House of PCB

pcbshopper.com

I got introduced to the website called pcbshopper.com where I could do price comparisons between different PCB manufacturers based on different metrics on borad requirements. There metrics included things like board size, copper weight, and material, to name a few.

I started the process of manufacturing PCBs with the design from the Quentorres board that was used this week to test soldering and simple programming. I chose not to order assembly, only the board that the pieces could be soldered to.

I chose the cheapest option that PCBshopper offered that was based in Europe. The decision was made for these reasons:

• The price difference was not that much for the amount that I was going to order.
• Ordering from EU does not cause hassle with customs
• Supporting local infrastructure that sells for individuals is always nice

The cheapest one listed was AISLER. They needed a file in either ODB++ or one of the few that they supported. As I wanted to just print the Quentorres board with them, I looked through all the files supplied in the QT repository, and compared with the supported file types of AISLER. The first such file was .kicad_pcb so I went with that one.

After I uploaded the file, AISLER showed me the preview of the board, which seemed okay. After that I clicked checkout and proceeded to select “beautiful boards” (to print just the board) and “Simple (1.6mm HASL)” as board configuration and not other addons.

After that I needed to register or login to actually place the order. Did not do that. The price had increased between PCBshopper and AISLER website by around 2€. Not that bad of a difference.