Alternatives to BatchPCB
BatchPCB offer an innovative service to electrical hobbyists - the ability to have single circuit boards - or small quantities - professionally manufactured at a relatively reasonable cost. They’ve been around for a while, they’re relatively easy to use, and they’ve become something of a de-facto standard recommendation in the electronics hobbyist community when someone asks about PCB prototyping.
They do good work, and they provide a valuable service, don’t get me wrong. Thing is, they’re also really slow - expect to wait a month or five weeks to get your PCBs - they don’t offer any real options to speak of, and their prices simply aren’t competitive if you need more than one or two copies of the same PCB.
So, with that in mind, here are some recommendations for alternative fabrication houses that I’ve used.
First up on the list is Sure Electronics. They’re better known as internet (and eBay) vendors of assorted electronics components - LEDs and LCDs and switches and resistors and so on - but they do, in fact, offer a variety of PCB fabrication services. Prices start at $50 for five boards of sixteen square inches each, including shipping. (By contrast, supposing you had a 3×5″ PCB, you’d get two copies from BatchPCB for slightly more money.) They do good work and their turnaround time is pretty good, but their customer service leaves a bit to be desired and they insist on 12 mil (yes, 12 mil!) trace/space. If you can live with that, though, they are a pretty good deal, particularly on larger boards; on smaller boards, they’re usually beat on price by others….
Such as Seeed Studio. They have some slightly confusing PCB offerings, but their prices are excellent, their boards are great, and their turnaround time is about as good as it gets for China-based PCB fabrication. Their prices start at about $50, including shipping, for ten boards of 100 square centimetres or less each (near enough sixteen square inches), with shipping. (It looks like they’ve suspended their PCB offerings until late February, because of the Chinese holidays, FYI.)
Seeed offer a number of options, but still don’t offer the full range of choices a real board house does. If you want something a little different, my suggestion is to try MakePCB. They offer some very high quality boards at prices that are very attractive if you need more than a dozen or so, and offer choices like different board thicknesses, different copper weights, gold plating, and so on. They’re who I generally use to produce “production” PCBs for projects, and I highly recommend them. Their standard trace/space size is “0.2mm”, which is basically 8 mils.
Next on the list is OurPCB. They do good-quality boards with a reasonable lead time, and their support is pretty good. Their prices are quite attractive if you need larger PCBs in relative quantity - 100 twenty-square-inch two-layer boards for $290, for example, plus shipping. They do 6 mil trace/space as standard.
Golden Phoenix are the fab house in China that BatchPCB actually get their boards from. So, same quality, better turnaround, and good prices, though you’ll need to order a few boards from them (prices start at about $99 for 155 square inches, which you can actually beat in some circumstances at, e.g., Seeed). They require 7 mil trace/space. Their ordering process is not the most sophisticated thing in the world, but it works.
Yes, all these outfits are in China. That’s part of why they’re so cheap - not necessarily because their quality is crap (it isn’t), but because you get all the benefits of a competitive high-volume industry. If you need boards fast, they’re not the choice for you - but they’re excellent alternatives to BatchPCB, who are anything but fast, anyway.
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