[sdiy] making PCBs, what's your method?

[karl dalen]

--- Oakley Sound <oakley at techrepairs.freeserve.co.uk> skrev: > > I have had
great success using Eagle CAD and sending BRD files to PCB
> fabrication companies such as Olimex in Bulgaria. www.olimex.com ...
> 
> I wonder about Olimex. In particular, whether they actually do make
> their own PCBs, or farm them out as when the demand requires. I have
> seen some very good boards from them, and I have seen some not so good
> boards. It was pretty clear that were not made by the same process, yet
> apparently came from the same company.

The PCB manufacturing industry is  one of the hardest when it comes
to cost effiency in manufacturing therefore this have made many PCB
manufacturers in europe during the last 5 years go "RIP", its all
about "lowest cost of labouring" so the very few thats left are 
located to the former east europe countries like Bulgaria (olimex)
Baltics, Rumania, etc, today its even possible  to have small series
of PCB directly out of a Chinese manufacturer trought a agent. Some
even outsource  to China by collecting many small orders and then 
ship that over, you as a customer newer ses that operation!  
 
> I had one set of boards made at Olimex, the tbDAC-2. Suffice to say, the
> next issue I had made at a different place. [One Way Circuits in the UK]
> 
> They are probably OK for prototyping and one offs, but I wouldn't want
> to sell them as they aren't up to the quality my customers would
> normally expect from me.
> 
> The other thing with Olimex, they weren't able to read my old style
> RS274 files wanting the 'newer' RS275X Gerbers instead.

RS275x are the compostite gerber file includes all so Olimex has
it a bit easyier to deal with your files. 

Reg
KD

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