I think a great feature for the site would be some sort of estimate of panel completion.
If you know the size of the panel being ordered, you could estimate how much is filled based on how many square inches of individual PCBs are in the queue. I know that the actual layout and number of PCBs per panel will vary, but it would be nice to know whether one has just been shipped, is in the middle of filling, almost done, etc.
Great idea. Sounds familiar…
I was under the impressions that it didn’t work like that.
As far as I remember, that’s how SFE used to do it, send off a panel when it was full, but they stopped that when the service started getting busy.
I believe that it is now on a schedule, where every X day of the week, the panel(s) are made up and sent off, even if its just for one board.
Although I could be getting wires crossed, but that’s how I understood the workings (over the past… 3-4 years).
You may be right but I recently had a 2 layer job that sat for over 7 days before being briefly in the panelized state and then in the processing state.
I think the underlying ask is for more transparency of the process.
Philba:
I think the underlying ask is for more transparency of the process.
That’s right. If it does go on a weekly basis like I think it does, then maybe a simple “X Days till next panelization”.
(Slightly offtopic:)
To be honest though, I have only used BatchPCB a dozen or so times, and that was quite a while ago.
Now days I just panelize my own boards and send them off to GoldPhoenix. I am quite a regular customer there of production stuff. It works out to around $100usd shipped for a 6-7day turnaround. When you are doing things seriously and don’t mind spending a few extra dollars its a better choice, for me at least.
This is course goes on the fact that I am in Australia, so even a $2.5 BatchPCB board usually ends up around the $30 mark. Most of my orders were around the $50 mark, with a month turnaround time.
I see it as good value to pay some extra $$$ and get a stack more boards on my door in a weeks time.
It’s a shame there isn’t a batchpcb style service here in Australia, there just isn’t enough demand sadly.
Great idea. Sounds familiar…
Sorry - I’m new here >.<
I think the underlying ask is for more transparency of the process.
I completely agree. BatchPCB seem to be an awesome service, and I feel like this would make the vast majority of customers happier. Most of the Pizza delivery services in the USA have this type of online status check with delivery estimates, so why not BatchPCB 
If nothing else, a schedule would work just as well.