It's incredible how cheap it is to get custom PCBs made at prototype scale these days, even ones with advanced features. It feels like we're living in a golden era of custom manufacturing.
It is unfortunate hope local companies like OSH Park get love too. The marketing of companies like JLC or pcbway whenever I post a hardware project on a website like Hackaday or Hackster always reach out to me to use em. Not that it would matter so many big makers on YT use em.
I can vouch for OSH Park. Wonderful company, nice people, and really good quality boards. Pads lift so much easier on the cheap Chinese boards that I think it alone makes it worth it to choose local manufacturers.
The price is a bit steep for bigger boards but if you're working on a project that they are interested in, they provided financial support every so often. I've gotten a few boards sponsored by them!
OshPark's quality is high, but their prices are certainly higher too. Good to support them though if you live in the States, since that's where they manufacture the boards.
That's kind of the problem though. jlc/pcbway aren't just "cheaper", for anything 2 or 4 layer that doesn't require special coatings, thickness, or finish such as gold fingers, it's just so cheap and fast that it makes no financial sense to buy locally. You'd pay several hundred percents more to get the boards maybe 1-2 business days earlier.
In addition, china is where all the world's pcbs are made, even for commercial stuff, it's not unreasonable to expect them to deliver higher and more consistent quality than home fabs.
The gap only begins to slightly close at more complex boards, but not that much.
OSHPark is more comparable to JLC if you squeeze your design down to the absolute smallest footprint. They market to hobbyists but only in the sense that you're doing this as a side project to your regular hardware engineering job and have access to a rework station to install 0402s and BGAs (i.e. you have the skills and tools to actually design and build a tiny board). I wouldn't use OSHPark to make something the size of a conference badge unless I specifically needed it to be domestically produced or I was selling it. JLC offers purple and black soldermask too.
Sounds impressive in relative terms but not quite so in absolute terms, because PCB is dirty cheap so 100% is just $10-$20.
> it's not unreasonable to expect them to deliver higher and more consistent quality than home fabs.
Actually it is the opposite, OshPark quality is consistently higher than JLC for years. Chinese manufacturers can do Apple products but also Temu craps, so don't get your hopes high. The only reasonable expectation is being cheap reduces quality.
It's interesting to me because it tries to protect American options, but for Americans only. It creates an opportunity for the rest of the world to be able to get boards printed far cheaper than the Americans can.
Maybe I'm just catching up to what people already know, but it feels like the tariffs are especially bad for parts and not just products where the U.S. market is the final stop.
The problem with OSH Park is that they're in the US, so they're prohibitively expensive for shipping and there's no guarantee your boards will even make it to you.
I've also got concerns about the quality of American electrical products.
In the past if you didn't live in the US, OSHPark was a great option. Local fabs were very expensive, had big setup fees and even the "maker" places charged more and you'd only get HASL. Meanwhile OSH gave you 3 with ENIG and the quality has always been excellent. They nailed the automation to make group buys cost effective.
If you live in the US, it's free shipping and for breakout boards or smaller work, still a great option. Unless you're a student, I think most side projects aren't make or break if the boards cost $5 vs $2. Even $20-25 I would consider fair for a one-off side project and they also do $1/sqin medium runs if you need > 10.
Right now it's several hundred dollars to get anything electronic out of the US and into the UK, unless you're a big enough company to be able to lawyer your way out of it.
The UK has de minimis for a while yet, and PCBs are 0% import duty. The only thing you might get shafted by is Royal Mail's handling fee if it gets checked by customs. We're talking about hobbyist PCBs here, not production runs.
> I've also got concerns about the quality of American electrical products.
American PCB fabs are far higher quality/capability than most Chinese quick-turn fabs, but good luck getting Advanced Circuits or similar to talk to you for under $5k.
That isn't to say that the products JLC and PCBWay produce aren't high-quality: they are - for what they are, but you aren't using JLC boards in your $100mm satellite.
It's a loss leader by JLBPCB to get the high-volume contract. Or so said the head of OshPark eight years ago.[1]
There does seem to be a willingness by Chinese manufacturers to deal with small-volume makers and sellers. Look at the minimum order quantities on Alibaba. That's supposed to be a wholesale market, but often wholesale starts at 2 units.
Their PCB service must be a loss leader, but their assembly service might be profitable. What's also a loss leader is their default configuration. Want .2mm vias? That's another 30$. Want to assemble both sides? More fees. So it gets more profitable for them not just with volume, but also with designs that require the add-on fees.
To throw another in the mix, SendCutSend has consistently been a reliable and affordable option for 2D cut parts. They recently added CNC machining offerings, though I can't speak to their affordability on that.
Overseas will almost always win on price (at least in small quantities), but it's hard to beat the turnaround from local manufacturers...
> Overseas will almost always win on price (at least in small quantities), but it's hard to beat the turnaround from local manufacturers...
Overseas can work with crazy turnarounds too. Once I ordered a bunch of stuff from Digikey, and the parcel came around from the tiny village of Thief River Falls MN to rural Bavaria in less than 30 hours, picking/handling included. And free shipping, despite being less than 100€ in volume.
I was actually very surprised myself. As I mentioned in the post, I don't do that type of work so it's all new to me. This got me also interested in CAD. You can design parts and don't need to own the 3d printer, could just get parts manufactured online.
Yeah, and since it seems there's some competition there, the prices are decent. You can get milled metal, 3D prints, populated PCBs... crazy what you can do now and how quickly it can be turned around, if you are willing to pay.
I wish there were more regional places like PCBWay and JLCPCB in US, EU, etc (with similar pricing) so shipping didn't require circumnavigating the globe.
EU has Aisler but what you win in shipping times you lose in production lead time (unless you pay for faster service).
And there are probably others but with even less visibility / willingness to interact with private customers. Hell, I used to live next door to a sales office for a local PCB fab, but they never bothered to answer my inquiry about prototypes.
