[sdiy] Today's Pet Peeve: PCBs

[Chris McDowell]

I have had this happen too many times. Most recently with a high-ish power LED driver, so not only was it a waste of a board, but a very exciting failure. That was from Bay Area Circuits, who usually do great work. I don't use them for anything fine pitch anymore ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

Chris 


> On Jul 27, 2018, at 1:36 PM, Tim Ressel <timr at circuitabbey.com> wrote:
> 
> Ugh. This has happened to me. I hate it when you spend all that time stuffing a board that urns out to be bad, especially if it is too bad to fix. I would have to say if a board house cannot plate holes well they should be dropped. I'm not one to jump ship at the least little thing, but plated holes are a basic thing. If their process control is that bad then I'd consider moving.
> 
> I have had good luck with PCBWay although there has been the occasional bad board. The fail rate is very low and the quality is high. I would recommend them.
> 
> There are a few things you can do to minimize issues: make traces as large as practical, miter all sharp corners to avoid acid traps, add tear drops to pads and vias. One fun thing I ran into: if you board is symmetrical then the board house might get one side backwards. In that case add some text to the copper on both sides to give the board house a reference.
> 
> --Brother Theo
> 
> On 7/27/2018 10:49 AM, MTG wrote:
>> So my pet peeve is different. While soldering up some prototype boards received from DirtyPCBs (Wherelabs) I found one copy of board A that had two feedthroughs shorted and one copy of board B that had traces with gaps in them (missing copper).  Same thing happened before on boards from OshPark. I wish I'd noticed before I soldered the parts on!  I guess I need to super inspect each board. The gaps aren't really that hard to see, but the feedthroughs I needed to buzz out to find. Fortunately that one was fixable. The missing copper one is quite a few traces and not sure it's worth the time to rework it.
>> 
>> So, any sage advice? Is PCB testing worth it? Or is the cost of a couple of bad boards less painful.
>> 
>> 
>> 
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> 
> -- 
> --Tim Ressel
> Circuit Abbey
> timr at circuitabbey.com
> 
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