The page says 10-18 days… and that is kinda ‘obscure’. Does it mean 10-18 business days? or 10-18 calendar days…
I’m just courious because I’m horribly impatient and I don’t want to start hammering your CS department unless I think something is wrong (I ordered about 2 and a half weeks ago)
I was wondering the same.
What kinda throughput have those that already received their boards experienced? How many business days has it taken from the time your design was “approved” until you received it?
I wonder if the Chinese New Year has played any role in boards arrival times, I assume they were shut down for some time over their big holiday.
That’s a good point about the Chinese New Year…I ordered 20 days ago and was wondering where my boards were…I hadn’t thought about the new year thing.
I irdered mine 25th jan, they were shipped 9th feb and arrived 15th feb (to Australia)
Hey guys - always good questions!
Indeed - the Chinese New Year shut down the factory for 8 days which threw a horrible kink in things. All orders placed in Feb. are going to be very sluggish.
This is normally how it works. We collect orders over the weekend and throughout the week. On Thursday or Friday we assemble the panel and send it off. The manufacturing starts on the following Monday. 7 days later (on Monday) the panel exits the factory and is shipped. We receive the boards 3-4 days later (via TNT or UPS). Same day, we turn around the boards to you via the selected shipping methods.
So if you order on a Monday, you get to wait a few more days than the person that orders on Wed. or Thurs. The risk is that many designs fail and we have to ask the customer to fix a drill problem or DRC failure and you’ll have to resubmit the gerbers. You may miss the Friday cut-off.
To complicate things (but for the better!) we are receiving enough orders that panels are starting to fill up before the Friday cut-off. Therefore, orders are turned faster (we send off the panel as soon as it fills), but we can’t really assign a cut-off time.
For a good rule of thumb, let us say you order on a Monday. 3 days later, Thursday, the panel is sent for manufacture (4 days total). A week later the panel is shipped from China (11 days total). 3 days later we receive it (14 days total). SFE ships the boards to you and you receive it 3 days later via USPS Priority Mail (17 days total).
So you can see there is some play in the numbers. We cannot guarantee a day or even give you a good window of time. But if you can sit tight for 10-18 days, we can get you a pretty good deal on PCBs.
-Nathan