(That's another thing the proto-friendly companies do right: instant quotes without log-in requirement)
> but with even less visibility / willingness to interact with private customers
It's honestly depressing. I could believe the theories (off vibes, since I'm not in manufacturing, just a hobbyist) that this is one of the reasons why China is overtaking the West in hardware. Manufacturers here just don't want to talk to you at all unless you're willing to buy a million units, it seems. From what I've heard, in China, it's far easier to get started (and that certainly matches my experience with jlc/pcbway).
Like, I get it, profit wise. But it's a bit of a sad state of affairs.
OK, so people are ordering a custom PCB from China for a one-off? Whatever happened to making them at home? I remember my brothers doing this in the bathroom sink with a board coated with copper¹, some special markers to draw the circuit on the board and chemicals to wash off the extra copper. I’m guessing they might have used our dad’s electric drill to put some holes in the board as well, but looking at the article, this doesn’t seem like an order from China need.
⸻
1. Some details may be incorrect as I was 10, this was the late 70s and I only saw the results, not the process.
In addition to what others said, home-etched PCBs are just much lower quality. We're no longer living in a world where every component has leads on a 2.54 mm grid, so tolerances matter a lot more. Also, SMD means you really need vias and a solder mask.
The problem isn't that people outsource it, it's that they need to outsource to China. That's an abject failure of domestic PCB manufacturers who simply don't want to deal with retail customers.
Exactly. Even for this small board, the IC has 0.65mm spacing of the LGA pads. It would be pretty difficult to assemble it without solder mask.
Almost everyone who has the experience of etching a board, or even using a router to automate making one, and also has the experience of ordering a PCB, never makes one by hand again.
What happened is that you can get a set of 5 custom PCBs for about $2. The quality is much higher and you don't have to deal with nasty chemicals. I'll never manually etch a board ever again if I can help it.
Ferric chloride isn't that nasty, it just stains everything.
Electricity costs 25 pence per kWh here. I don't have to make many boards before JLC becomes cheaper than firing up the heated bubble etch tank.
I first started using JLC instead of etching at home in early 2020, and since then I've had a small child, so yeah I'm not running the bubble tank with a 6-year-old running around. Maybe in a couple of years we'll do one by hand, drawing the tracks on the PCB with a Dalo pen and so on, because I remember doing that with my dad when I wasn't much older than my son is now.
But that is definitely going to be an Outside Toy.
I have a small CNC mill and can carve out a board if I don't have time to wait for ordered boards. It's a pain to set up to get it to cut properly, the boards are either one sided or with no vias, and the lack of solder mask makes it harder to solder, especially for SMD components that rely on the solder blob being a certain shape. Additionally, I find that the traces tend to peel off a little too easily, though that may be down to the Ea-Nasir quality copper clad boards I'm using.
It is pretty fast though, and worth learning if you need to do prototyping quickly. You can have a finished board in just hours instead of a week.
I still do mine at home, though I mostly only build one-offs with older style thru-hole components where tolerances are not as sensitive.
Usually I can get away with using a simple Sharpie marker mask, though I've also had good luck in the past with the toner transfer method for more intricate designs:
Buying custom PCBs from China makes sense if you're interested in making electronics. It was more than a decade ago that the equation shifted to the point that making them at home has only made sense if you're interested in the process of making PCBs themselves.
Things like soldermask, multiple layer stackups and plated holes and vias are standard on dirt-cheap Chinese boards but are challenging and time-consuming to do at home.
I used to do this at home. Either thermal transfer or also used a flat bed plotter with an adapter for a Staedler permanent market to draw directly on the PCB. Fun times. Ferric Choride IIRC for etching or you could also use hydrogen peroxide which was much slower...
And yes drill through holes.
Ofcourse only good for two sided (layers) boards at the most.
That method works for creating single sided PCBs with through-hole components or rough SMD parts. Double sided PCBs are more effort but still possible.
But everything more complex than that - multiple layers, blind or buried vias, fine-pitch SMD, anything involving clock frequencies higher than say 50-100 MHz or depending on specific impedances or capacitances, or requiring stuff like vias to groundplanes to dissipate heat in copper? No way even for a dedicated hobbyist. And you need special equipment to make a proper stencil if you can't use a soldering iron due to feature size or because it's impossible otherwise (=BGA parts).
And where it gets really spicy is sandgrain sized SMD parts (0201 and smaller). Even for professional repair shops, that size requires experienced experts...
JLCPCB is often the manufacturer of choice with DIY PCBs, and the reputation is well deserved. I recommend them as well, have never had an issue with what they've made. It's a bit pricier for a one-off board given the MOC, so it's preferable to do some sort of group buy if you can.
Slight tangent: a long time ago when I was into this hobby, Oshpark was usually the go-to instead of JLCPCB. What happened to them? Macrofab too if anyone's used them.
I don't think anything necessarily happened to OSHPark so much as JLC became the default for a lot of people. I find the defining factor is just consistency mixed with capabilities. Even if one could conceivably get a specific PCB stackup quicker from a US company, being able to order basically any type of PCB (and increasingly more than just PCBs) from a single vendor is a pretty significant value-add.
There are US shops like Advanced Circuits that can turn boards around extremely quickly, but obviously you are paying for that speed. Most people ordering a handful of boards for a hobby project, or prototype are probably optimizing more for cost and consistency than shaving a few days off the lead time.
Once someone finds a vendor where they know the quality will meet whatever their own subjective minimum is, there's not much incentive to shop around. Being able to tack on assembly at JLC with a single checkbox also exponentially increases the desire to just stick with that vendor.
Simple: jlcpcb can deliver you 10 boards for anything a hobbyist will likely need for 10$ including shipping, and it ships in 24 hours. Oshpark cannot compete with that.
OSHPark is bare board fab only but JLC does turnkey. I've enjoyed working with CircuitHub for turnkey prototypes. I'm not in love with the web interface (source files must be uploaded so if you have silkscreen that has dynamic parameters you need to make a ticket and the BOM parser misses stuff very often so every project needs an audit).
It's always cool to see people discover KiCad and the amazing world we live in now where a hobbyist can come up with something that can masquerade as a commercial offering.
