Board printing costs

[beakie]

I want to professionally print a board I have designed that is the size of an arduino (2.7 x 2.1 inches). It is single sided. There are about 10 components on it if that matters. I want it to look exactly like a professional board including some sort of text based layer.

Who can do the best price for 1, 3 or 10 copies?

Thanks

G

 

[dougy83]

You can try futurlec.com

qUOTE:
Printed Circuit Board Quotation
Qty Description Each Total
1 Single-Sided Printed Circuit Boards 2.56 2.56
1 Silk-Screening for above boards 12.00 12.00
1 Solder-Mask for above boards 12.00 12.00
1 Setup and Artwork for above boards 15.00 15.00
Total (USD) 41.56

For 10 boards, it's $64.60

Quote says a week, but if it's anything like the Australian Futurlec it'll take > a month. Board quality seems OK although the silk screen is not so crisp.

 

[beakie]

Anything UK based?

 

[dougy83]

UK and Europe

Futurlec
2nd Floor,
145-157 St John Street,
London,
EC1V 4PY
UK

 

[HarveyH42]

Have you considered making your own, with toner-transfer paper. There are dozens of posts on the process here, and some very impressive photos of the results. I'm satisfied with functional, but there are a few people here that make very high quality boards at home this way, even the text overlay. For me, I'm cheap and lazy, and the board will eventually get stuffed in a box, and nobody will see my sloppy work...

 

[beakie]

I have been making them at home... but I am never satisfied with the results of my soldering. My soldering on professionally printed boards looks machine soldered (if I do say so myself), but I certainly couldn't say the same about my home etched pieces. There is nothing more annoying than soldering most of a board before some of the copper tracing comes away from the board and I have to start soldering unanticipated wires between components.

 

[3v0]

Traces should not lift when soldering a board unless

1. Iron is too hot
2. Iron is left on joint too long
3. PCB material is resisting soldering
4. PCB material is crap

I assume you are experienced you would only be doing 1 and 2 if 3 where true. If so a Liquid flux (I use a pen) can reduce the time it takes to solder a joint.

Where are you getting you PCB material. I have one batch of PCB stock that has a white plastic substrate. With it I have to be very careful not to lift traces. Several other types have no problem even with narrow traces.