PCB Board House Research And Capabilities

idbruce

Hello Everyone

I am doing a bit of research here, which I am sure will be of good use to many others, so please participate if you create PCBs on a fairly regular basis.

There are three basic questions:

1. In your opinion, which board house manufactures the nicest PCBs (Please provide a link to their website, unless someone else has already provided the link)?
2. Which board house do you currently order your PCBs from and why(Please provide a link to their website, unless someone else has already provided the link)?
3. What is the minimum trace width and spacing that you use in your PCB designs, especially where multiple tracks are concerned (e.g... 4 mil/4 mil, 6 mil/6 mil, 8 mil/8mil, 10 mil/10 mil, 12 mil/12 mil)?

Thank you for your participation.

Bruce

Leon

PCB-Pool makes very high-quality PCBs (they are made in Germany):

http://www.pcb-pool.com/ppuk/index.html

They accept Pulsonix and Eagle board files.

Service is superb. On the odd occasion when they've made a mistake I've had replacement boards in a few days, and a full refund on one occasion (I'd ordered 100 small boards). I think that they were the first company to offer a low-cost "pooled" PCB service.

I've used ITead recently because they are very cheap:

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

Quality isn't all that good, but I don't know anyone cheaper. Boards only take three or four days to make, but postage from China takes another week or more.

I also use PCBTrain, especially if I need a board in a couple of days:

http://www.pcbtrain.co.uk/

I use anything from 8/8 mil up.

T Chap

http://www.sunstone.com


I love Sunstone. Boards uploaded by noon are shipped out the following business day, so Order Monday, at your door Wednesday. I use Eagle, and they accept .brd, so it there is no gerber exporting. I always use the maximum panel of 12 x 14, and fill the panel up with whatever combination of individual boards, it is not cost efficient to have them produce individual boards, just cut the panel up with a scroll saw yourself. Once you get past an order of around 5 boards, the cost starts dropping radically per individual board.