What's up with JLCPCB these days?

[TIOUK]

I recently uploaded a several board job to JLCPCB at a cost of $900.

I have two issues, one stencil was 8mm over PCB area and I could only order it with a stupidly large framed stencil when the acutal SMD area is well within the requirement. I have messaged them before about this asking to make on a smaller stencil and got OK, your risk. This time I'm on the third message and all I get is "we can't do this at this stage", but no indication of the stage they can do this.

Second issue is when uploading the job (did this three times as the new interface causes me issues) I accidentially missed changing the FR4 to 1.2mm on one PCB and I'm getting the same messages about "we can't do this". The PCBs are not in production yet as they all have the confirm manufacturing data so I can check for things like not using the paste layer for stencils or checking panelisation. It is getting so hard for what was an easy process.

The best I got for the second problem is "you can leave a comment at the confirm stage", but no guarantee they will actually read and understand, likely they will just see the green light and move to production as is.

What board factory should I move to, we make both batch quantity and small 10 PCB development runs. We spent $5200 in the last 12 months with JLCPCB.

I have used quickturnpcb, S Korea in the past, the boards were super nice, but that was a few years back thing things might have changed.

Looking forward to your recommendations.

Thanks for your time

[TERRA Operative]

What's wrong with JLCPCB?

Nothing, its you that keeps messing up and trying to push the rules.

[Infraviolet]

There is PCBWAY, but I tried them and JLCPCB at the same time and found JLC easier to work with. There's also eurocircuits, but they are pretty expensive for the sorts of jobs which are cheap at JLCPCB/PCBWAY, for really big jobs like your £900 sort though the prices might be more similar.

[mojalovaa@gmail.com]

In China, until 08.10, there is some kind of national day, so it's a holiday and no one works

[mikeselectricstuff]

I recently uploaded a several board job to JLCPCB at a cost of $900.

I have two issues, one stencil was 8mm over PCB area and I could only order it with a stupidly large framed stencil when the acutal SMD area is well within the requirement. I have messaged them before about this asking to make on a smaller stencil and got OK, your risk. This time I'm on the third message and all I get is "we can't do this at this stage", but no indication of the stage they can do this.

I've had that - their system doesn't understand that the active area of the stencil may be smaller than the PCB outline.
The fix is to do the stencil as a seperate item on the order, so the system "doesn't know" how big the PCB is.

[tszaboo]

They pissed me off a few times as well. My latest one was, when they asked for an extra 90 USD payment for a 4 USD order, because they think panelizing stuff needs some sort of special care, so it's worth to ask 23 times as much for it 

[luudee]

JLSPCB is NOT for professional jobs.  I do probably 4-8 PCBs with them per months, all for personal/home
usage.

Recently, I have attempted to have them manufacture one of my companies PCBs, and it was a total mess.
The BOM management is a nightmare, if your components are not stocked by LSCS. Several, large bill
items (>$200) we would have to ship to them and would lose if we would not use them. That's just one of
the issues. The other issue we had was that they refused to order parts directly from vendors, even though
we had a relationship with the vendor (ASM in that case) and they agreed to ship directly to JLSPCB, and
the list goes on.

I believe it will take them some time to be useful for the "big money" projects. I am glad to see their new
"HD PCB" offering. Quality and pricing will determine if they can be competitive in the future or not.

For now, I am taking my company business to the "Big Boys" !

Cheers,
rudi

[luudee]

They pissed me off a few times as well. My latest one was, when they asked for an extra 90 USD payment for a 4 USD order, because they think panelizing stuff needs some sort of special care, so it's worth to ask 23 times as much for it 

My experience has been that they don't know what they are talking about or asking of you.
The entire company sales/management force seems to be made up of 20 yo tik-tok users ...
They can be very unreasonable, and they don't give a shit ... (typical Asian culture).

rudi

[BFX]

JLCPCb is going to the hell I think , first month ago they refused to make PCB which they did in the past and now I'm not able to pay for another simple PCB by PayPal.
I think they will bankrupt soon. 

[asmi]

My experience has been that they don't know what they are talking about or asking of you.
The entire company sales/management force seems to be made up of 20 yo tik-tok users ...
They can be very unreasonable, and they don't give a shit ... (typical Asian culture).

rudi

My experience is the diametric opposite - any questions they ever had has been relevant and to the point. And they were very quick to respond whenever I had questions.

[mikeselectricstuff]

I've done well over 100 orders with JLCPCB.
Minimal issues -the only recurring one is getting them to put tooling holes in the right place on the stencils - I ask for them 19mm from the edge, which only gets done about half the time. Once they just moved just the holes and not the rest of the apertures

Only done one assembly order so far and that was fine.

