PCB fab: Hackvana vs OSHPark

[marshallh]

I promised Mitch a writeup on this, so here it is.
OSHPark - 2-4layer batch pooling service, charges by the square inch bounding box of gerbers.
Hackvana -  2-4layer direct ordering service, charges by setup cost + quantity, specs, and area.

Let me start by saying I have ordered many boards from Laen through his oshpark service, and have that service of his to thank for enabling my projects. However there are issues that I and others have experienced that might save somebody else some trouble.

4 layer, 5mil track/space, 10mil minimum drill.

Screenshot of the 0.8mm BGA which is why I need 10mil drill.


Drill export report

Code: [Select]

Tool         Hole Size           Hole Type     Hole Count Plated       Tool Travel
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
T1        10mil (0.254mm)          Round          869              57.37 Inch (1457.13 mm)
T2        12.99mil (0.32995mm)     Round          4                0.14 Inch (3.60 mm)
T3        13mil (0.3302mm)         Round          16               0.63 Inch (16.00 mm)
T4        27.56mil (0.70002mm)     Round          5                0.33 Inch (8.50 mm)
T5        35.43mil (0.89992mm)     Round          10               0.90 Inch (22.86 mm)
T6        36.22mil (0.91999mm)     Round          4                0.28 Inch (7.00 mm)
T7        76mil (1.9304mm)         Round          3                0.34 Inch (8.60 mm)
T8        86.61mil (2.19989mm)     Round          2                0.39 Inch (9.90 mm)
T9        90.55mil (2.29997mm)     Round          2                0.47 Inch (12.04 mm)
T10       100.39mil (2.54991mm)    Round          1                0.00 Inch (0.00 mm)
T11       125.2mil (3.18008mm)     Round          4                7.47 Inch (189.81 mm)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Totals                                            920              68.32 Inch (1735.45 mm)

Sep 29 - Run 1 ordered. $75
Oct 11 - Run 1 shipped.




Minor plating failures, maybe salvageable if all pads had oxidation removed immediately before reflow. However all 10mil hits were upsized to 13/14mil by the fab, resulting in catastrophic breakout. Inner 16 power vias are 13/21mil and were not negatively affected.

Oct 15 - Run 2 ordered. Complementary re-run after talking to Laen (Thanks)
Oct 25 - Run 2 shipped.




Plating failures, severe overetch and again overdrill.

My project needed to progress and it looked unlikely that I would be able to get it done at all.
Enter hackvana. Mitch is an Australian fellow that travels to Shenzhen and works directly with a board shop there. He does not pool batch orders like Oshpark. This means the minimum order is 5 pcs and you pay all the setup costs. At this point I was more interested in getting a working PCB.

Quote from Mitch was $123 plus shipping. Turn time was about 9 days.




Great plating, proper 10mil drills, adequate silk and soldermask. The only beef I had is that the fab grew the copper layers by about 2mil to prevent drill breakout. This is a pretty common chinese fab trick. Mitch says this can be bypassed if needed (obv. for stuff like controlled impedance diff pairs). It does not create any shorts but does mess with track impedance. E-testing is claimed but I do not see any probe marks or evidence of testing.

In any case I assembled the PCB and it brought up OK.






Back to OSHPark -----
Nov 7 - Run 3 Oshpark started (Again complementary after talking to Dan and describing the issues, he said it would be addressed)
Dec 2 - Run 3 shipped.



Plating and drill alignment is finally addressed. Drills are still upsized and causing severe breakout.

OSHPark uses about 3-4 different fabs for the 4layer batch. Whichever one you get is up to the phase of the moon. Each one is identifiable due to characteristics like LPI silk, copper overetch, low DPI silk, etc...
The moral of the story: Don't use 10 mil drills with them, and prepare for delays. Plating fails have happened before, a friend wrote up a failure analysis with SEM imagery and sent to the fab. That fab is still experience plating failures and still being used by the service.

One such failure courtesy azonenberg

SEM comparison of plating (good is first, bad is second)

You can read his full failure analysis pdf here

Laen and Dan of OSHPark are both great guys and a pleasure to talk to. I will still order 4layer pcbs in the future, but not important ones.
Mitch of Hackvana can also be talked to directly via email or IRC. I will be ordering from him in the future as well.

I hope this was objective and gave you an idea of what to expect from these two services.
Links -
OSHPark http://oshpark.com/
Hackvana http://www.hackvana.com https://docs.google.com/document/d/1p6FH25ltGpzJQ5_8fbflDukqEKghiEcpuhJpngth2Is/edit

[hackvana]

Hello folks,

I'm Mitch, yes Mr. Hackvana.

marshallh, thank you very much for your kind words.

I have the best job in the world.  I get to see amazing designs like this one, and I get the glowing feeling of helping people make things.

Being the centre of the largest electronics manufacturing district in the world, Shenzhen has everything you need to turn an idea into reality.  I've lived there for several years and I love it.  The language barrier is enormous though. 

There are several fabs I use, depending on the job.  I know the people at each one personally, and I know they'll do a good job.  I see my role as helping you guys get access to these wonderful places, while taking care of shipping, payment, the language barrier, and most importantly, fixing things if they go wrong.

My IRC channel (#hackvana on Freenode):

  http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=hackvana

Good place to talk about electronics, as well as ask me questions.

