{"id":4241,"date":"2018-09-29T16:06:48","date_gmt":"2018-09-29T20:06:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.paleotechnologist.net\/?p=4241"},"modified":"2018-09-29T16:11:53","modified_gmt":"2018-09-29T20:11:53","slug":"jlcpcb","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.paleotechnologist.net\/?p=4241","title":{"rendered":"JLCPCB"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Maker revolution generally encourages adding to the repertoire of processes that can readily be done at home. Desktop soldering stations, multimeters, and power supplies have been available for decades; oscilloscopes have been getting more affordable recently, and the recent explosion of 3D printer technology has really made a lot of things possible.<\/p>\n

The production of good quality circuit boards, however, is still a challenge. I can produce more-or-less-acceptable 2-layer boards on our LPKF PC board mill at work, but producing good circuit boards at home either requires a lot of patience and toxic chemicals or a circuit board mill costing probably into four figures. And even then, the boards produced lack through-hole via plating, solder mask, and silkscreen, and are generally cruder and less reliable than any industry standard. Some processes still require expensive equipment to do well.<\/p>\n

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Some circuit boards, freshly milled on the LPKF desktop mill at work.<\/p><\/div>\n

Recently, however, a number of DIY-friendly, low-quantity solutions for getting PC boards made have become available. I recently placed an order for ten PC boards with JLCPCB.com<\/a>. Here’s how that went, and why I now have another go-to vendor for my list of favorites.<\/p>\n

The process starts by creating a set of Gerber files. This is usually done automatically by PC board CAM software like Eagle CAD. I’ve been using FreePCB<\/a> for years to make our boards at work, so I decided to see how it did.<\/p>\n

<\/a>

CAD view of the top of the board<\/p><\/div>\n

The test board (which needs several revisions, but that’s expected) is mostly a 24VAC-to-5VDC power supply for a Raspberry Pi and relay module, along with some extra connections to make hookup easier. I created the design in FreePCB, exported the Gerber files, and then uploaded the design to JLCPCB’s site. Design took a few hours; the upload and ordering process took maybe half an hour since I was unfamiliar with it. Now that I’m signed up and everything, future orders will probably take more like ten minutes.<\/p>\n

…and that was it, really. I got a couple of emails later that day saying the boards had started production (even though it had to have been something like midnight in Shenzhen.)<\/p>\n

Less than a week later, an express DHL shipment arrived. The boards look quite good, especially considering I paid $2.00US for the whole ten-pack. Shipping was just under $20, but that’s expected for essentially overnight shipping from China.<\/p>\n

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Ten boards, delivered in about a week, for $20 or so. Not bad.<\/p><\/div>\n

I populated and soldered the first one off the stack (I only really needed one, but it’s the same price for ten), and it works well so far. Custom good-quality PCBs for twenty cents each (plus shipping). I love living in the future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Inexpensive-but-solid custom circuit boards from Shenzhen in a week or two, for $2.00 apiece. Yes, really. Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[238,394],"tags":[526,525,476,479,314,524],"class_list":["post-4241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-electronics","category-resources","tag-cad","tag-circuit-board","tag-freepcb","tag-pc-board","tag-prototyping","tag-shenzhen"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paleotechnologist.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paleotechnologist.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paleotechnologist.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paleotechnologist.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paleotechnologist.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4241"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.paleotechnologist.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4241\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4250,"href":"https:\/\/www.paleotechnologist.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4241\/revisions\/4250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paleotechnologist.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paleotechnologist.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paleotechnologist.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}