PCBCORE, professional PCB supplier

[PCBCORE]

Hi Guys,

If you need PCB, feel free to visit www.pcbcore.com, or send email to sales@pcbcore.com for quotation,

Skype: PCBCORE
MSN: pcbcore@hotmail.com

Thanks.

[kaz911]

a few suggestions:

1. A lot of people do not want to register to get a quote or price examples. Either make it possible to get a quote without registration or provide some example design prices.
2. Update your copyright to 2011?? (now says 2008)
3. It is very polite when you advertise here for free to give the members of EEVBlog SPECIAL discount. :-)

/Kasper

[PCBCORE]

Kasper, thanks for your good suggestions, we are indeed trying to finish updating website this year, 
it will be much more humanistic.

And sure, if someone can launch a group buying at eevblog, we will offer discount, anyone interesting in?

PCBCORE
Rachel

[amspire]

I could be interested in a special deal. Until I can see your prices without registering, it is hard to judge if you are competitive or not.

If the tooling costs are high for prototyping, that would definitely not be attractive to hobbyists here.

If PCBCORE felt like making a videoblog on preparing a 2 or 4 layer board for manufacture, it would be popular here. Things like how to minimize problems and costs based on your in-house experience.

If we are using Diptrace, Design Spark, KiCad, gEDA, etc, we will have to send you Gerber files. Any regular problems that you can warn us about?

It is good to see you in the forum. If you ever feel like contributing when someone has a question on PCB manufacture, that would be really great.

Richard

[PCBCORE]

Hi, Richard, PCBCORE needs you registered in to quote right now, the quote system will be opened to visitors when updating...If you don't want to registe, you may quote via email by sending files and board specifications, we will do manual quoting...

When generate gerber files, please don't miss dimension layer and drill file(incluing sizes and positions)? layers with clear file extension for us juding the sequence, especially for multi-layer jobs?it's very important to point out if board has cutouts or slots?check if all pads with correct soldermask openings; check agin when sending them out to make sure if all necessary files were included, like silkscreen layer if you need it....Though these questions are easy, but we do get these questions everyday...

If you want get the cheapest price from us, remember to set the min. spacing/tracing >8mil, min. via: >0.3mm, min. annular ring: >10mil

When you guys have any manufacturing question, feel free to ask us, we are glad to help, for fast response, please send email to service@pcbcore.com.

PCBCORE
Rachel

I could be interested in a special deal. Until I can see your prices without registering, it is hard to judge if you are competitive or not.

If the tooling costs are high for prototyping, that would definitely not be attractive to hobbyists here.

If PCBCORE felt like making a videoblog on preparing a 2 or 4 layer board for manufacture, it would be popular here. Things like how to minimize problems and costs based on your in-house experience.

If we are using Diptrace, Design Spark, KiCad, gEDA, etc,  we will have to send you Gerber files. Any regular problems that you can warn us about?

It is good to see you in the forum. If you ever feel like contributing when someone has a question on PCB manufacture, that would be really great.


Richard

[janekm]

Dear Rachel,

I am always interested in finding out about new suppliers so I took the time to calculate an example quote using your online quote system (the registration process is very arduous especially as it required me to enter my address twice, despite ticking the "same as billing" checkmark, so it is good that you are revising the website).

I compared based on a recent design we had ordered from PCBCart (currently our standard PCB fab supplier based on very positive previous experiences). You will appreciate that I would not move to a new supplier unless they can offer something better, be it more flexible (say allowing multiple designs on a combined panel as some PCB fabs now offer), quicker lead time (12 days for 4-layer at PCBCart so you might have them beat there but you don't specify whether your lead time includes shipping as PCBCart do), or cheaper (not always the most important as you will appreciate... If I order a PCB from a new, cheaper supplier but we end up loosing 2 weeks of development time if we have to reorder if the quality is not good my boss would not be happy!).

The design I checked has the following specs:
10 pieces, 51x34mm size
4 layer, stackup 10-20-10mil (1mm thickness)
FR4, ENIG Finish, white soldermask, black legend
.15mm track&space (I chose 6-8mil on your site, though strictly speaking 6mil is .1524mm)
.1mm restring (4-10mil on your site)
.2mm smallest hole

These are the minimum specs required for this type of design (.8mm pitch BGA, RF section) so there is little scope for cost optimisation at the design side.