The transition to SMD and having the "fab" do the assembly was another hurdle for me.
Now I tend to consult LCSC Electronics at the same time I am designing my circuit: checking availability and price of the various components I am proposing to use in my design.
Nice board, looking forward to seeing your next one. A little feedback, helpful I hope:
A "via" is basically just a wire stuck right through the whole board top-to-bottom. (Okay, it's not really a wire. They drill a hole and then chemically grow a layer of copper that fills the hole.) You can connect the copper pattern on any layer(s) to that "wire", so it's often used to route a signal from one layer to the other. But you already have a real wire going through the board: the GND header pin! So no via is necessary; just connect directly to that pin on each layer (kicad probably did this for you automatically). This trick works with all thru-hole pins.
For RF or high-current applications, sometimes you cover a board with a grid of vias, just making redundant connections between the planes all over the place, "stitching" them together. But careful, add too many vias and the PCB shop will bill you extra.
Putting a GND pour on the top layer is a good idea. It's lower-impedance than individual skinny traces, and takes less/zero effort to route. The GND trace you manually routed isn't necessary; you can see by the transparent-red shape that kicad already has copper there. However, you ended up with a little "island" of dead copper between R2 and C2, which is the real reason you needed the via.
A better approach would be to use the bottom layer for +3.3V power instead of a redundant ground pour. This gets rid of the +3.3V traces (BTW, best to use a single, thicker one instead of 2x side-by-side) and unifies the island into the ground pour. Even though this is a micro-power application, playing the traveling-salesman game with long scraggly power traces is never a good idea. You would still need vias to connect each top-layer +3.3V SMD pad to the bottom-layer power plane, but the signal-integrity benefits of a plane make this worth it. Maybe the absolute best is an uninterrupted GND plane on the bottom and a +3.3V pour on the top.
Putting SMDs on the bottom side makes the board cost more, so good call leaving them all on top, but putting traces on the bottom layer is free. So you can even move signal traces between layers to avoid cutting up your planes too much. It's "fun" with big complex boards, like untying a giant knot...
You are very miserly with your +3.3V global net symbols in the schematic! You can place as many as you want to optimize the schematic's readability. Especially near the CSB pin, the 4-way solder dot looks like some intermediate signal in a voltage divider, but it's actually just +3.3V. Same suggestion with GND -- basically, it's more informative to read "this pin is GND, and this pin is GND" than "these two pins are connected, I wonder what they're doing...oh, it's all GND".
Pull-up resistors are usually oriented vertically, too, so they graphically pull "up"!
Anyway...I hope you don't mind all my constructive criticism. It's nice to see something on HN I know about!
> So no via is necessary; just connect directly to that pin on each layer (kicad probably did this for you automatically). This trick works with all thru-hole pins.
Note that without a plated through hole (vias are small plated through holes, those designed for component legs are bigger) the solder will only adhere to one side. For mounting large components where vibration may be a problem this will make the pad weaker & more likely to lift off. A plated through hole lets the solder flow through & bond to pads on both sides. So you sometimes do need plated through holes.
Otherwise I agree. These days 4-layer boards are so cheap it's often worth just dedicating an entire layer to ground, and one to power. E.g. Signal, ground, power, signal. All your ground connections become vias. Most of your power connections are vias to a lower inside plane. Your signal traces are available to probe & rework easily. You get a bit of distributed capacitance from the power & ground planes.
For a simple-enough design, I'd just route the signals as on a 2-layer board. Play around with placement & orientation of parts to minimize overall trace length. If you have some A-B duo with many connections between them: place those first & then put the other parts.
Then fill the remaining space with power planes. GND on one side, most-used supply voltage on the other side.
That way you reduce/avoid the need for blind (or worse: buried) vias.
Another trick: route signals roughly east-west on one side, roughly north-south on the other side, and use a via where you change direction. Many early (complex!) computer mainboards were done that way on 2-layer boards (often using through-hole IC pins or passives as via).
You shouldn't really need 3+ layers unless you get into high density stuff like many-ball BGA parts & the like.
This is great! Thanks for the detailed write up and suggestions to improve. Like I said, this is my first time doing it and I have no background in EE or PCB design. If I make something else I'll give your suggestions a try.
Wow, very very similar to my first PCB, a breakout board for the TSL4531. I ordered it from OshPark back in 2016. Used the exact same soldering iron, and a Quick hot air station, though it's the less fancy one than you have.
From there on I've made various PCBs, and thankfully they've pretty much all worked on the first try. I do take a lot of extra time to verify the design and double check all the datasheets.
I work on software and a bit of hardware for my job, at tonari. It's basically a low latency video "portal" to connect spaces. My most recent hardware project was to add an OLED display + rotary encoder dial to the product. That was a fun project, and it turned out great! It was also my first time doing a 4 layer board and having to worry at least a little bit about EMI and all that. All my previous stuff has been lower speed 2 layer stuff, like a custom mechanical keyboard.
This guy, with his air quality sensor, should get together with the guy yesterday that built a fan controller. Connected, fans could turn on when really needed. That's the basis of intelligent HVAC.
It is like 1 week between order and delivery. It feels to me that if you can't wait for a week for parts and PCB then maybe project should not exist at a first place.
Did you find out that designing, manufacturing and testing PCBs are very interesting, but also very exhausting. You have quite a lot of repetitive jobs, especially paper work to do.
Maybe, but that's a good use of Claude IMO. How else would one learn--by googling? Claude does the annoying aggregation of data and distills into a list.
I can tell you where Claude wouldn't have been much use: if it didn't fire right up due to a short or voltage drop that might occur during reset propagating through circuit. You're on your own at that point and gotta break out the multimeter.
I've been trying to make a PCB but it's just so annoying having to sift through pages and pages of listings in order to find each individual tiny component without minimum order quantities of hundreds or more. The process of finding each component is so tedious that I gave up. (I was using EasyEDA hoping it would be easy to find components I could actually order -- nope)
Part selection is often the bulk of the work in a PCB design, yeah. What tools were you using, though? In general the parametric searches on digikey, mouser, etc are pretty good for the standard components. For stuff like resistors it's generally easiest to find a particular range and pick from those. You might find most of those have a MOQ but they're cheap enough it's usually not a major issue.