[wraper]

I recently uploaded a several board job to JLCPCB at a cost of $900.

I have two issues, one stencil was 8mm over PCB area and I could only order it with a stupidly large framed stencil when the acutal SMD area is well within the requirement. I have messaged them before about this asking to make on a smaller stencil and got OK, your risk. This time I'm on the third message and all I get is "we can't do this at this stage", but no indication of the stage they can do this.

I've had that - their system doesn't understand that the active area of the stencil may be smaller than the PCB outline.
The fix is to do the stencil as a seperate item on the order, so the system "doesn't know" how big the PCB is.

The issue is that even if SMT assembly area is smaller than max size, more than half of framed framed stencil (outer) area cannot lie on top of PCB because of higher thickness than in area with bare metal in the middle. So I really doubt limitation has anything to do with SMT assembly area.

[langwadt]

JLSPCB is NOT for professional jobs.  I do probably 4-8 PCBs with them per months, all for personal/home
usage.

Recently, I have attempted to have them manufacture one of my companies PCBs, and it was a total mess.
The BOM management is a nightmare, if your components are not stocked by LSCS. Several, large bill
items (>$200) we would have to ship to them and would lose if we would not use them. That's just one of
the issues. The other issue we had was that they refused to order parts directly from vendors, even though
we had a relationship with the vendor (ASM in that case) and they agreed to ship directly to JLSPCB, and
the list goes on.

I believe it will take them some time to be useful for the "big money" projects. I am glad to see their new
"HD PCB" offering. Quality and pricing will determine if they can be competitive in the future or not.

For now, I am taking my company business to the "Big Boys" !

JLCPCB can do cheap assembly because they don't have to hassle with people sending special parts, ordering from different vendors, etc. etc.

f you expect that kind of service, go to the "big boys" and pay orders of magnitude more for it

[phil from seattle]

I have a number of products I push through JLC.  The key thing to realize is you need to stay within their boundaries - especially, use their library or LCSC. 

I've had a number of issues. They keep tweaking their software and regularly breaking what worked last month. Other than one time (out of about 250 orders) where they failed to catch an out of stock part and did a run without the part, they have been pretty solid building what I want. They were kind of weaselly about fixing the problem - a customer focused manufacturer would have fallen all over themselves to make good - but we came to an accommodation.  I've spent >$5K USD on them in the last 12 months so not a tiny customer, would like to have been treated a little better than "can't you just solder it on?" as a first proposed solution.  Also, their part library data base is a complete nightmare. They forced a great 3rd party search engine to close and did nothing to improve their pathetic solution. And their recent separating out basic parts from the rest of the database only made it a worse experience.

If there was something better that cost the same or maybe even a little more,  I'd be there.  But there isn't so I'm sticking with them, for now.

[Mangozac]

JLSPCB is NOT for professional jobs.

Myself and several other businesses I know doing tens of thousands of boards per year with JLC would disagree with.

The only issues we've had of late have been jagged board outline routing but that seems to have been resolved now.

Edit: I now realise he was talking about JLC's assembly services and is probably right about that.

[JLCPCB Official]

I recently uploaded a several board job to JLCPCB at a cost of $900.

I have two issues, one stencil was 8mm over PCB area and I could only order it with a stupidly large framed stencil when the acutal SMD area is well within the requirement. I have messaged them before about this asking to make on a smaller stencil and got OK, your risk. This time I'm on the third message and all I get is "we can't do this at this stage", but no indication of the stage they can do this.

Second issue is when uploading the job (did this three times as the new interface causes me issues) I accidentially missed changing the FR4 to 1.2mm on one PCB and I'm getting the same messages about "we can't do this". The PCBs are not in production yet as they all have the confirm manufacturing data so I can check for things like not using the paste layer for stencils or checking panelisation. It is getting so hard for what was an easy process.

The best I got for the second problem is "you can leave a comment at the confirm stage", but no guarantee they will actually read and understand, likely they will just see the green light and move to production as is.

What board factory should I move to, we make both batch quantity and small 10 PCB development runs. We spent $5200 in the last 12 months with JLCPCB.

I have used quickturnpcb, S Korea in the past, the boards were super nice, but that was a few years back thing things might have changed.

Looking forward to your recommendations.

Thanks for your time

We deeply apologize for the confusion and inconvenience caused. Please accept our sincere apologies.

Regarding the stencil sizes, we currently provide five commonly used options, with the smallest size being 380mm*280mm (valid area 290mm*190mm). If none of these sizes meet your requirements, we also offer customization services. When selecting a stencil, please ensure that your PCB dimensions fall within the valid area range.

