was a bit drawn out because their customer service wasn't fluent in English.
Elecrow was my favorite for a 2 layer board -- fast, cheap, and pretty. From the 3 orders in my email history, I had boards in hand on the US East Coast 8,9 and 13 days after ordering. Pay for the DHL shipping!
posted by Metasyntactic at 7:36 AM on January 1, 2023
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posted by aubilenon at 5:09 PM on December 31, 2022