Need Reliable PCB Fabrication, PCB Design Software

[humfree]

Found a free program called PCB Artist that allows you design your own PCBs. Pretty cool for a freebie.. but it may be a distraction.

I need a good fabricator that is reasonable.. it would also be nice to avoid paying for design.. so now I'm hoping to find a manufacturer that accepts customer generated PCB designs.

Is there an industry standard for software?

Do companies use their own software tools or buy off the shelf?

Anyone have a good fabricator on their short list?

Thanks a bunch!

[Carl.B]

Humfree,

I will ask my buddy who is a manager at a small fab shop actually heading over to his house on saturday. I know they have in the past made boards for some small pedal makers. They are a small family run operation.

[Bloozguy]

PCB Artist is a proprietary product developed by Advanced Circuits specifically to design boards that they will be fabricating. There is another product called ExpressPCB that works the same way. Their software is free but you must have them fabricate your boards. If you want to generate industry-standard RS-274X (also known as Gerber) files to send to a different fabricator that will cost you money. The amount varies depending upon the complexity of the board.

We have a customer who has used ExpressPCB to design and fabricate boards for a number of projects that we have assembled. The software seems to be easy to use and accurate and the boards fabricated by ExpressPCB appeared to be good quality and very reasonably priced. I have heard much the same feedback about Advanced Circuits.

If you are only building a few boards with a relatively low layer count (4 or less), one of these places is probably the way to go.

To the best of my knowledge there are no freeware or shareware PCB design programs that will output Gerber files. The last time I checked, one seat of fully capable (but still entry-level) PCB design software with Gerber output capability was around $6,000.00.

Feel free to shoot me an email if you have any more questions.

[Armitage]

A big thing is to consider how many boards you want, (a dozen or a thousand... say) and if you want them populated with parts. There are tons of companies we've used from China that are cheap, but you'll always be checking for counterfeit parts...

[LordsoftheJungle]

I used to design pcbs for a living, but that was many years ago and on a different scale, so I dont know if any of my input would be relevant. The only PC based software we used was Pads PCB which dovetailed with the Mentor Graphics we used as the primary software,,, probably overkill for your project.

At that time we also had alternatives to CAD and gerber/ascii/ebcdic files in which the designer created "RED AND BLUES" which were layed out to scale by hand and photographed to create the film needed for fabrication. This might still be an option for two sided boards.

[Tres Aardvarks]

The only PCB design software I've used was Expedition (since I was involved with a project at Mentor Graphics for 2 years). I know that's overkill for you (maybe Pads would fit the bill)?

[Bloozguy]

Without divulging too much, if you can give me a brief overview of what you're trying to do I have a couple local (Minneapolis/St. Paul) PCB designers who could probably knock something out for you for at little or no cost.

[Carl.B]

Without divulging too much, if you can give me a brief overview of what you're trying to do I have a couple local (Minneapolis/St. Paul) PCB designers who could probably knock something out for you for at little or no cost.

+1

I talked to my guy and he said if it something simple it really shouldn't be to much money. Bloozguy and I are in the same area so we will likely be talking about the same shops!

[humfree]

Thanks for all the great information. Y'know, I used to work on a production floor with PCBs... you'd think I'd have retained some of the lingo.

As I remember it, there was initial setup cost and then the boards were pretty inexpensive.. what I've gathered from 'Advanced Circuits' is a two layer boards are $33 each.. that seems really high, but there is no mention of a setup cost. I want to say boards were as little as $2-$4 each once you paid for the initial setup.

I'm a little leery of using small unknown manufacturers. I know Hermida got like a thousand bad boards that really screwed up his operation. We would most likely want to start out with a small order, but our largest would most likely be around 200 at a time.

We will use our own parts and do our own populating. We're talking two-sided boards 2"x2" up to 4"x4", 30-40 components, and all sizes in between.

I'm not really trolling for the best deal, but some idea of pricing would be nice. I'm always glad to pay more for reliability and professionalism.. you have to be comfortable with the people making your guts, eh?

Well, thanks again.. I have a bunch more questions.. just need to organize them..

[Bloozguy]

Advanced Circuits, ExpressPCB and most of the other prototype PCB fabricators focus on getting you a very small quantity of boards very quickly, so their unit cost is high and typically includes the tooling charges. More traditional PCB fabricators typically break out the tooling charges and often fabricate on larger panel sizes so their costs are generally lower, but their lead times are generally longer as well.

If you are relatively confident that your board design is stable, we usually steer our customers toward conventional fabricators because they are much more competitive when quantities get higher.

Pricing is based not only on the size of the board, but on the type and thickness of the base material, copper thickness, quantity of drilled holes and quantity of plated through holes. If you have a listing of the parts that will be on the board I can put you in touch with a good supplier that we use who can give you a reasonably close estimate of cost and lead time.

[Thundernotes]

A company I used to work for used ExpressPCB for their prototype boards, because they were reasonable, quick, and pretty good quality. I'd use them for a small-scale operation or low-volume work.

[dragan]

we used to make them at the jr college where I studied electronics .dont know if they do that sort of thing anymore , but you might get a one off free or for materials cost ?