circuit board software and fab services.

[mikepukmel]

I have been looking for software to make circuit boards. Jameco has this one referenced on their web site:

Design Your Own PCB

with a tutorial. From what I can gather, the Bay Area Circuits company gives the software to you, or at least they have a download link, then you send them a proprietary file, and they fab circuit boards for you, or for a fee they can spit out a gerber file that you can user wherever you want.

I wanted to experiment with making bias circuit boards, and filter cap boards.

Since the caps are so much smaller these days than the huge cardboard units that came in the old Fenders, I wanted to see if I can tuck a small ckt board with the filter caps soldered on, inside the chassis rather than have them hanging off the top, and having to run a lot more wire in and out of the chassis for Fender style builds.

To that end, I found a few places that have services. Bay Area Circuits just found yesterday. The software is nice to use, even I was able to get simple stuff together in a few hours, not knowing anything.
OshPark is the other one, but they seem to refer you to external (very expensive) software.

Anyone have any experience with designing circuit boards, and having them fabbed?

[mikepukmel]

In case anyone is interested: Autodesk Eagle is awesome software. They have a free version that has a restriction on the size of the board you can make (something like 3 x 5), limited to 2 layer, and a few other missing nice to haves. But for most stuff we need for small amp building, stomp boxes, it is just awesome.

I found a sweepable mid schematic that didn't have a circuit board, so I used Eable to design one. There is a very inexpensive board house SEEED https://www.seeedstudio.com/fusion_pcb.html you can get boards made from there. Eagle also has a whole bunch of built in tools for making BOM's, and sending out quotes to board houses.

The learning curve isn't so steep, even I could learn to use it, and Im not the sharpest pencil in the box.

[nickb]

Mike - check out KiCad - free, no restrictions, big libraries. Even 3D. I've used it to layout half a dozen boards. Like everything, it has it's quirks, but you'll soon get used to them and much more to like. Samples:

[mikepukmel]

Mike - check out KiCad - free, no restrictions, big libraries. Even 3D. I've used it to layout half a dozen boards. Like everything, it has it's quirks, but you'll soon get used to them and much more to like. Samples:


[ATTACH=CONFIG]43703[/ATTACH]

[ATTACH=CONFIG]43704[/ATTACH]

[ATTACH=CONFIG]43705[/ATTACH]

Thanks Nick, checking it out now. Your boards look great!

[nickb]

I forgot to say. One on the nicest features is an autorouter. I found a combination of careful placement, auto router and hand routing worked well for me.

I have used a couple of PCB fab provided tools. One was DesignSpark and the other was PCB Artist, essentially the same software. Load of features but no autorouter but that might have chnaged. It took me ages to do a tiny 4 opamp low noise preamp board so I kinda went off them.

I recently have had all my boards fabbed by pcbway.com. These were a big mixture of double sided discrete, 4 layer surface mount and one high current board that needed 2oz copper. All done with an ENIG finish. I guess this is a highly automated fab you upload the gerbers, specs and whether you need a solder stencil and the price is calculated along with shipping immediately. Boards all turned up just a few day later. I was blown away by the quality, the service and the pricing, even allowing for shipping, was excellent. If you just need 2 layer and less than 100mm square it's $5 for 10 ($29 inc shipping to UK). I cannot recommend them highly enough.

[Mick Bailey]

Did you get stung with VAT plus Royal Mail's handling fee (also with VAT) as well?

[nickb]

Did you get stung with VAT plus Royal Mail's handling fee (also with VAT) as well?

It came via DHL and like all importers they charge VAT and a processing fee. Even then it was still less half the price of using a UK fab. I found out later that the cut price UK fab was actually sending them off to China for processing

[Zozobra]

Damn, that's some cheap PCB pricing. I was looking at OSH park but this looks to be cheaper!

[mikepukmel]

I forgot to say. One on the nicest features is an autorouter. I found a combination of careful placement, auto router and hand routing worked well for me.

I have used a couple of PCB fab provided tools. One was DesignSpark and the other was PCB Artist, essentially the same software. Load of features but no autorouter but that might have chnaged. It took me ages to do a tiny 4 opamp low noise preamp board so I kinda went off them.

I recently have had all my boards fabbed by pcbway.com. These were a big mixture of double sided discrete, 4 layer surface mount and one high current board that needed 2oz copper. All done with an ENIG finish. I guess this is a highly automated fab you upload the gerbers, specs and whether you need a solder stencil and the price is calculated along with shipping immediately. Boards all turned up just a few day later. I was blown away by the quality, the service and the pricing, even allowing for shipping, was excellent. If you just need 2 layer and less than 100mm square it's $5 for 10 ($29 inc shipping to UK). I cannot recommend them highly enough.

Thanks for the tips, and info on the auto-router. The Eagle autrouter doesn't like me. (Told me in as many wild traces). Wow, $29 including shipping is a bargain! Seems like prices are all over the map, that's a good one.

[mikepukmel]

It came via DHL and like all importers they charge VAT and a processing fee. Even then it was still less half the price of using a UK fab. I found out later that the cut price UK fab was actually sending them off to China for processing

Yeah, we got those here in the USA as well! <big frown>

[mikepukmel]

pcbway price is a wow

Nick, wow, WOW, the total price shipped to me is 26.00. Shipping is 4x the price of the boards! I got the same quote from a place on the West Coast (Im on the East Coast) and total price shipped was like $180.00. Its not even in the same ballpark, the prices are so different.

Holy Guacamole!

[nickb]

Here's a couple of the boards. I couldn't seem to get a decent focus- sorry about that. The board on the left (behind the LCD) has a micro controller with EEPROM to store patches and a MIDI interface. It controls the thing on the right which is a stereo phaser. I've populated just one half while I debug it. I got something like 35 boards in the last round so the shipping was a small part of the total.

[MarkusBass]

Very nice project. I assume this is based on Wavefront Semi ICs. I did something similar based on FV-1.

[rjb]

Nick, wow, WOW, the total price shipped to me is 26.00. Shipping is 4x the price of the boards!

Great price, but why would shipping be ~$20.80 ?

-rb

[nickb]

Very nice project. I assume this is based on Wavefront Semi ICs. I did something similar based on FV-1.

Thanks. Nothing so grand. The signal processing is 100% analog - a customer requirement.

I'd like to have a play with an FV-1.