What kind of part? I use Octopart for a lot of things, like ICs (sometimes some variants are available in low quantities but others aren't and only in thousands).
For stuff like passives it's usually easier to use Digi-Key or Mouser and you can filter by MOQ so you only see things that are available individually.
the most annoying was stuff like resistors or capacitors. They tended to have huge minimum order quantities, there were hundreds of results for any kind of query and most of them were always out of stock. I wanted to stick to JLCPCB's platform so that I could order the boards pre-populated, but I didn't want to be stuck ordering far more components than the board actually needs.
I always feel anger or something when I see some YouTuber say they easily made a board and ordered it pre-assembled from JLCPCB. They make it sound like it's so painless, but for me it's mostly searching through part listings trying to find one without a minimum order quantity of like 100, because there are no filters or sorts for that
Were the MOQ for the resistors a major contributer to cost? Usually they're super cheap so even buying 100 is not a crazy problem. Also most PCB assemblers will have a generic component library for common resistor and capacitor values and footprints, which they encourage you to use anyhow because it's less hassle for them (they're often not even charged per part).
(And if you're assembling them yourself, then you can also buy kits of the common ranges to save the hassle and cost of having to maintain a stock)
DigiKey used to be a good place to get. Also design for parts you can get... In the old days you could also get samples from chip companies if you asked nicely. No idea if anyone still does that.
So a lot of this goes away if you try to stick to jlcpcb basic parts from lcsc, and you sort of develop preferred components for things. Another trick is when in a category, for example angular hall sensors, once you have the key attributes like vin, smt, etc, sort by quantity desc to see what parts get heavily stocked, that tends to indicate what is popular in industry and likely to be a good generic fit. Out of the top 10-20 pick according to stock level against price. If youre ordering from jlc, look through lcsc and you can do pcba with them, or get the parts shipped with the pcbs. Otherwise digikey, mouser (good for connectors), farnell, rs etc, roughly in that order. You will quickly learn for a lot of components there are very standard parts everyone uses. Diodes, inductors for example. To some extent if your footprint is already in the jlcpcb library, its popular and use that. Ie theres 1 smd push button that is basic on jlc and has a footprint in kicad default library. Youd be a little crazy to use anything else. Make all your resistors and caps 0603 or 0402, jlc stocks those the most, vs spotty coverage in 0805 or 1206.
But you find each time you find something in a category, a hall sensors, an encoder, a capacitance sensor, gpio expander, adc, you just file that away as kind of solved and next time you hit that part first before finding alts. Over time you have to dig about less and less. But dont bother with things like resistors, caps, etc that are basic. Even mosfets, unless you have special needs the 3 main types jlc has as basic are fine. Dont get some odd package thats technically two mosfets in one, just put down two basic mosfets. And if you do need a more 'advanced' part, look what is on jlc's promo list atm. Theres very popular stm's for example that are prettymuch constantly on promo (promo is they have the part loaded in mid term for some big customer so you might as well piggyback. Means no loading fee. Adds up)
Llm's can be useful for sifting the sand. Narrowed it to like 30 options and still dont know whats the best pick? Export search as csv and ask your favourite stochastic parrot which part would work best for your application and why. Dont ask them for part numbers though, completely pointless.
Yes, you need to design for what jlc stocks as basic parts to retain your sanity. Dont just slap down a 1206 resistor and call it good, jlc prob has no stock in that size in that value, but they probably have it in 0603. Once you get a handle for whats basic or very common extended parts, that sort of thing gets a lot easier. You kind of have to work backwards, ie if i need a diode i see what jlc has in basic and make my part choice accordingly.
I wasn't trying to choose a footprint/etc ahead of time. I would need, say, a 3.3KΩ resistor, and I would not filter for anything else other than the resistance yet, then I would choose a listing that I could use and that had a reasonable footprint and etc.
It's incredible how cheap it is to get custom PCBs made at prototype scale these days, even ones with advanced features. It feels like we're living in a golden era of custom manufacturing.
It is unfortunate hope local companies like OSH Park get love too. The marketing of companies like JLC or pcbway whenever I post a hardware project on a website like Hackaday or Hackster always reach out to me to use em. Not that it would matter so many big makers on YT use em.
Osh makes pretty good boards but the customer service for the Chinese fabs are on another level.
I got a few small simple boards made through OSH to test their services and their user portal basically left me in the dark for 1-2 weeks.
I'd still use them again but JLC and PCBWay are operating at another level.
I can vouch for OSH Park. Wonderful company, nice people, and really good quality boards. Pads lift so much easier on the cheap Chinese boards that I think it alone makes it worth it to choose local manufacturers. The price is a bit steep for bigger boards but if you're working on a project that they are interested in, they provided financial support every so often. I've gotten a few boards sponsored by them!
I rarely have problems with lifted pads or traces on Chinese boards. And if I do it is usually my own fault.
Pad lift is mainly an issue with base material and there are only a hand full of copper clad suppliers
Almost everyone is using King Board, and they are high quality
I'll have to try OSH Park.
They don't do assembly, just the bare PCBs—and my last projects required assembly.
Is the cost and quality comparable to the Chinese options?
OshPark's quality is high, but their prices are certainly higher too. Good to support them though if you live in the States, since that's where they manufacture the boards.
That's kind of the problem though. jlc/pcbway aren't just "cheaper", for anything 2 or 4 layer that doesn't require special coatings, thickness, or finish such as gold fingers, it's just so cheap and fast that it makes no financial sense to buy locally. You'd pay several hundred percents more to get the boards maybe 1-2 business days earlier.
In addition, china is where all the world's pcbs are made, even for commercial stuff, it's not unreasonable to expect them to deliver higher and more consistent quality than home fabs.
The gap only begins to slightly close at more complex boards, but not that much.
