![]() But they should at least tell me as much. It always seems I pick projects with very restrictive PCB sizes and pain-in-the-ass PCB pins to deal with.Ĭertainly making more boards is going to reduce the cost, and you are probably right, I was probably paying for a whole panel or something. Believe me, I would *love*, for once, to work on a design that can use a larger PCB. Now that parts costs have come down, and the capabilities I need are available at hobby levels, I can finally make the board I wanted to make back in 2011. ![]() I can't really increase my PCB size, I am bound by the 600mil package of the original 40-pin DIP IC that my board replaces. This seems to be typical capabilities these days. OSHPark offers 5/5 and 10mil holes on all 4-layer boards, which I need for the 0.8 pitch BGA I have to use. But PCBWAY offers 5/5 as an option (as well a 4/4, and other sizes too), and I'm only using two sizes of holes. Personally I think cell phones are almost solely responsible for the advancements in capabilities that are now available to us. Back then 8/8 was the smallest you could get in hobby quantity, and 4-layers were out of reach. That must also explain the cost jump after The 5/5 trace/space is small, but it was not even an option a few years ago when I did the first version of my board. Which is to say, a smaller board is a cheaper board, but an easier board is also a cheaper board. It might not suit your needs, but it would be kind of interesting to know if the cost would be lower if your design was 2x or 4x the size, as a 2 layer and with easier track pitch and spacing. The hole sizes are important too: board houses need to replace drill bits, and smaller bits wear (and break) sooner. And 5/5 spacing is quite aggressive - maybe that means they have to do everything more carefully, therefore slowly, therefore using more of their capacity, or maybe it means the yield is lower and they need to process 3x or 4x the parts to get fully working ones. It's alway true that 4 layer is more: they have to do more than twice as much work. The best case for the PCB house is high-volume customers! Which is something you can only do if you have a fair number of low-volume customers. Maybe they make a panel per customer, whereas others maybe make up a panel for several customers and share the cost. Those prices for 5/10/40 show that that house has a high fixed cost and a low per-area cost. But I am very surprised that PCBWAY was going to charge me almost $20 per board! Even the U.S. I have yet to find one place that is good for everything. It looks like the best solution is to shop around based on your PCB design files to know the actual cost. OSHPark is making me 3 of these boards for $15.20, they accepted and approved the design automatically in less than a minute, and I received an email today that my order is at the fab house (I ordered them Sunday night). When I came back to the order after they reviewed my gerbers, the cost was $192 for 10 boards! Needless to say I canceled the order. I do not need 10 boards, but I was curious to see how the quality compared, so I submitted my gerbers and had to wait 24-hours for "approval". These were all options on their quote calculator and the cost for 10 boards was $101 (the cost for 5 was $100, and for 40 it was $109). As soon as I selected the 4-layer option (I have 4-layer boards), the price jumped, also I need 5/5 mil trace/space. My boards are small, 52mm x 19mm (about 2" x 0.7") so I figured the cost would be low. Two days ago I needed to order a few boards for testing, and based on this thread I decided I would see what PCBWAY would quote.
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