Talk:PCB Manufacturers

Table

This list is full of FIXME's, I'm not sure if anybody's working actively on those. I was going to implement a table of capabilities/etc. but then I saw that several fabs have all sorts of special case mentions. Perhaps a subset could be used; the user can always go straight to the fab's website/page to find out the nitty-gritty. Question is, though, what subset should be included?

A specifically difficult metric is pricing comparison. Two layers vs 4 layers vs 6 layers vs 8 layers etc. makes for a quickly-expanding table of hell. Perhaps 3 typical cases could be suggested next to a 'square inch' which seem ubiquitous, and each calculated at each fab, as an indicator only. For limited cases, a fab could be listed on more than one row (e.g. BatchPCB's 2 layer vs 4 layer differences).

Below is an example/test table to play with.

Fab	Layers	Traces	Annulars	Spacing	Clearance	Drill	Vias	Mask	Silkscreen
BatchPCB 2-layer	2	8	-	8	X	20-500	Y	red?	-
BatchPCB 4-layer	4	6	-	6	X	13-500	Y	red?	-
DorkbotPDX	4	6	7	6	15	13-260	Y	purple	~200
Pad2Pad (low cost)	2	8	-	-	-	20-	Y	green	~167

Transposing the rows/columns may be a better layout choice, though that will most definitely cause horizontal scrolling, and is a lot more difficult to edit. And apparently there's no method to sort the columns by a given row. Darn :)

Fab	BatchPCB 2-layer	BatchPCB 4-layer	DorkbotPDX	Pad2Pad (low cost)
Layers	2	4	4	2
Traces	8	6	6	8
Annulars	-	-	7	-
Spacing	8	6	6	-
Clearance	X	X	15	-
Drill	20-500	13-500	13-260	20-
Vias	Y	Y	Y	Y
Mask	red	red	purple	green
Silkscreen	-	-	~200	~167

Kamiquasi 23:25, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

The tables Kamiquasi made look really nice. If we make a table like this, I want each row of the table to link directly to the "capabilities" page where we got the data in that row -- to make it easier for people to confirm that the current values are correct, and if not, to update them.

I agree that there are a lot of special cases that don't seem to fit a rectangular table. If that data is usually not necessary for PCB design, and it's easy to get from the "capabilities" link, I'm happy with deleting it from this page.

When I started editing this page, I was doing circuit board layout and wondering "Hey, how big do I really need to make the outer diameter of the vias?". Alas, I haven't seen *any* manufacturer directly state the outer diameter I need to draw for vias so they work fine when fabbed with their standard process. :-( I prefer to pick a via size that I'm sure that several manufacturers can easily manufacture using their low-cost standard process. So what size is that?

So this page started out as a few random examples of PCB manufacturers and how big to make the vias, etc., to fit their "minimum" process.

Then I discovered that if I actually designed to those "minimum" numbers, it took longer to get the hard PCB prototypes in my hand, than if I had designed to their "standard" process. Also, I got hit with a big fee for using their "non-standard" extra-small process. And it was a big hassle to re-lay-out the board, spreading everything out a little to make room for slightly larger vias. Which led to the "preferred" vs "minimum" subsections for each fab.

Then the page exploded into a huge list of every PCB manufacturer anyone around here had ever heard of. --DavidCary (talk) 09:46, 5 June 2014 (PDT)