Having cheap PCB’s made part 2.

A while ago i made a popular post about having cheap PCB’s made. Some things have changed so it’s time for a new post.

BatchPCB is now OSH Park.

EuroCircuits have broadened their range of services to better cater to prototype runs and hobbyists.

Seeedstudio have a PCB prototype service.

Where there are lots of suppliers and customers shopping for the best price, sooner or later someone is going to set up a price comparison site like : PCBShopper.

The most interesting manufacturer for me is now DirtyPCBs (from the people behind Dangerous Prototypes who made the Bus Pirate), my last 3 batches were ordered there.

The first batch was a new run of the LivingColors Arduino shield.

New batch of LivingColors Arduino shields.
New batch of LivingColors Arduino shields.

The second batch was a breakout board for the NiceRF SX1276 LoRa module. Here i experimented a little with contour routing.

SX1276 module breakout board.
SX1276 module breakout board.

The third batch was an adapter board to use no-name CC2500 modules in boards designed for the Quasar QFM-TRX1-24G. The boards are small (about 20 mm x 25 mm) and the minimal size for dirtypcbs PCB’s is 100 mm x 100 mm. Here I experimented with breakout panels, putting 4 PCB’s in one design.

Adapter boards
Adapter boards

The end result worked out nicely, two things I’d do better now are :

  • Position the “mouse bites” differently so the rough edges won’t protrude, see this post.
  • Copy and fixate the silkscreen text to a new layer before copying and rotating the sub-PCB’s. If you look closely at the PCB’s you’ll see that the text didn’t rotate with the rotated copies of the traces. That’s what you want for a big PCB but not for a breakout PCB. There is a ULP for that and a nice tutorial.

 

 

 

3 thoughts on “Having cheap PCB’s made part 2.”

  1. Hallo,

    Ik zou graag jouw design van de PCB voor de breakout van de LoRa module zien. Zou je hem willen delen?

    Alvast bedankt!

  2. Verkoop je nog pcb voor arduino cc2500 shield ivm living colors aansturing ?

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