Comment by kicat | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kicat | Hacker News Reader

There's a lot of negativity here, and I think I understand where it's coming from. A lot of you sound like you do this sort of work for a living. I am getting into small electronic projects in my limited free time.

Things I care about: * Board fabrication AND final assembly * Quick turnaround time * Small minimum order size (preferably 1) * Help choosing components

Things I DON'T care about: * Getting the absolute cheapest price * Being locked into a vendor for a particular project * Tight tolerances on things like thermal management or AC signal integrity.

I just want to have a custom board for my PIC-based project, or my one-off guitar pedal circuit.

I haven't tried this service, but I will. If anyone knows of other similar services, I would love to hear about them as well.

The web interface of the chinese fab houses directly is way better than what these guys offer.

For example JLPCB https://cart.jlcpcb.com/quote?fromDemo=yes You first order is $10 including parts and assembly for 5 boards with 4 day turn (1 for pcb fab, 3 for assembly). Typically the boards I have done (comparable to complexity to an arduino) are about $20 for 5 copies including fab and assembly. They also have a free cad tool called easyEDA https://easyeda.com/ but I would really recommend kicad. It takes like 5 clicks to go from layout in kicad to boards at jlpcb https://support.jlcpcb.com/article/44-how-to-export-kicad-pc...

PCBway has a lot more capability, but is a bit more expensive https://www.pcbway.com/orderonline.aspx

There's a bunch of them. Companies like this one have been offering free basic Windows design tools locked into their service for about 20 years now. I think they are where unsuccessful "value EDA" software goes to die.

I used ExpressPCB for a small project back when all these tools were very expensive and there weren't any good free ones. I found it very easy to use.

If I did not have professional tools available today, I would use KiCAD or TinyCAD + FreePCB and pick my board vendor independently.

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