OSHPark is more comparable to JLC if you squeeze your design down to the absolute smallest footprint. They market to hobbyists but only in the sense that you're doing this as a side project to your regular hardware engineering job and have access to a rework station to install 0402s and BGAs (i.e. you have the skills and tools to actually design and build a tiny board). I wouldn't use OSHPark to make something the size of a conference badge unless I specifically needed it to be domestically produced or I was selling it. JLC offers purple and black soldermask too.
> You'd pay several hundred percents more
Sounds impressive in relative terms but not quite so in absolute terms, because PCB is dirty cheap so 100% is just $10-$20.
> it's not unreasonable to expect them to deliver higher and more consistent quality than home fabs.
Actually it is the opposite, OshPark quality is consistently higher than JLC for years. Chinese manufacturers can do Apple products but also Temu craps, so don't get your hopes high. The only reasonable expectation is being cheap reduces quality.
But, holyshit, the tariffs when ordering from JLCPCB from the U.S. this year have been astronomical.
It's interesting to me because it tries to protect American options, but for Americans only. It creates an opportunity for the rest of the world to be able to get boards printed far cheaper than the Americans can.
Maybe I'm just catching up to what people already know, but it feels like the tariffs are especially bad for parts and not just products where the U.S. market is the final stop.
The problem with OSH Park is that they're in the US, so they're prohibitively expensive for shipping and there's no guarantee your boards will even make it to you.
I've also got concerns about the quality of American electrical products.
In the past if you didn't live in the US, OSHPark was a great option. Local fabs were very expensive, had big setup fees and even the "maker" places charged more and you'd only get HASL. Meanwhile OSH gave you 3 with ENIG and the quality has always been excellent. They nailed the automation to make group buys cost effective.
If you live in the US, it's free shipping and for breakout boards or smaller work, still a great option. Unless you're a student, I think most side projects aren't make or break if the boards cost $5 vs $2. Even $20-25 I would consider fair for a one-off side project and they also do $1/sqin medium runs if you need > 10.
Right now it's several hundred dollars to get anything electronic out of the US and into the UK, unless you're a big enough company to be able to lawyer your way out of it.
We'll see what 2026 brings, I suppose.
The UK has de minimis for a while yet, and PCBs are 0% import duty. The only thing you might get shafted by is Royal Mail's handling fee if it gets checked by customs. We're talking about hobbyist PCBs here, not production runs.
> I've also got concerns about the quality of American electrical products.
American PCB fabs are far higher quality/capability than most Chinese quick-turn fabs, but good luck getting Advanced Circuits or similar to talk to you for under $5k.
That isn't to say that the products JLC and PCBWay produce aren't high-quality: they are - for what they are, but you aren't using JLC boards in your $100mm satellite.
While we're at it, anyone here aware of a PCB supplier and (ideally) assembly provider that is available for Europeans?
https://aisler.net/
Eurocircuits
(disclaimer: have no experience with them)
I have, only PCBs, no assembly though.
I have been ordering from them since last century and they are excellent, great customer service too.
It's a loss leader by JLBPCB to get the high-volume contract. Or so said the head of OshPark eight years ago.[1]
There does seem to be a willingness by Chinese manufacturers to deal with small-volume makers and sellers. Look at the minimum order quantities on Alibaba. That's supposed to be a wholesale market, but often wholesale starts at 2 units.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/PrintedCircuitBoard/comments/9bt5ed...
Their PCB service must be a loss leader, but their assembly service might be profitable. What's also a loss leader is their default configuration. Want .2mm vias? That's another 30$. Want to assemble both sides? More fees. So it gets more profitable for them not just with volume, but also with designs that require the add-on fees.
This and sheet metal manufacturing from Oshcut have been game changers for me
To throw another in the mix, SendCutSend has consistently been a reliable and affordable option for 2D cut parts. They recently added CNC machining offerings, though I can't speak to their affordability on that.
Overseas will almost always win on price (at least in small quantities), but it's hard to beat the turnaround from local manufacturers...
> Overseas will almost always win on price (at least in small quantities), but it's hard to beat the turnaround from local manufacturers...
Overseas can work with crazy turnarounds too. Once I ordered a bunch of stuff from Digikey, and the parcel came around from the tiny village of Thief River Falls MN to rural Bavaria in less than 30 hours, picking/handling included. And free shipping, despite being less than 100€ in volume.
They were just on Linus Tech Tip.
I was actually very surprised myself. As I mentioned in the post, I don't do that type of work so it's all new to me. This got me also interested in CAD. You can design parts and don't need to own the 3d printer, could just get parts manufactured online.
Yeah, and since it seems there's some competition there, the prices are decent. You can get milled metal, 3D prints, populated PCBs... crazy what you can do now and how quickly it can be turned around, if you are willing to pay.
I wish there were more regional places like PCBWay and JLCPCB in US, EU, etc (with similar pricing) so shipping didn't require circumnavigating the globe.
EU has Aisler but what you win in shipping times you lose in production lead time (unless you pay for faster service).
And there are probably others but with even less visibility / willingness to interact with private customers. Hell, I used to live next door to a sales office for a local PCB fab, but they never bothered to answer my inquiry about prototypes.
(That's another thing the proto-friendly companies do right: instant quotes without log-in requirement)
> but with even less visibility / willingness to interact with private customers
It's honestly depressing. I could believe the theories (off vibes, since I'm not in manufacturing, just a hobbyist) that this is one of the reasons why China is overtaking the West in hardware. Manufacturers here just don't want to talk to you at all unless you're willing to buy a million units, it seems. From what I've heard, in China, it's far easier to get started (and that certainly matches my experience with jlc/pcbway).
Like, I get it, profit wise. But it's a bit of a sad state of affairs.
Yeah golden days for PCBs especially now the golden days for home built PCs seem to be over.
OK, so people are ordering a custom PCB from China for a one-off? Whatever happened to making them at home? I remember my brothers doing this in the bathroom sink with a board coated with copper¹, some special markers to draw the circuit on the board and chemicals to wash off the extra copper. I’m guessing they might have used our dad’s electric drill to put some holes in the board as well, but looking at the article, this doesn’t seem like an order from China need.