The quote from PCBCart was € 219.40 (+€25.40 shipping), your site's quote was €256.01 (+€29.11 shipping).

PCBCart is far from one of the cheaper PCB fabs (in fact as Dave mentioned in one of his recent blogs their prices have gone up due to their popularity), so I think you have a bit of work to do to make your offering competitive.

One area where you could offer something competitive is on "high"-spec cheap prototypes... If you have a look at how Laen (http://dorkbotpdx.org/wiki/pcb_order), iTead and Seeed Studios offer PCB prototype services (they collect orders from several customers, panelize a board, and separate the different orders), there are now many good offerings for "standard"-spec boards, but nothing for the type of spec required for my work, and I am sure many others are in a similar situation.

A good "standard high-spec" in my opinion would be 4-layer, 10-20-10 stackup, .1mm track&space, .2mm hole, .1mm restring, ENIG or Immersion Silver (HASL is unusable for BGA/QFN). A good target price would be $50 for 10 boards up to 50x50mm each, with a suitable lead time to allow you to collect multiple orders. 14 days would be good, 21 days ok, more than that problematic.

I hope you find my feedback useful,
Janek

[PCBCORE]

Dear Janek,

First I am really quite appreciate your advise, thank you for your time.

The"same as billing" checkmark works from here, the shipping address will be copyied from the billing info once you click it.
I tested in different webbrowsers, it's fine too, I don't know why you got fail.

About price, I am sure we are not the cheapest one in this world, also not the higest one, but I must say our prices are worth for
our quality and service.

Lead time for 4-layer job is 10 days at our website, but normally we shipped in 8-10 days for prototypes, not including shipping time.

Feel free to contact us at service@pcbcore.com if you have any question about our service.

Thank you.

Rachel

Dear Rachel,

I am always interested in finding out about new suppliers so I took the time to calculate an example quote using your online quote system (the registration process is very arduous especially as it required me to enter my address twice, despite ticking the "same as billing" checkmark, so it is good that you are revising the website).

I compared based on a recent design we had ordered from PCBCart (currently our standard PCB fab supplier based on very positive previous experiences). You will appreciate that I would not move to a new supplier unless they can offer something better, be it more flexible (say allowing multiple designs on a combined panel as some PCB fabs now offer), quicker lead time (12 days for 4-layer at PCBCart so you might have them beat there but you don't specify whether your lead time includes shipping as PCBCart do), or cheaper (not always the most important as you will appreciate... If I order a PCB from a new, cheaper supplier but we end up loosing 2 weeks of development time if we have to reorder if the quality is not good my boss would not be happy!).

The design I checked has the following specs:
10 pieces, 51x34mm size
4 layer, stackup 10-20-10mil (1mm thickness)
FR4, ENIG Finish, white soldermask, black legend
.15mm track&space (I chose 6-8mil on your site, though strictly speaking 6mil is .1524mm)
.1mm restring (4-10mil on your site)
.2mm smallest hole

These are the minimum specs required for this type of design (.8mm pitch BGA, RF section) so there is little scope for cost optimisation at the design side.

The quote from PCBCart was € 219.40 (+€25.40 shipping), your site's quote was €256.01 (+€29.11 shipping).

PCBCart is far from one of the cheaper PCB fabs (in fact as Dave mentioned in one of his recent blogs their prices have gone up due to their popularity), so I think you have a bit of work to do to make your offering competitive.

One area where you could offer something competitive is on "high"-spec cheap prototypes... If you have a look at how Laen (http://dorkbotpdx.org/wiki/pcb_order), iTead and Seeed Studios offer PCB prototype services (they collect orders from several customers, panelize a board, and separate the different orders), there are now many good offerings for "standard"-spec boards, but nothing for the type of spec required for my work, and I am sure many others are in a similar situation.

A good "standard high-spec" in my opinion would be 4-layer, 10-20-10 stackup, .1mm track&space, .2mm hole, .1mm restring, ENIG or Immersion Silver (HASL is unusable for BGA/QFN). A good target price would be $50 for 10 boards up to 50x50mm each, with a suitable lead time to allow you to collect multiple orders. 14 days would be good, 21 days ok, more than that problematic.

I hope you find my feedback useful,
Janek