ITead may be locked in competition with Seeed Studio to sell the cheapest prototype PCBs. After a round of price cuts at Seeed earlier this year, ITead has responded with a new ultra-low cost “no frills” service starting at $5. Fewer PCBs with no e-test, lower tolerance, and longer lead times:
It seems like they want to offer a 5USD prototyping service for 5 PCB (5×5 cm), with slightly reduced specs (8mils, no e-test, longer lead time). They are also introducing 10×10 at 15USD and 10×5 at 10USD. Awesome! I really didn’t needed 10 copies most of times.
We work with Seeed, so take our recommendation with a grain of salt. We understand that Seeed and ITead use the same major prototype PCB fab in China, so the boards you get are the same.
Seeed offers 10 5x5PCBs for $9.90. That’s the same $1 per board as ITead with a higher minimum purchase, but it’s faster and five boards are e-tested for problems. Five bucks extra is a small price to ensure a strange PCB defect isn’t causing debugging nightmares on an SMD design. However, it might be a great option for simple through-hole designs you don’t want to fab at home.
Via the forum.
Some of the guys I’m friends with only want to go with boards made in the U.S.A.
I’m concerned about board counterfeiting so I believing in silk screening as minimally as possible so they can’t figure out which parts to install.
I do the same, but I have no proof that it is effective security.
In Eagle, I turn off the tValues layer completely when creating the Gerbers for the silk screen. The truth is that I can barely fits the tNames on my boards, so this is both a practical choice and a security enhancement.
By the way, on serious commercial boards, I view the Vias layer, tStop layer, and tNames at the same time so that I can move the labels around until they are not made illegible by the drill holes and solder stop. In other words, I have a lot of parts and a lot of labels to fit and it’s tough to make them all readable.
I guess the only way to ensure your design is safe is to manufacture it yourself with thick curtains in front of the windows ;)
Though I can’t see why you would blindly trust an American company and blindly distrust a chinese company.. Commercial espionage is something that happens everywhere and anytime. As all of our boards are OS anyway this is not a big concern. If you are an enthausiastic hobbyist either..
How about the PCB service offered by laen @dorkbotpdx ?
Costs $5 for 3 pieces of a 1sq-inch 2 sided board. I love it!
at the moment itead offers the same service as seeed, i order at itead but i have ordered at seeed to for a while and the speed and PCB quality is the same for me.
I like Laen @drkbotpdx service. They don’t currently offer a solder paste stencils, but the boards are very good quality AND gold plated :-)
Also, if I’m not mistaken the PCB’s are made in the USA? Not a fan of supporting communist states….since pretty much ANYTHING you buy from China, the state gets a cut. Disclaimer: I have nothing against people of Chinese decent. Only bad government.
If you go to ShenZhen of Guang Zhou, you can get virtually ANY PCB that has been made in those areas of China.
They just wait until the product ships and then get the component values from that, in some places you can even buy DIY ‘kits’ that contain the PCB + components.
Security is bull, since the engineers in these PCB fabs can make extra cash by dropping the files onto a USB.
I can’t imagine an engineer working on a secret commercial product would choose a $5 service without etesting.
I don’t think it has anything to do with the $5 cost. There just appears to be a different atmosphere of ethics, but that could be entirely anecdotal, and it can change at any time for the better or for the worse, anywhere.