Finally I want to say sorry oshpark didn't work out for that board.  Laen is a big inspiration for me, and I think what he's done for hackers over the years has been huge.  If you're in the USA (or you just want to support a guy whose done so much for hackers), get your boards from OSH Park 

Mitch.

[chickenHeadKnob]

The edge connector fingers on the hackvana board look a bit corroded, maybe from handling. Is this just the standard enig for a prototype or is it a special (thicker) hard gold plating as done by some shops?

[amyk]

If you don't mind saying what that is? Building your own PCI-E gigabit Ethernet adapter?

[marshallh]

The edge connector was not electroplated. There is some scuffing due to the shop running the boards through the edge beveler.

[matkar]

If you don't mind saying what that is? Building your own PCI-E gigabit Ethernet adapter?

It's not an ethernet connector. It has a USB and some type of power connector... I'm curious too.

[free_electron]

usb 3.0 engine obviously

[Rigby]

obviously

Not obvious.  Not to everyone, anyway.

[c4757p]

One comment about the electrical testing - I have had boards which failed the E-test (they still sent them to me, as well as the second batch) and had no evidence of having been tested. Some of the fabs must have very gentle testers (or do it before HASL?)

[free_electron]

obviously

Not obvious.  Not to everyone, anyway.

really ? the usb connector with 6 extra pins and the matched length differential pairs are a dead giveaway.

[Rigby]

really ? the usb connector with 6 extra pins and the matched length differential pairs are a dead giveaway.

Dead giveaway to you.  Lots of us don't look at this stuff every day, like you.  I'm just starting in this hobby, and I had no idea what that board was until you posted what it was.

[MrAureliusR]

You've never used USB 3.0 before? The blue on the connector was the dead giveaway for me. They're all that particular blue colour.

(Plus the silkscreen USB symbol helps too)

[Monkeh]

You've never used USB 3.0 before? The blue on the connector was the dead giveaway for me. They're all that particular blue colour.

(Plus the silkscreen USB symbol helps too)

I still don't personally own a machine with USB 3.

[MrAureliusR]

... 

[Monkeh]

... 

Some of us buy good hardware and just can't afford to every other year when the latest fancy toy comes out...

[c4757p]

What do most people even use USB 3.0 for?

[MrAureliusR]

lol wow. You think I can afford anything at all? I've got I think 1 USB3.0 port. I was shrugging because I didn't know what to say to what you said. Don't get so bent out of shape.

I use it for my external hard drive. I can copy over a 6GB file in a minute or two. USB2.0 would take most of an hour. 2.0 is becoming extremely obsolete, very quickly. I'm just as behind as anyone else.

[c4757p]

How many 6GB files do you copy?

I don't think I've ever used a USB 2 device and thought "damn, this should be faster"!

Anyway..... back to PCBs?

[MrAureliusR]

Quite a few, you don't watch TV shows or movies? I download just about everything onto a 2TB external hard drive. Makes it nice and portable.

Anyway, we're way OT here.

[mrflibble]

I still don't personally own a machine with USB 3.

Your computer needs to get out more often. That aside, the usb connector, the color and the squiggly lines kinda gave it away. And oh I dunno the big fat TUSB1310A transceiver right next to it. 

[Monkeh]

I still don't personally own a machine with USB 3.

Your computer needs to get out more often.

My wallet needs to get laid more often.

That aside, the usb connector, the color and the squiggly lines kinda gave it away. And oh I dunno the big fat TUSB1310A transceiver right next to it. 

Never said I didn't know it was a USB 3 port.

[mrflibble]

What do most people even use USB 3.0 for?

External drives for a cheapo backup solution. Doesn't get you the same iops and latency as sata, but throughput is pretty good. All I need for said cheapo backup solution. Get two 3 Tb disks at your local friendly Aldi and you're good to go.

[mrflibble]

I still don't personally own a machine with USB 3.

Your computer needs to get out more often.

My wallet needs to get laid more often.

Amen brother. Or am I now anthropomorphizing m4 w4ll3t? Damn...

That aside, the usb connector, the color and the squiggly lines kinda gave it away. And oh I dunno the big fat TUSB1310A transceiver right next to it. 

Never said I didn't know it was a USB 3 port.

Never said I didn't know that you did or didn't know that it was or was not a USB3 port (or not). In fact, I didn't even imply that you did or didn't know that it was or was not a USB3 port. Or did I ... ?



no I didn't

[c4757p]

External drives for a cheapo backup solution. Doesn't get you the same iops and latency as sata, but throughput is pretty good. All I need for said cheapo backup solution. Get two 3 Tb disks at your local friendly Aldi and you're good to go.

Aldi sells HDDs where you live? Here, it just sells the sort of food that you eat while reading job listings and crying.

[mrflibble]

Aldi sells HDDs where you live? Here, it just sells the sort of food that you eat while reading job listings and crying.

Yup, HDDs. Good coffee too. Quite decent wine as well but that takes a little timing. So I'm guessing this is a distance-to-Heimat thing. Apparently in a US Aldi you can get cryworthy food. In a dutch Aldi you can get good coffee, well timed wine and cheapo HDDs. And back in Germany you can probably walk into an Aldi store and get a Rheinmetall transfunktionierter cyberblaster bollocks Kanone on discount.