Really, really, really cheap PC boards!?

HollyMinkowski · 2011-05-29 21:30

I stumbled upon this on the web just now.
http://wa0uwh.blogspot.com/2011/04/boards-received-from-china.html

This guy is getting 1" X 2" 2-sided PC boards delivered for 1.60 USD each.

That seems cheap to me, is it cheap?

Here is his diptrace 3d image of his board.

Here is the actual board he got back from China

Looks pretty good :-)

I went to the site and it seems they have a special that
cuts 2.10 off this price so you would get the boards for
a bit less than 1.40ea and that includes shipping.

The boards are small but you can stuff a lot of sm stuff
on a small 2 sided board like this.

The site says
Green, 2-sided max 5cm x 5cm boards - 10pcs for 9.90

Shipping was reported by the blogger to be 4.00 USD for this package.

http://iteadstudio.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=19_20&products_id=173&zenid=ucavpvkloscvdu57551dmgfhe5

Has anyone done business with these guys before?

he said it took 22 days from order to get these back to the USA
from China...that's a long time but sometimes the wait is worth it
for a bargain. I'm setting someone up in the US to assemble and sell
some projects on ebay...this might be a good board house to use
for that.

Dr_Acula · 2011-05-29 21:37

Good find. Looks like you can get bigger boards too http://iteadstudio.com/store/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=19_20&zenid=ucavpvkloscvdu57551dmgfhe5 All very good value considering this includes the setup costs and shipping seems very reasonable.

HollyMinkowski · 2011-05-29 21:49

The guy on the blog said shipping for the 10 boards was 4.00 USD.
So 9.90 + 4.00 = 13.90 for 10 little boards.

These boards would be a great match up for these cheap 1.75 USD
Jiffy boxes...should fit the slots well. The complete package of board
and case would be pretty inexpensive for a short run of custom projects.
About 3.50 USD for the case and board plus whatever parts you placed
onto the board. The project I have in mind uses a Tiny85 and several
really cheap parts so the whole thing would be just barely over 6.00 USD.

Kevin Wood · 2011-05-29 23:30

nevermind, too off topic...

LoopyByteloose · 2011-05-30 01:09

I've had some made in China using Eagle CAD. The quality and service were good. I paid them via a US Paypal account and they shipped to Taiwan without any problems. They were very careful to confirm the art work with me and to verify that my data files were correct.

HollyMinkowski · 2011-05-30 01:50

Thanks for the info Loopy :-)

I think I will try to design a simple board using Diptrace
and order 10 of the little boards.

I'm going to go with a DIP part for the uC and place a low profile
socket on the board... I just think it's better that way so if someone
modifies the program and sets the fuses incorrectly and bricks
it they can just put in a new Tiny85 without having to deal with
removing and replacing a sm part. There should still be plenty
of room on the board even though the DIP parts takes up a lot
more space than the sm one. I found a supplier that sells the 8 pin
sockets for just .02 each. I have an idea for another project that
uses a prop, I would have to go with the sm prop though as a 40 pin
DIP would never fit on these tiny boards.

Leon · 2011-05-30 02:52

You can recover an AVR if the fuses are messed up by using an external oscillator. It can be virtually anything, even a 555.

I've got a design for a little Tiny45/85 prototyping PCB that you can have, if you don't want to make your own. It's 6.54cm x 3.24 cm.

HollyMinkowski · 2011-05-30 03:43

Leon

Yes, I know it's easy to recover a tiny85 using an oscillator as
a clock source. It's harder though to recover if you inadvertently
turn off serial programming, then you need high voltage parallel.

I was thinking it would be easier for the end user of the device
to just swap in a new DIP part and be done with it since the 85
is so cheap. The end user might not know enough to do anything
else other than just pry up the uC and stick in a pre-programmed
replacement.

I wouldn't mind seeing your design for a tiny85 board :-)
Perhaps you could post it here or pm it to me.

