You guys are in for a treat now that BatchPCB is switching to OSHPark. I have been ordering boards from OSHPark for a while now. You will be impressed by the quality of the boards and the quick turnaround. Made in the USA !
Upload your eagle .brd file, specify a quantity, pay by PayPal and two weeks later (or less) you have your 2-layer boards !
mechg (Greg)
Yep, been using them for a while now. They were my first fab I ever used. Laen, OSH Park founder, will take care of ya.
Also, for those bigger boards, Itead has the best price. And they just started doing flexible circuits!!
While I’m sad to see BatchPCB go - competition is good, and when it worked the problem indication from BatchPCB was useful to many - the steady stream of complaints and negative reviews as of late clearly indicated something was untenable, and I couldn’t be happier to see that things are being primarily migrated to OSH Park. We’ve been very happy with quality and pricing of the boards, the level of support, and the ease of getting things made (we do condense our boards to just a few layers - e.g. just 1 silk layer and not tPlace + tSilk + tWhatchamacallit all intended for silkscreening - before sending off the Eagle files, but it saves the hassles of gerbers), and they are our go-to place when things progress beyond our in-house etching capabilities.
Hopefully the BatchPCB ‘marketplace’ will also be migrated or kept around in some other way, as it filled a niche that I was hoping would be expanded on.
I have had the opportunity to finally visit Sparkfun’s shop in Colorado recently. What a hotbed of cool!
I decided to try the board service again and see if I could live with it. Discovering that they were going to a different board house was intriguing. I have had a bitter taste sending my boards off-shore, but accepted it as inevitable. Boy was I excited to see the change to OSH Park. If this shop is as good as it looks, I’m going to be very impressed. The reviews are good, the are domestic, they accept Eagle files directly, and they are affordable without jumping through a bunch of compromises.
It finally seems someone has gotten it right for the small volume user. WooHoo! :dance:
Bo
I’ve only used OSH once a month ago, it was for my first board ever and I was really happy with the service, super easy to use. The uploader is sweet because it lets you see the layers as they will be made, and purple is a pretty cool color for a PCB. I honestly don’t think I will ever again etch a board at home
I’m curious though, what color were BatchPCBs boards? I’m assuming red.
Green, actually :) Well, the mask anyway. This is probably one of the last few boards to come out of BatchPCB (by way of Gold Phoenix):Tomdf:
I’m curious though, what color were BatchPCBs boards? I’m assuming red.
On my third order form OSH Park. I’m pleased with the quality of the boards. Holes are lined up, quality is great, and the color is pretty cool. Since they are protos for me, I had to play with some through hole components that were being problematic (a hand wound coil that had Kapton insulation instead of “solderable” insulation). Pretty much abused one of the boards with a soldering iron and no damage in any way. The only minor observation was that the smallest silkscreen was a bit imperfect, but completely readable. The font was almost too small to be useful anyway , so I’ll bump it on the next ones. I did go back and find that my text was propotional instead of vector, so that may have an affect too. Ill see on the next one.
Summary: this is a Godsend! very high quality boards, domestic, timely, and affordable. Its almost like the change from a film camera to a digital, I feel free to spin boards all day without going broke!
Thanks to all involved.
Bo