We deeply regret the lack of clarity in our response from our customer service. Our founder, who has an engineering background, deeply understands the challenges that can arise during the ordering process. Your post has brought this issue to our attention, we will take immediate steps to enhance the training and skills of our customer service team. We will continuously improve the user experience and strive to provide satisfactory solutions for each customer.

Thank you for bringing these issues to our attention, and please do not hesitate to reach out if you have any further questions or require additional assistance.

[mikeselectricstuff]

When selecting a stencil, please ensure that your PCB dimensions fall within the valid area range.

the problem is that the PCB size is usually larger than the valid area due to panel borders etc., but your system still rejects based on the PCB dimension, not the dimension of the area actually used on the stencil.

[loki42]

How do you fit the board and stencil in the printer of it's smaller than the pcb?  I always use 29" stencils as my machine is a bit annoying with smaller ones and the cost is pretty similar. Maybe vector guard would work for you?

[wraper]

When selecting a stencil, please ensure that your PCB dimensions fall within the valid area range.

the problem is that the PCB size is usually larger than the valid area due to panel borders etc., but your system still rejects based on the PCB dimension, not the dimension of the area actually used on the stencil.

Again, there is a limit of how large PCB you can put under the framed stencil, it's not all flat surface underneath. I took a few 400x300 stencils I have and exposed steel area underneath is about 220-260 x 140-160 mm which is sometimes less than 240 x 140mm JLCPCB limits. So they would need to pay attention even when going close to those limits.

[luudee]

JLCPCB can do cheap assembly because they don't have to hassle with people sending special parts, ordering from different vendors, etc. etc.

f you expect that kind of service, go to the "big boys" and pay orders of magnitude more for it

I totally agree with you. They are great for simple designs.

It does appear as JLCPCB is trying to enter the "big boy" market with their HDI PCBs. IMHO, if
they want to do that, they have to become more flexible, and more professional.

Best Regards,
rudi

[mikeselectricstuff]

How do you fit the board and stencil in the printer of it's smaller than the pcb?  I always use 29" stencils as my machine is a bit annoying with smaller ones and the cost is pretty similar. Maybe vector guard would work for you?

It's not the stencil size that's the issue, it's the useable area they allow you to cut. e.g. JLC's 380x280mm size has a 290x190mm useable area - I could easily have a PCB larger than that with panel borders etc. but with pads within in less than a 290x190mm area

[wraper]

I could easily have a PCB larger than that with panel borders etc. but with pads within in less than a 290x190mm area

And then fail to apply solder paste because of the gap.

[wraper]

If PCB extends to the area covered by tape, you won't be able to apply solder paste properly.

[asmi]

It does appear as JLCPCB is trying to enter the "big boy" market with their HDI PCBs.

They don't currently offer HDI PCBs, nor even blind/buried vias. Which is shame.

IMHO, if they want to do that, they have to become more flexible, and more professional.

They are fine already. If you pay $10K for PCBs, then the fab would better accomodate, but if you pay $100 for the same PCBs, then it's on you to ensure fit into their workflow. If you don't want to change your ways, go to "big boys" which will lick your ass all day long, but you will pay dearly for that.

[luudee]

It does appear as JLCPCB is trying to enter the "big boy" market with their HDI PCBs.

They don't currently offer HDI PCBs, nor even blind/buried vias. Which is shame.

Actually they do. See attached screenshot. Looks like they renamed it now to Advanced PCB,
and they still call it "High Precision PCB" - up to 20 layers. I wonder if they can provide a
sample stack-up for that, lol.

IMHO, if they want to do that, they have to become more flexible, and more professional.

They are fine already. If you pay $10K for PCBs, then the fab would better accomodate, but if you pay $100 for the same PCBs, then it's on you to ensure fit into their workflow. If you don't want to change your ways, go to "big boys" which will lick your ass all day long, but you will pay dearly for that.

Sounds like you are rumbling here. What are you trying to say ? Who pays $10K for what PCB ?

"They are fine already" ? No they are not, not for complex PCBs that use any high speed
signaling. They are several generations away from that.

The professional fabs are not necessarily much more expensive than JLCPCB.  Specially if you
consider the services they offer. We have used several companies in China, all have been professional
and their pricing is usually quite reasonable. Pricing has been consistent for PCB materials and
assembly cost. Variations are mostly small.

JLCPCB is still growing. They decided to go after the low volume, low requirements, but high demand
hobby/semi-professional market first. They have grown since, and many commercial designs that fit in
to their capabilities and volume are being done - which is great !

But, playing with the big boys will be a real challenge for JLCPCB. I look forward to seeing how they
will grow, and will continue supporting them through my business any way I can !

Regards,
rudi