I have some PCB layouts I want to make available. I don't want the hassle of ordering, holding stock and dispatching the PCBs themselves so the 'shared PCB' concept where the board house makes them for anybody from my design files seems great, as long as it's economical for the small number of PCBs that anyone might want to order.
The first of these I tried sharing via OSHpark. They will make and post it for $8 for 3 boards and that seems very acceptable. But another - 5 x larger, but still under the 100x100 limit that's quite common on these aggregation services - is over $40 for 3, much less attractive. I guess OSHPark must price linearly by area rather than having a default minimum. The 5 samples I had made by jlcpcb cost me $2.50 shipped (admittedly that included several one-time-only discounts but normal price would still be only about $10, I think).
I've tried various low-cost (and some more expensive UK) PCB printers and been entirely happy with the service from all them. The quality is fine for the jobs I'm doing, and I'm quite happy with the slow speed of cheap postage (in general I've found that spending more on the pcbs has very little effect on speed but spending more on postage can save 1-2 weeks). So it's just the sharing mechanism I'm looking for, I think any of the manufacturers will be fine otherwise.
I believe I've seen someone else (one of the chinese manufacturers) offering this sort of open design deal but not sure who - is there a particularly good place to do it, or some other way to make them available ? I think many low cost sources are disadvantaged through no fault of their own by high postage costs. I'm very happy to let the Chinese government subsidise those !