[sdiy] Cheap PCB fabs

[mskala at ansuz.sooke.bc.ca]

On Sun, 7 May 2017, KRiSh wrote:
> Which cheap fabs do you know, and in particular do you know if they also
> provide some cost saving upon reorders, like tooling charge and NRE
> discounts.. etc ?

I second the recommendation of PCBshopper.

My guess is that for small quantities and physically small boards, it's
unlikely anybody will give you a meaningful discount on reorders, because
of the way these places do their work.  Your board is combined with boards
from other customers to make a panel that will be cut up and the pieces
shipped to different customers.  If you order again, the other customers
who were on your first panel probably won't all be ordering again at the
same time in the same quantities, so they still have to do the tooling to
put your board on whatever panel they're making next, and they don't have
a cost saving that they would pass on to you.  Not much of the cost of
tooling for your board is associated with the board and not with the
panel.  Saving money on tooling would only become a realistic expectation
once you're ordering enough boards (maybe a few hundred) that it makes
sense to lay out a whole panel just for you.  Then on a reorder they might
be able to remake your entire panel without retooling.

-- 
Matthew Skala
mskala at ansuz.sooke.bc.ca                 People before principles.
http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/