I've had over 8000 PCBs produced through Seeed, including 4000 assembled PCBAs, and I'm generally pretty happy with them. I can run a global electronics business out of my apartment because of Seeed.

We did have one major production issue where a critical part was substituted for an out of spec part without authorization and without anyone at Seeed knowing about it. [1] That was very frustrating. But once I came up with a software fix, Seeed had their local rep Erin (who is amazing) take the 3000 boards I had, set up a programming station I provided in her basement, and run a 30 second programming and calibration routine on each one. The boards work now.

So yeah. Even with as easy as Seeed makes it, production issues happen. But I'm sticking with Seeed for future production runs.

Seeed if you're reading this, can we get an option for silkscreen color on your fusion service? Thanks!

[1] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/flutterwireless/flutter...

The fact that you can send drawings to be fabricated and get hard goods in the mail days later has been true for years. You could have been running a global electronics business from home for fifteen years now. So what do these guys add over players like pcbexpress, or the innumerable Chinese shops?

The small batch multi-layer boards haven't been as affordable. Also, many of the board houses won't work with small batches for anything above 4 layers. Now this isn't an issue when you're running a full business (assuming said business is large enough to have the capital to invest in a large enough order of boards).

This is great if you're running a small prototyping lab or doing some one-off or freelance work, since it'll be much easier to get these multi-layer boards in small enough batches.

The prices do seem lower. A 100mm^2 6-layer board is half the price at seeed compared to pcb express.

Follow up. Another major thing with Seeed is that they have no minimum order quantity for assembly. They'll do 10 or 10,000 PCBAs for you. Lots of other places I quoted had large minimum order quantities. My main products might have met those requirements, but some of my accessories didn't. With Seeed I can do everything in one place.

That's true. To be honest they're not different in principle. They used to have amazing customer service, where I had a very good relationship with the guy on their end (we emailed each other pictures of our cats). But that person no longer works in that role and I no longer have the time to email often, so lately my customer service experience has been pretty basic.

I'm sure there are many services you can use that would let you do this. The only other time I've had PCBAs made in China was through GoldPhoenix and I was very unhappy with the quality of soldering.

All I can say is Seeed has worked for me.

I think a key benefit here is the fast and cheap PCBA service over just making the boards (yes, lots of places make boards).

Shameless plug here, we're just working on getting a PCB & assembly service like Seeedstudio to Europe. What we're trying to achieve is to get close to prices from China but with zero quantities. That means you don't have to take care of stock, as soon as you need one we manufacture it. Beside that all manufacturing is done in Germany and we take care of logistics.

Anyone interested take a look at https://go.aisler.net, if you'd like to participate in our beta assembly just drop me a line at patrick@aisler.net

Finally, something being done in Europe! Sign me up. I've been using Seeed, ITEAD & OSHPark for my hobby stuff, and MacroFab for work stuff (eyeing closely PCBng which gets a lot of things right, but doesn't support all my components yet), but all of those have the same problem: shipping. You either pay with time (3 weeks to get your boards back) or with money (>$60 for quick shipping).

I believe there is a lot that can be done to reduce the cost of electronics assembly and I'm very happy to see something happening here in Europe.

Hi jwr,

co-founder of paddi91 here. What your are saying is essentially what has driven us to start investigating into this.

We come from the Open source hardware and hobby electronics world, and have backgrounds in mechanical engineering and information technology. So we wondered how we can add a European flavor to it: Lots of high quality manufacturers here in (central) Europe, but with a focus on High-End High-Scale series production, both for PCB and PCB assembly. We collaborate with them, automate most of the production process for them, and thus are able to offer competitive prices for low quantities.