BTW: I found a china seller on ebay selling USB programmers
for the AVR for just 6.90 and that includes shipping. I'm going to
put a six pin isp block on the board so users can alter the firmware
and direct them to the 6.90 device. It comes with the 6 pin isp cable.

Leon · 2011-05-30 03:55

Here it is:

HollyMinkowski · 2011-05-30 04:01

Thanks leon

That's a nice simple design :-)

Leon · 2011-05-30 04:22

I adapted a design for a similar home-made PCB of mine for someone who wanted me to design it for him. It was only a few minutes work so he gave me some of his boards instead of payment (he had 100 made). I kept one for myself and gave the others away to AVR Freaks members. It's a pity they've all gone, otherwise you could have had a couple.

HollyMinkowski · 2011-05-30 04:45

I wonder if I could design a board with a sm prop and a
sm 1284p and fit it all on a tiny board this size. You would
have a lot of power for little $ if it would all fit.

I have real problems designing pc boards...it's a sort of
mechanical skill and I'm really bad at that kind of thing.
But I'm sick of having to get someone else to do it for me :-(

Leon · 2011-05-30 04:50

Some simple strategies help. Route the supplies and clocks first. Then route the remaining tracks, starting with the shortest ones and leaving the longest ones to last.

Unknown · 2011-05-30 19:44

HollyMinkowski wrote: »

I wonder if I could design a board with a sm prop and a
sm 1284p and fit it all on a tiny board this size. You would
have a lot of power for little $ if it would all fit.

I've seen students use cardboard in college. It is probably cheaper to prototype something like that until you get your idea finished. My dad also brought home small plastic paper like sheet you could cut.

RDL2004 · 2011-05-30 21:00

Something you might find interesting.

http://www.eevblog.com/2011/03/11/eevblog-155-itead-studio-pcb-prototype-goof/

and definitely read the comments.

Leon · 2011-05-30 22:31

They do recommend 8/8 mil rather than the minimum 6/6 mil. I wouldn't have used 6/6 rules. You also need to be careful with the 0.3 mm minimum drill, I'd use a 0.3mm annular ring.

They obviously don't make the boards themselves. They panelise them, and then send off the Gerbers and drill file to a cheap board supplier, which explains the long delivery period.

I've ordered some of their nRF24L01+ modules. I've already got some similar ones I bought from an Ebay supplier, but their's are cheaper at $4. Another supplier is also selling them for $4, but I thought I'd try Istore, whilst I was on their web site.

RDL2004 · 2011-05-30 22:51

There's some pretty funny stuff if you poke around on their site. They have an electronic dummy load for testing power supplies (its out of stock right now) but they decided to test their first prototype by hooking it up to a 5 volt 500 mA AC adapter they were selling. They discovered that their adapter couldn't even put out 60 mA without dropping to under 4.7 volts. At 500 mA it was barely over 1 volt. "Counterfeit" as they put it.

John A. Zoidberg · 2011-05-30 23:57

HollyMinkowski wrote: »

The guy on the blog said shipping for the 10 boards was 4.00 USD.
So 9.90 + 4.00 = 13.90 for 10 little boards.

These boards would be a great match up for these cheap 1.75 USD
Jiffy boxes...should fit the slots well. The complete package of board
and case would be pretty inexpensive for a short run of custom projects.
About 3.50 USD for the case and board plus whatever parts you placed
onto the board. The project I have in mind uses a Tiny85 and several
really cheap parts so the whole thing would be just barely over 6.00 USD.

I've been dying to get these cheap plastic boxes.

Unfortunately, I'm living in SE Asia, so I can't seem to find any of them.

Any e-stores in China sell those?

LoopyByteloose · 2011-05-31 00:14

Those plastic boxes are available in Taiwan, but only in black plastic. I'd love to have the transparent.

I wish I could remember the name of the jobber in China that I used as they are at least proven to me, but I don't. I ordered 25 boards from them and with shipping and all it came to less than $100USD. But this was years ago.

