RF PCB House?

[EricVanWyk]

I'm looking to do a couple 4 layer PCBs that have RF components in the 5-7GHz range.  Does anyone have a favorite house for doing these sorts of things?

[free_electron]

whaddaymean ? to do the layout work or to make the bare board ? any serious board house can make this. Pick one of the Nelco or Rogers RF substrates , pick the layer stackup , plug the numbers and off you go.

[EricVanWyk]

To make the bare board.  I have my favorite houses for high current, and another set for "cheap crap quick", but I don't yet have a favorite house for RF.

All of my RF work has been either 900M or 2.4G, and honestly wasn't all that complicated - mostly I did antenna design or front ends with just a handful of RF components.  This will have a few copper defined components (filters and splitters) and is more sensitive to interference than other designs I've done.

What is your favorite "serious board house" for this?

Thanks!
 - Eric

[Dago]

I know PCBcart (chinese shop, ok place) offers RF-substrates at least: http://www.pcbcart.com/ No experience with their RF-boards though. I have a bunch of friends who have ordered regular boards from there without a hitch though. I think you need to email the design files to them to get a quote for RF-boards, can't use their automatic quote.

[nctnico]

Where are you located? Eurocircuits offers Rogers material IIRC.

[Dago]

Also Brandner (https://www.brandner.ee/) has Rogers RO4003C in their stock list but I have never ordered an RF PCB from them. Plenty of other boards though with very good service.

[Chris Jones]

If you are in Australia, http://www.lintek.com.au/ are good. Their design rules document http://www.lintek.com.au/resources/datasheets/Capabilities%20and%20Design%20Guide%20V2.4.pdf is very clearly written.

[IconicPCB]

Chris,

Iconic PCB make bare boards in Brisbane using mechanical milling process. Mechanical process will provide a cleaner edge profile than chemical etching.

They have made some cavity boards in Rogers material in the past.

www.iconicpcb.com

[Alexei.Polkhanov]

They have made some cavity boards in Rogers material in the past.

Interesting. From your experience, besides 3D-iness and miniaturization does "cavity board" give any other advantage over simple planar board? Which CAD tool do you use?

[IconicPCB]

The process relies on mechanical etching. Gerbers are processed by Graphicode Gerber editor which also generates G code.

Cavity structure was a part of resonator design.