We started investigating into this because we want every OSHW project to be reproducible by others. So that if you are an author and publish your designs with us (we synchronize with github if you want), other people (and the many others that are not able to design or assemble the project) can receive a copy of the current version. And since not everyone can assemble by themselves, we try to make it as simple as possible which is the reason for the PCB Assembly pilot. Here we use similar tools to automate everything. It should therefore be affordable to re-produce any project on-demand. Seriously, if you want to help make open source electronics more accessible come and join us with your project for the assembly beta, the more projects, the better, as it improves the test-suite ;-) feel free to either send an email to patrick via patrick@aisler.net (my co-founder) or contact me directly via felix@aisler.net

By the way: the cost parameters for assembly would be the following: cost of the pcb x 2 + cost of parts. no minimum quantity required. All boards come with green soldermask, white top and bottom legend, and will have ENIG surface plating. We only use high-class FR4, 1.6mm TG150 material.

So, I did a quick check, and you're currently over 4x more expensive than OSHpark for 2-layer PCBs, but the assembly proposition looks much more promising. I will definitely keep an eye on your project.

You might want to look at these UK companies who have helped produce the badges for the last two EMFCamp events: http://ragworm.eu/ http://www.hcduk.com/

Since there many guys using Fusion PCB service in Seeed, Here I share the couopn code for the first 50 users :

【FusionPCB11】

Every one use this coupon code in Fusion will obtain a 20% off discount. The coupon code is valid before November.

You pivoting from your OSHW platform Patrick? This is Kaspar, I think we might have met at FOSDEM 2 years ago? I gave a talk about my browser extension: https://1clickbom.com

Yeah, we met back in 2015 I guess! Will you be there in 2017? Would you be interested in some exchange over 1clickbom?

We noticed that a platform for OSHW without making the actual hardware available is kinda useless. That's why we started to thinking about, how do we make these projects available cheaply?

What's your pricing like? I don't see anything on the site, and I don't have a PCB on my phone right now to upload to see if I can get a price.

If your price is comparable to DirtyPCBs, you have a new customer.

On the page is a pricing calculator, just scroll down a bit. As I said we're trying to get a low price on low quantities, if you only need 3 PCBs (e.g. for prototyping) we're cheaper than DirtyPCBs.

As I noticed some interest here, I'd like you to test the PCB service. Use coupon code 'hn102016' on checkout to get a 15% discount on your order. Would be happy to get some feedback on the PCB quality!

I used their 2-layer service a while back it wasn't impressed, primary issues were solder mask wasn't up to spec, silkscreen was rough, and some copper was removed from areas that should have met their spec.

I wound up going with pcbway.com on the same gerbers and have used them many times since.

Thanks for the tip. I have just ordered a PCB where I really care about the silkscreen from DiryPCBs. We'll see how it turns out (given they pretty much pride themselves in not caring about the quality so much). If it's not up to scratch I will give PCBway a go.

Didn't ask for a redo. Had it been just silk screen maybe.

I had sent my prototype gerbers to two places. Pcbway was better quality and cheaper. As a result, I gave them the rest of the production order.

Has anyone used their service to build fully-populated boards? I've been dabbling in making boards as a hobby but really don't like the soldering bit at the end. I'd be happy to pay a bit more for it to be done by machines.

Their assembly is reasonable at a few cents per solder joint. I am pretty sure the machine they use is a hard working guy with a soldering iron though. I used it on a small project because they can put down surface mount passive components for less than the cost of the shipping I would pay mouser.

If you can live within their parts library there is no reason not to use it.

The PCB ordering service seems to accept files well, and the prices are great. But the link is hard to find. From the home page, it's not even clear that they make boards.

Board assembly service is even harder to find. It's here: [1] The list of stock parts they can assemble, the Open Parts Library, is a dead link. It's actually at [2]. although there are several versions and I'm not sure which one is what they actually stock.

[1] http://www.seeedstudio.com/propagate/app/service/ [2] http://statics3.seeedstudio.com/assets/file/fusion/Seeed_OPL...

Since I've ever only done rather simple boards: when would you actually need 16 layers? How complex of a component are we talking about when it would be feasible to use that many layers?

Anything with RF sensitivity can benefit from isolating ground layers. You can use layers for managing thermal effects. Vertical isolation of signal groups to reduce cross-talk. Horizontal space restrictions.