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1. Some details may be incorrect as I was 10, this was the late 70s and I only saw the results, not the process.
In addition to what others said, home-etched PCBs are just much lower quality. We're no longer living in a world where every component has leads on a 2.54 mm grid, so tolerances matter a lot more. Also, SMD means you really need vias and a solder mask.
The problem isn't that people outsource it, it's that they need to outsource to China. That's an abject failure of domestic PCB manufacturers who simply don't want to deal with retail customers.
Exactly. Even for this small board, the IC has 0.65mm spacing of the LGA pads. It would be pretty difficult to assemble it without solder mask.
Almost everyone who has the experience of etching a board, or even using a router to automate making one, and also has the experience of ordering a PCB, never makes one by hand again.
They are lower quality, but you actually made them yourself, and that comes with a satisfaction that cannot be gained from sending a drawing to China.
Edit: and many perfectly useful projects use through hole components. Not everything of value had a microprocessor
What happened is that you can get a set of 5 custom PCBs for about $2. The quality is much higher and you don't have to deal with nasty chemicals. I'll never manually etch a board ever again if I can help it.
Ferric chloride isn't that nasty, it just stains everything.
Electricity costs 25 pence per kWh here. I don't have to make many boards before JLC becomes cheaper than firing up the heated bubble etch tank.
I first started using JLC instead of etching at home in early 2020, and since then I've had a small child, so yeah I'm not running the bubble tank with a 6-year-old running around. Maybe in a couple of years we'll do one by hand, drawing the tracks on the PCB with a Dalo pen and so on, because I remember doing that with my dad when I wasn't much older than my son is now.
But that is definitely going to be an Outside Toy.
I have a small CNC mill and can carve out a board if I don't have time to wait for ordered boards. It's a pain to set up to get it to cut properly, the boards are either one sided or with no vias, and the lack of solder mask makes it harder to solder, especially for SMD components that rely on the solder blob being a certain shape. Additionally, I find that the traces tend to peel off a little too easily, though that may be down to the Ea-Nasir quality copper clad boards I'm using.
It is pretty fast though, and worth learning if you need to do prototyping quickly. You can have a finished board in just hours instead of a week.
These days, a one-off PCB is dirt cheap. They’ll provide and solder the components for you, for less money than you could buy them to do it yourself.
I still do mine at home, though I mostly only build one-offs with older style thru-hole components where tolerances are not as sensitive.
Usually I can get away with using a simple Sharpie marker mask, though I've also had good luck in the past with the toner transfer method for more intricate designs:
https://www.thompdale.com/pcb_etch/gotee_board_production/Ea...
I knew someone who destroyed three surface pro keyboards with chemical etcher.
I've got a cat and live in a carpeted apartment. I prefer to keep most projects "dry" for that reason.
LOL tell them you're not supposed to dip keyboards into it!
Buying custom PCBs from China makes sense if you're interested in making electronics. It was more than a decade ago that the equation shifted to the point that making them at home has only made sense if you're interested in the process of making PCBs themselves.
Things like soldermask, multiple layer stackups and plated holes and vias are standard on dirt-cheap Chinese boards but are challenging and time-consuming to do at home.
I used to do this at home. Either thermal transfer or also used a flat bed plotter with an adapter for a Staedler permanent market to draw directly on the PCB. Fun times. Ferric Choride IIRC for etching or you could also use hydrogen peroxide which was much slower...
And yes drill through holes.
Ofcourse only good for two sided (layers) boards at the most.
> Whatever happened to making them at home?
That method works for creating single sided PCBs with through-hole components or rough SMD parts. Double sided PCBs are more effort but still possible.
But everything more complex than that - multiple layers, blind or buried vias, fine-pitch SMD, anything involving clock frequencies higher than say 50-100 MHz or depending on specific impedances or capacitances, or requiring stuff like vias to groundplanes to dissipate heat in copper? No way even for a dedicated hobbyist. And you need special equipment to make a proper stencil if you can't use a soldering iron due to feature size or because it's impossible otherwise (=BGA parts).
And where it gets really spicy is sandgrain sized SMD parts (0201 and smaller). Even for professional repair shops, that size requires experienced experts...
JLCPCB is often the manufacturer of choice with DIY PCBs, and the reputation is well deserved. I recommend them as well, have never had an issue with what they've made. It's a bit pricier for a one-off board given the MOC, so it's preferable to do some sort of group buy if you can.
Slight tangent: a long time ago when I was into this hobby, Oshpark was usually the go-to instead of JLCPCB. What happened to them? Macrofab too if anyone's used them.
I don't think anything necessarily happened to OSHPark so much as JLC became the default for a lot of people. I find the defining factor is just consistency mixed with capabilities. Even if one could conceivably get a specific PCB stackup quicker from a US company, being able to order basically any type of PCB (and increasingly more than just PCBs) from a single vendor is a pretty significant value-add.
There are US shops like Advanced Circuits that can turn boards around extremely quickly, but obviously you are paying for that speed. Most people ordering a handful of boards for a hobby project, or prototype are probably optimizing more for cost and consistency than shaving a few days off the lead time.
Once someone finds a vendor where they know the quality will meet whatever their own subjective minimum is, there's not much incentive to shop around. Being able to tack on assembly at JLC with a single checkbox also exponentially increases the desire to just stick with that vendor.
Simple: jlcpcb can deliver you 10 boards for anything a hobbyist will likely need for 10$ including shipping, and it ships in 24 hours. Oshpark cannot compete with that.
OSHPark is bare board fab only but JLC does turnkey. I've enjoyed working with CircuitHub for turnkey prototypes. I'm not in love with the web interface (source files must be uploaded so if you have silkscreen that has dynamic parameters you need to make a ticket and the BOM parser misses stuff very often so every project needs an audit).
Oshpark is more expensive and doesn't do assembly. Their only value over JLC is "not in China."
Their shipping costs are too high.
Not if you limit yourself to 5pcs.