Above all, make sure your jobber has someone that can handle English and that they have software to view and verify the files independently. Both these issues were very helpful to me and shouldn't add to the expense. What they did was to take my submitted files and printed out WYSIWYG pdf files that I have to accept before they went to production. One was Lables and two other were the copper (two sides). They did do a mask file as well, but I didn't look at it.

Leon · 2011-07-23 03:35

I've just placed an order with ITead Studio for some small boards (40 mm x 46 mm) - I'm getting 10 pieces for $9.90 + $4.00 postage! I realised after I'd sent the files off that I didn't quite meet their annular ring requirement on some of the holes and I'd included drill holes in the Gerbers, but they should be OK. They seem to fix the Gerbers themselves if they don't meet their requirements which has caused problems for some customers. They've added a lot more size options:

http://iteadstudio.com/store/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=19_20&zenid=qa08tp07o8bn54mjpo155e5o16

You need to make sure that your design meets these requirements:

http://iteadstudio.com/service/prototyping-pcb-minimum-spacing-limitation/

They should provide that info on their main page, that's why I missed it.

zoopydogsit · 2011-07-23 05:34

Loopy, zoieberg. You can get the transparent jiffy boxes in Australia from altronics www.altronics.com.au have a look. Though the Aussie dollar is very expensive to buy and ship them from here.

Leon · 2011-07-27 01:21

I just got an email from ITead Studio informing me that my boards have been posted. The order was placed four days ago - very impressive for such a cheap service. I'll probably have to wait a couple of weeks for them to get here, though.

LoopyByteloose · 2011-07-27 04:17

I had previously mentioned that I got some good boards from a Chinese source. Nuts & Volts arrived recently and I see that the advertiser is no longer in there. In fact, there are very few advertisers for board fabrication.

So it seems this thread is all the more important as a way to find good value and good service.

Leon · 2011-07-27 04:54

You didn't mention the supplier!

LoopyByteloose · 2011-07-27 09:33

It has been quite awhile, I don't remember. I'd have to dig for the invoice. At the time, Futurelec and Sparkfun were jobbing circuit boards from China for similar prices. If they still do, there is little point to bother going direct.

Leon · 2011-08-02 03:36

My ITead Studio boards have just arrived!

I actually received 11 boards for my $9.90 plus postage (one extra), and they took a total of 11 days to get here from when I placed the order. The board quality looks pretty good: some people have complained about poor drilling tolerances and my vias should really have had a larger annular ring. $0.90 per board and 11 days to make and deliver them is amazing, I can't see how ITead and the factory they use make a profit.

Here is my (mostly) assembled board attached to the FPGA board for testing. It worked OK.

TonyD · 2011-08-03 01:27

Thanks for posting Leon. It looks a interesting board, what does it do?

I'll be trying Itead for my next boards.

Leon · 2011-08-03 01:45

If you mean my little PCB, it's a very simple user interface for the 8-bit CPU in Hamblen et al's FPGA book. The two push buttons are for binary data and clock entry to a shift register implemented in the FPGA, and the LED displays the data in hex, rotating through the digits, and the final result. The Altera boards used in the book have rows of switches and several LEDs, but I wanted something much cheaper. I know that my proposed interface works because I used it many years ago with the same CPU in an earlier version of the book, with an Altera FLEX10K board I designed for myself. I did consider attaching a Morse key to the FPGA, and entering the data in Morse.

I've just received an email from ITead saying that my second order has been posted. It was placed on the 28 July, which means it took six days to manufacture the boards. That's actually four working days, the same as for my first order. I might have them in my hands by next Wednesday, if they take the same time to get here. The new board is a wireless sensor prototyping board using a Nordic Semi nRF24L01+ module with a PIC18 controller.

I'll see if I can get another board in the pipeline. A similar wireless sensor board using a Propeller might be fun.

Update (13 August):

The postman tried to deliver my second set of boards yesterday, but I was out and have just collected them from the sorting office. That makes 15 days in total, which is pretty good. I actually received 12 boards.

Really, really, really cheap PC boards!?

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