Homebrew PCBs

Chris, thank you very much for the review.

I must say that shorts on a professionally-made board does not sound good.
If I am paying to have a board made, I would expect to be able to depend on
it. I would not want to debug problems due to the board house screwing
things up.

That said, I do not have any experience with board houses... Does this kind
of thing happen often?

-Tolga

On Sun, Jul 11, 2010 at 1:44 PM, Chris <lcdpublishing@...> wrote:

>
>
> Hi all,
>
> I had my first circuit board made by a manufacturer instead of DIY. This
> one was just a bit too tough for DIY so I thought I would try a board house.
> I selected https://www.protoexpress.com/home.jsp and used their no touch
> service.
>
> The board I had made was a 2 layer, measuring about 4 1/2" by 11" the price
> ended up at $113.00 with shipping and I selected their 10 day service.
>
> One of the reasons I choose this mfg was that I could submit gerber files
> and didn't have to use someone's special software. I use Sprint layout. It
> took a few attempts to submit the files on-line, but once I understood what
> the problem was it was pretty easy.
>
> The board shipped on time and Fed-Ex delivered on-time. It was packaged
> good (actually way overkill, but better safe than sorry).
>
> Being that this was my first board from a board house, I don't really have
> a basis for comparison, but overall the board was good quality.
>
> The silkscreen is a bit course, must be inkjet printed, but very legible
>
> The solder masks are the typical green stuff and was good, and performed
> good during soldering (hand soldering).
>
> The through hole plating was a bit rough in a few places. Some of the
> smallest holes seemed to be plated a bit "Thick", almost closed completely.
>
> I did find 3 shorts between pads on a surface mount chip (atmega 644P
> location 44 pin QFP). Interestingly, the mounting area for the Atmega2560
> chip (100 QFP, 13MM x 13MM) was perfect.
>
> Anyway, just thought I would share my experience. They can do more layers
> and other things too, so if you find yourself with a project that is just
> beyond DIY capabilities, give them some consideration.
>
> Chris
>
> 
>


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]