It's always cool to see people discover KiCad and the amazing world we live in now where a hobbyist can come up with something that can masquerade as a commercial offering.
The transition to SMD and having the "fab" do the assembly was another hurdle for me.
Now I tend to consult LCSC Electronics at the same time I am designing my circuit: checking availability and price of the various components I am proposing to use in my design.
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Does anyone else remember when designing and assembling your first pcb involved marker pens and ferric chloride?
Yes, but not how to copy the paper design to the pcb with the marker pen. I am pretty sure a did the drilling after the etching.
I made an old school linear psu for my arp 2600 clone like that. I etched w something else :)
Nice board, looking forward to seeing your next one. A little feedback, helpful I hope:
A "via" is basically just a wire stuck right through the whole board top-to-bottom. (Okay, it's not really a wire. They drill a hole and then chemically grow a layer of copper that fills the hole.) You can connect the copper pattern on any layer(s) to that "wire", so it's often used to route a signal from one layer to the other. But you already have a real wire going through the board: the GND header pin! So no via is necessary; just connect directly to that pin on each layer (kicad probably did this for you automatically). This trick works with all thru-hole pins.
For RF or high-current applications, sometimes you cover a board with a grid of vias, just making redundant connections between the planes all over the place, "stitching" them together. But careful, add too many vias and the PCB shop will bill you extra.
Putting a GND pour on the top layer is a good idea. It's lower-impedance than individual skinny traces, and takes less/zero effort to route. The GND trace you manually routed isn't necessary; you can see by the transparent-red shape that kicad already has copper there. However, you ended up with a little "island" of dead copper between R2 and C2, which is the real reason you needed the via.
A better approach would be to use the bottom layer for +3.3V power instead of a redundant ground pour. This gets rid of the +3.3V traces (BTW, best to use a single, thicker one instead of 2x side-by-side) and unifies the island into the ground pour. Even though this is a micro-power application, playing the traveling-salesman game with long scraggly power traces is never a good idea. You would still need vias to connect each top-layer +3.3V SMD pad to the bottom-layer power plane, but the signal-integrity benefits of a plane make this worth it. Maybe the absolute best is an uninterrupted GND plane on the bottom and a +3.3V pour on the top.
Putting SMDs on the bottom side makes the board cost more, so good call leaving them all on top, but putting traces on the bottom layer is free. So you can even move signal traces between layers to avoid cutting up your planes too much. It's "fun" with big complex boards, like untying a giant knot...
You are very miserly with your +3.3V global net symbols in the schematic! You can place as many as you want to optimize the schematic's readability. Especially near the CSB pin, the 4-way solder dot looks like some intermediate signal in a voltage divider, but it's actually just +3.3V. Same suggestion with GND -- basically, it's more informative to read "this pin is GND, and this pin is GND" than "these two pins are connected, I wonder what they're doing...oh, it's all GND".
Pull-up resistors are usually oriented vertically, too, so they graphically pull "up"!
Anyway...I hope you don't mind all my constructive criticism. It's nice to see something on HN I know about!
> So no via is necessary; just connect directly to that pin on each layer (kicad probably did this for you automatically). This trick works with all thru-hole pins.
Note that without a plated through hole (vias are small plated through holes, those designed for component legs are bigger) the solder will only adhere to one side. For mounting large components where vibration may be a problem this will make the pad weaker & more likely to lift off. A plated through hole lets the solder flow through & bond to pads on both sides. So you sometimes do need plated through holes.
Otherwise I agree. These days 4-layer boards are so cheap it's often worth just dedicating an entire layer to ground, and one to power. E.g. Signal, ground, power, signal. All your ground connections become vias. Most of your power connections are vias to a lower inside plane. Your signal traces are available to probe & rework easily. You get a bit of distributed capacitance from the power & ground planes.
For a simple-enough design, I'd just route the signals as on a 2-layer board. Play around with placement & orientation of parts to minimize overall trace length. If you have some A-B duo with many connections between them: place those first & then put the other parts.
Then fill the remaining space with power planes. GND on one side, most-used supply voltage on the other side.
That way you reduce/avoid the need for blind (or worse: buried) vias.
Another trick: route signals roughly east-west on one side, roughly north-south on the other side, and use a via where you change direction. Many early (complex!) computer mainboards were done that way on 2-layer boards (often using through-hole IC pins or passives as via).
You shouldn't really need 3+ layers unless you get into high density stuff like many-ball BGA parts & the like.
This is great! Thanks for the detailed write up and suggestions to improve. Like I said, this is my first time doing it and I have no background in EE or PCB design. If I make something else I'll give your suggestions a try.
Wow, very very similar to my first PCB, a breakout board for the TSL4531. I ordered it from OshPark back in 2016. Used the exact same soldering iron, and a Quick hot air station, though it's the less fancy one than you have.
https://github.com/bschwind/tsl4531-module
https://imgur.com/ozk7UuS
(sorry for imgur, not sure what people use for image hosts these days)
I then went on to also make a BME280 breakout:
https://github.com/bschwind/bme280-module
From there on I've made various PCBs, and thankfully they've pretty much all worked on the first try. I do take a lot of extra time to verify the design and double check all the datasheets.
It's so funny that you had a similar idea. Are you an electrical engineer or swe? What are you building these days?
I work on software and a bit of hardware for my job, at tonari. It's basically a low latency video "portal" to connect spaces. My most recent hardware project was to add an OLED display + rotary encoder dial to the product. That was a fun project, and it turned out great! It was also my first time doing a 4 layer board and having to worry at least a little bit about EMI and all that. All my previous stuff has been lower speed 2 layer stuff, like a custom mechanical keyboard.
This guy, with his air quality sensor, should get together with the guy yesterday that built a fan controller. Connected, fans could turn on when really needed. That's the basis of intelligent HVAC.
Are there any low cost US based PCB mfgs? Part of me thinks we should support our local supply chains, or should I not care?
I worked in a PCB shop in the Washington DC area making prototypes and small quantities for 25 years. We closed in 1998.
