[sdiy] PCB Design services?

[Vesa Lahteenmaki]

> anybody have recommendations/experience with a good PCB design service? that is, someone to translate a schematic into gerber files for production? (there's plenty of past threads for pcb production).
>
> bob drake

DIY mean do it yourself !

If you have never done layout yourself, I do understand the task might seem to very difficult in the beginning.  Learning new sotfware, first creating footprint libraries even before you can start the actual layout phase etc. Sure takes time to learn, but believe me some of us find layout design phase quite fun.

Using professional design house is going to be EXPENSIVE.  Most likely many hundreds of dollars even for a simple job. I remember one company charged about 80 euros per hour a few years ago using high end Mentor Expedition layout tool.  Of cource small one man design service using cheaper tools will do the job much cheaper, but even then I think it will be much more what you have expected.   


Key question would be is this pcb for your own private use or are you planning to sell hundreds of these pcbs in the future ?


What schematic tool are you using ? Design services use various pro level layout tools, but don't count on that they can allways use netlist from some free hobbyist level schematic tool.  Perhaps schematic would have to be redrawn with their own sw.  Most likely not all your componets are in their libraries yet. So you would have to pay them to update the libraries, sch symbols and footprints.
So you better find service familiar with your own schematic tool to minimize the costs.


If you are really not interested in learning to do the layout yourself, some members of this group might be willing to do layout for you 


Vesa, senior pcb design engineer

 




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