PCB Printing - How Much??

[Necrosaro420]

Im interested in getting some custom PCB's printed up. They will have solder pads on each side. Around 1 inch long, by 1/2 inch wide....Does anyone know about how much one of these would cost?? Are they expensive? Thanks!

 

[bobsmith1492]

4pcb.com -> Use the $33 special. You can make up to about a 60 square inch board, two-sided copper, mask, and silkscreen, with something like 8 mil line width and spacing. They cost $33 per board, with a 3-board minimum. If you're a student, you can get a minimum of 1. That doesn't include shipping, though, so it would be about $50. I don't know if you'd consider that expensive or not, but you can make a pretty big and complicated board on one of those, and it doesn't sound like yours would be either...

 

[jmcoreymv]

4pcb.com is great. I've used them before and they did a great job with great customer service and a free pizza/soda/popcorn as well.

 

[krotchy]

sparkfun is another good choice:

http://www.batchpcb.com/index.php

Alot of kids at my school have done custom PCB's from them. Pretty much its really cheap when you do a small board, but they are slow. They charge 10 bucks + 2.50 per square inch (including shipping). Id only recommend them if your looking into making a very small board.

 

[Mark R]

www.olimex.com/pcb will do double sided boards for $33 + shipping for 4" x 6" (their standard size). The boards include the green solder mask (repellant) on both sides, plated through holes, and a silk screen print (position labels).

This price includes replicating a smaller board and cutting into the smaller boards. So you could probably get about 30-40 for a single order.

If you use eaglePCB (www.cadsoft.de) - then you can just email them your project file.

(price applied last time I used them - it may have changed).

 

[cheesehead]

Olimex is supposed to be absolutely freakin' awesome, from what I've heard. 33$ is accurate for the "standard size".

 

[Necrosaro420]

Ahhh....ok, there has to be a cheaper one somewhere =P I want to make a few of these things this guy makes, he gets his own boards made (1" x 1") and he only sells the entire kit for 17$...so I must be able to get them cheaper somewhere lol..

 

[Mark R]

Originally posted by: Necrosaro420
Ahhh....ok, there has to be a cheaper one somewhere =P I want to make a few of these things this guy makes, he gets his own boards made (1" x 1") and he only sells the entire kit for 17$...so I must be able to get them cheaper somewhere lol..

Like I said. Ask olimex. They did me 10 of these boards on a single order. Total cost was about $38 to my door.

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The problem with PCBs, is that the cost of setting the equipment and tools up is high. And the vast majority of the cost, is the setup fee.

Again, if you've got lots of small designs - they can be merged into a single design for production. Either you can do this yourself - or the producer can do them (sometimes they may charge for this) - I htink olimex will do this at no extra charge.

 

[Born2bwire]

Ahhh....ok, there has to be a cheaper one somewhere =P I want to make a few of these things this guy makes, he gets his own boards made (1" x 1") and he only sells the entire kit for 17$...so I must be able to get them cheaper somewhere lol..

Like Mark said, the trick is in the initial costs for overhead. The guys that sell kits, even on a DIY niche level get the boards in volume.

 

[dkozloski]

Have them make multiples on one chunk of substrate and cut them out yourself like CPU's on a silicon chip to lower unit cost.

 

[jmcoreymv]

I retract my recommendation about 4pcb.com. I just sent them a 6x10" board with a bunch of smaller boards on it and they wouldnt make it for me without a $50 surcharge. It would be zero extra work for them because I was going to separate the boards myself, but they wouldnt budge. The lady even admitted that it was the exact same amount of work for them either way.

 

[bobsmith1492]

Yeah, 4PCB won't do multiple copies of a small board on one for you to cut out later. If that's what you're looking for, then forget them.

 

[William Gaatjes]

Have a look at shenzen2u.
I have a good experience with them and they are in comparison cheap as well.
It does take some time to get the pcb because of the transport of the pcb from China.
I always perfer ENIG finish(gold plating finish) because it is easy to solder when on one has small pads.
Last time i paid 35 euro(41.63 dollar) for 10 pcb pieces of 75mm x 40mm , green soldermask, double sided with ENIG finish, vias and white silkscreen. And i am sure that the transport costs were included as well.
https://www.shenzhen2u.com/

Here is the pcb calculator.
https://www.shenzhen2u.com/PCB

I just noticed this is a really old thread. O well.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Been wanting to get into this myself, just need to take some time to learn KIcad better. I have some SMD parts that would be so much easier to play with if I could make some break out boards as SMD is hard to solder "in free air" without having a proper pcb to put it on.

Check out dirtypcbs.com as well.

 

[Ichinisan]

Oshpark.com

 

[sdifox]

Oshpark.com

Op already died from waiting too long