Nothing competes with JLC but circuit hub isn’t terrible
I have made boards but never actually used them (the delay between need and supply is too long for me)
I wish I could 3d print a board with all its components - instant gratification (which incidentally was one of my half baked projects)
It is like 1 week between order and delivery. It feels to me that if you can't wait for a week for parts and PCB then maybe project should not exist at a first place.
Did you find out that designing, manufacturing and testing PCBs are very interesting, but also very exhausting. You have quite a lot of repetitive jobs, especially paper work to do.
This feels like you asked claude how to make a PCB.
Maybe, but that's a good use of Claude IMO. How else would one learn--by googling? Claude does the annoying aggregation of data and distills into a list.
I can tell you where Claude wouldn't have been much use: if it didn't fire right up due to a short or voltage drop that might occur during reset propagating through circuit. You're on your own at that point and gotta break out the multimeter.
PCBs are very neat, but that shipping time is a boomer when you are prototyping and you really don’t know what you are doing.
You need a project pipeline. I always have 3-4 of them running because of the waiting times.
I've been trying to make a PCB but it's just so annoying having to sift through pages and pages of listings in order to find each individual tiny component without minimum order quantities of hundreds or more. The process of finding each component is so tedious that I gave up. (I was using EasyEDA hoping it would be easy to find components I could actually order -- nope)
Part selection is often the bulk of the work in a PCB design, yeah. What tools were you using, though? In general the parametric searches on digikey, mouser, etc are pretty good for the standard components. For stuff like resistors it's generally easiest to find a particular range and pick from those. You might find most of those have a MOQ but they're cheap enough it's usually not a major issue.
What kind of part? I use Octopart for a lot of things, like ICs (sometimes some variants are available in low quantities but others aren't and only in thousands).
For stuff like passives it's usually easier to use Digi-Key or Mouser and you can filter by MOQ so you only see things that are available individually.
the most annoying was stuff like resistors or capacitors. They tended to have huge minimum order quantities, there were hundreds of results for any kind of query and most of them were always out of stock. I wanted to stick to JLCPCB's platform so that I could order the boards pre-populated, but I didn't want to be stuck ordering far more components than the board actually needs.
I always feel anger or something when I see some YouTuber say they easily made a board and ordered it pre-assembled from JLCPCB. They make it sound like it's so painless, but for me it's mostly searching through part listings trying to find one without a minimum order quantity of like 100, because there are no filters or sorts for that
Were the MOQ for the resistors a major contributer to cost? Usually they're super cheap so even buying 100 is not a crazy problem. Also most PCB assemblers will have a generic component library for common resistor and capacitor values and footprints, which they encourage you to use anyhow because it's less hassle for them (they're often not even charged per part).
(And if you're assembling them yourself, then you can also buy kits of the common ranges to save the hassle and cost of having to maintain a stock)
If you have dozens of different passives on the board, then a dollar or two to meet each minimum order quantity adds up quick.
DigiKey used to be a good place to get. Also design for parts you can get... In the old days you could also get samples from chip companies if you asked nicely. No idea if anyone still does that.
Some still do, but they'll only send to businesses, not to individuals.
What's annoying for me is Digikey and friends insisting on only delivering with express carrier. I'd like to have a cheaper, slower option.
USPS is def an option for Digikey...
(not that I use it since they don't deliver to our loading dock)
Good for american hobbyist I guess. It's not an option where I live unfortunately (orders above 75€ have free shipping though).
So a lot of this goes away if you try to stick to jlcpcb basic parts from lcsc, and you sort of develop preferred components for things. Another trick is when in a category, for example angular hall sensors, once you have the key attributes like vin, smt, etc, sort by quantity desc to see what parts get heavily stocked, that tends to indicate what is popular in industry and likely to be a good generic fit. Out of the top 10-20 pick according to stock level against price. If youre ordering from jlc, look through lcsc and you can do pcba with them, or get the parts shipped with the pcbs. Otherwise digikey, mouser (good for connectors), farnell, rs etc, roughly in that order. You will quickly learn for a lot of components there are very standard parts everyone uses. Diodes, inductors for example. To some extent if your footprint is already in the jlcpcb library, its popular and use that. Ie theres 1 smd push button that is basic on jlc and has a footprint in kicad default library. Youd be a little crazy to use anything else. Make all your resistors and caps 0603 or 0402, jlc stocks those the most, vs spotty coverage in 0805 or 1206.
But you find each time you find something in a category, a hall sensors, an encoder, a capacitance sensor, gpio expander, adc, you just file that away as kind of solved and next time you hit that part first before finding alts. Over time you have to dig about less and less. But dont bother with things like resistors, caps, etc that are basic. Even mosfets, unless you have special needs the 3 main types jlc has as basic are fine. Dont get some odd package thats technically two mosfets in one, just put down two basic mosfets. And if you do need a more 'advanced' part, look what is on jlc's promo list atm. Theres very popular stm's for example that are prettymuch constantly on promo (promo is they have the part loaded in mid term for some big customer so you might as well piggyback. Means no loading fee. Adds up)
Llm's can be useful for sifting the sand. Narrowed it to like 30 options and still dont know whats the best pick? Export search as csv and ask your favourite stochastic parrot which part would work best for your application and why. Dont ask them for part numbers though, completely pointless.
LCSC has been my problem. It's built into EasyEDA, but most search results aren't in stock, and most of the rest have high minimum order quantities.
I needed a lot of different resistor, capacitor, etc values so each and every one needed me to go through that search.
Yes, you need to design for what jlc stocks as basic parts to retain your sanity. Dont just slap down a 1206 resistor and call it good, jlc prob has no stock in that size in that value, but they probably have it in 0603. Once you get a handle for whats basic or very common extended parts, that sort of thing gets a lot easier. You kind of have to work backwards, ie if i need a diode i see what jlc has in basic and make my part choice accordingly.
I wasn't trying to choose a footprint/etc ahead of time. I would need, say, a 3.3KΩ resistor, and I would not filter for anything else other than the resistance yet, then I would choose a listing that I could use and that had a reasonable footprint and etc.
i suck at welding
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