4 Layer PCB Service

[T4P]

4 layer!
http://www.wondom.com/products

Tell me your thoughts

[Rerouter]

broken link...
edit: working now

[gxti]

Looks kind of meh. For small quantities I use http://oshpark.com , formerly the dorkbotpdx pcb order. Excellent quality. The 4 layer orders run monthly or so.

[djsb]

Does anyone know of anything similar in the UK or Europe?
Thanks.

[mikeselectricstuff]

www.eurocircuits.com

[poorchava]

www.eurocircuits.com

Prices are kinda high. For 2 boards 100x100 mm it comes out as 43 EUR for 2 layers and 75 EUR for 4 layers. When compared to iTead: 2 layers - $25 for 10pcs, 4 layers - $99 for 10 pcs + $5 shipping.

So when calculated per square inch (100x100mm =~16 sq.in.), assuming 1 EUR=1.33 USD
Eurocircuits 2 layer -> USD1.78
Eurocircuits 4 layer -> USD 3.15
iTead 2 layer -> USD 0.18
iTead 4 layer -> USD 0.65

So still, iTead pwnz in terms of price. I can't say anything about quality of 4-layer boards, as I never had a need to order those, but 2 layer ones are pretty decent quality (maybe apart from a bit "bumpy" hasl which would've been a problem for leadless packages).

[hans]

I have used eurocircuits at many internships, and a lot of companies in The Netherlands have it as their favorite PCB supplier. Their lead time is short (8 workdays delivered for standard pricing), quality is good, and can do pretty decent rules on 2 and 4 layer boards.
If you go higher I am not really impressed. I got stories from a schoolmate where they required a 8-layer PCB for a USB3.0 oscilloscope etc. They had to resort to pcbcart because they could do better rules. Then again, they paid top dollar for the PCB's there too,

Eurocircuits and pcbcart are not expensive, itead and seeed are just stupidly cheap. You won't find it anywhere else.
But the lead times are horrible, and if you need boards faster you basically can't. I also hear sometimes complaints about etch errors on those boards, good you get 10 pieces.

Furthermore, if I do a 'professional' project and have to make a schedule for the project   I want to make sure I get PCB's delivered in 8 days. So at eurocircuits I am confident I will get them delivered. In some cases software development must get started, and then 8 days can already be a long time waiting.
With itead it can take anywhere from 2 weeks to a month, sometimes even more. So that's another bit of extra pricing you're paying
Generaly for my hobby it doesn't matter.

[nctnico]

Another neat feature of eurocircuits is that you can panelize your PCB. So you can have tens of PCBs for the price of two boards!

[poorchava]

iTead can ship via expedited services like DHL and UPS. In the past they have'been enforcing it for orders above $200, but I've failed to find this info now. PCB fabrication time is around 6 days usually (last order I've placed on Aug 25th and I got message that it was shipped on Aug 30th).

I agree about lack of panelization being a problem with iTead, so in that case I'd probably go with eurocircuits. I've recently been searching for offers on PCBA and most companies weren't very happy to hear that PCBs would be supplied without a panel and would impose additional costs. One part of them would charge additional costs because of longer assembly time (i guess mainly p&p machine reload time) and the other part would propose fabricating some sort of jig to hold single pcbs and load few tens at a time.

Smaller pcbs are also not a problem, because iTead allows placing multiple copies of a design on PCB, but refuse to v-score them or fabricate long slot (you can work around that on occasion, but again - chinese might be cheap but they are not stupid and will most likely see what you are trying to accomplish). This doesn't concern me too much, as my ghetto plywood cnc mill is perfectly fit for cutting up pcbs. For example I've made a small project which is 22x22mm (4 of those on itead 50x50mm format) and prepared a jig to easily register and fix the pcb in my machine and just press 'start'. Well, that was one of the reasons for building the cnc mill in the first place

[KedasProbe]

http://makepcb.com/ (low price at least for 2 layers)

[T4P]

For example I've made a small project which is 22x22mm (4 of those on itead 50x50mm format) and prepared a jig to easily register and fix the pcb in my machine and just press 'start'. Well, that was one of the reasons for building the cnc mill in the first place

Sometimes i just bring out the mitre saw ...

[free_electron]

you still can;t beat Iteadstudo or Seeedstudio. even when paying the 25$ for ups shipping.