On 21 Apr 2018, at 13:35, Paul Andrews <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I've been using OSHPark to have my designs made up, and they are great, but I 
> figure I should try a few other manufacturers and recently went to look at 
> pcbway. So I am wondering if anyone has experience of OSHPark and any other 
> manufacturer (but particularly PCBWay), and could give me some idea of what 
> to Watch out for when trying to move from OSHParknto someone else.

I am still enthusiastic about Elecrow’s service. I have had several dozens of 
PCBs done by them now and I still find them competitive and perhaps more 
importantly responsive when things don’t quite go according to plan. They are 
fair and will reprint at their cost when it is their fault, with no argument. I 
do stuff with odd custom pad shapes (offset holes on weird wedge-shaped nixie 
pin pads etc and slotted tag plated hole issues) that sometimes confuses their 
checking software.

https://www.elecrow.com/pcb-manufacturing.html 
<https://www.elecrow.com/pcb-manufacturing.html>

10 green pcbs 10cms x 10cms are made and shipped to UK for $16.36 USD or £11.68 
GBP. I am sent a snapshot of the order and the boards when they are shipped to 
me and I then know they are on their way. They do not add any extra idents of 
their own to the silkscreen layer, something I personally hate seeing. If there 
are any extra PCBs you will be sent these free of charge - you will alway get 
the minimum 10 PCBs, but the most I have been sent is 14. A nice touch.

Other places I have used seem to want to charge extra for panelised boards, 
however you decided to do them - a series of holes, milled profile or V-groove. 
I use a 1mm milled slot between PCBs, with a few 1mm wide tabs to hold the set 
together and this always works. I used a V-groove on one board and it went 
through fine and was reprinted fine twice more, but another time they wanted to 
charge me extra because of the V-groove. Their documentation is vague on the 
topic.

I am a Mac person and use Osmond PCB to design my boards. I am very happy and 
programmer Joe Chavez is extremely responsive to bugs and issues. We have 
co-operated together on a number of features in the last few years.

If you are also a Mac user may I recommend Cuprum for checking your gerber 
files? The free Cuprum community edition will add a feature to OSX that 
displays ripped previews of the gerber files right there and then in the Mac 
Finder. Checking these gerber views against my layouts has saved me a number of 
disappointments. Cuprum itself allows you to view the various layers and hole 
information.

John S

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"neonixie-l" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to [email protected].
To post to this group, send an email to [email protected].
To view this discussion on the web, visit 
https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/neonixie-l/0A87F92D-6362-4441-9D92-FFA02CAECE7D%40jsdesign.co.uk.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Reply via email to