And then of course, signal count and density. Many FPGAs have a thousand or more pins.

We find 4 and 8 layer boards are the best for most of our RF designs (depending on frequency, complexity, etc.) - more layers than that and your dielectric layers start to get too thin and then your tracks have to be super narrow to hit a 50 ohm impedance... But of course, that also depends on what type of substrate you're using, etc.

But for complex digital boards, 16 (or more) layers is common.

Your comment reminds me why it always pays to consult with an expert, pennies up front versus real dollars later.

Modern BGAs will often need that many layers just to break out all the signals.

Once you use a BGA with X balls in Y rows and Z columns with so and so pitch the minimum number of layers needed quickly goes way up.

If you use any kind of BGA you will want to start with 4 layers just for signal integrity.

Google something like "bga escape routing" -- I found one chip that needed 12 layers pretty quickly.

You might be able to route it but that doesn't mean it will work due to crosstalk and then those additional layers will come in handy as ground.

Seeed also does a fair bit of open source work - I've used their CAN library and the associated Arduino shield fairly extensively, and it's worked out quite well. Would recommend.

https://github.com/Seeed-Studio/CAN_BUS_Shield

Hi guys, for those electronics aficionados, just to let you know I've been using with great results Fusion PCB to produce my own designed PCBs. I was very impressed with the result, very high quality PCBs and very good personal customer service. Despite it's a manufacturing house based in China, the process was very smooth, I had constant feedback from the production line, in case I wanted to correct or change things, the quality standards and testing was more than I was expecting, and the shipping was really fast. In the end they offered me some extra coupons, which was the cherish on the top of the cake. If you're thinking on printing your PCBs, I couldn't advise more

I find it amazing that OSHpark manages to be price-competitive with Chinese PCB services. If you need small 4-layer boards with ENIG finish, OSHpark is hard to beat!

I use OSHpark for smaller projects since it's impressively cheap and fast, but for complex projects I've had issues because OSHpark does not e-test the boards. Seeed has e-test for no additional charge and I've never had faulty boards from them (though cosmetically OSHpark generally does better)

I think it is the specificity of OSHpark that makes it work for them.

They are also great for smaller sizes, but as soon as you get bigger than a few square inches, they get expensive in a hurry.

I've used their service in the past when it was limited to 4 layers and have always been very happy with it. I had to find a new source for my last 6-layer board that was much more expensive.

pcbcart.com has always been my choice for chinese PCBs. They have really good capabilities compared to budget board houses.

I've never heard of them, but they look pretty competitive on pricing above 4 layers.

The benefit of the budget board houses is when you need a small run of boards for prototyping. OSHPark is great when you want a few 2layer boards under say 6 sq inches. DirtyPCB is great for 2 or 4 layer boards under 15sq inches (10cmX10cm size). You can get ten 4-layer boards at 10cmX10cm for $50, where as pcbcart has that for $250

It isn't just layer count. Look at the trace and space capabilities as well as smallest via hole size and annular ring size.

I currently use goldphoenix. How do they compare to them?

> The only other time I've had PCBAs made in China was through GoldPhoenix and I was very unhappy with the quality of soldering

From TaylorAlexander in sibling comments, who has used both services.

I hope I never see the day I have to route 16 layers.

Technically routing gets easier with more layers available. If a 16 layer board cost the same to manufacture as a 2 layer one I would just always use that.

Of course today they are still magnitudes more expensive so generally such a high layer count means you are routing evil high frequency signals..

Regarding material, are there standard dimensions for FR-4 (and other materials) boards out of which PCBs are manufactured?

The standard boards are pretty large, but they do come in a variety of sizes. Once you are in volume, the cost of the PCB itself is pretty small. Board houses will almost always want to panelize themselves, partially because their machinery will be set up for a particular size. The machinery is adjustable, but the adjustment itself costs them some labor, so they would rather stick with a single panel size until the production run gets very large or the board has special needs.

I've run a few scenarios through the pricing tool and it seems very competitive (medium size four layer stuff).