Help you guys make PCBs

[pcbtracy]

Hello, everyone. I'm Tracy, was introduced by a friend into this forum. I don't know how many people need PCBs in here ? If you are seeking PCBs now, maybe I can help.

I'm in a China PCBs factory, can supply you high quality and low cost PCBs.

What we can do:

1. PCBs (1-10 layers)
2. Material: FR4,CEM-3,CEM-1
3. Surface Finish: HAL,HAL Lead Free, Gold/ Tin/ Silver plating/immersion, OSP/ENTEK, Bare Cu

For quotation, pls send gerber files to my mail box: pcbtracy@gmail.com
I'll give you a quotation for your reference.

[rich smith]

First question I would ask is are you able to ship airmail like Hong Kong companies (HobbyCity etc.) or restricted to DHL/Fedex like Shen Zhen companies. Where are you located? What about prototype quantities?

Do you have a website? It's better if we can get an idea of prices w/o sending gerbers to strangers.


Hello, everyone. I'm Tracy, was introduced by a friend into this forum. I don't know how many people need PCBs in here ? If you are seeking PCBs now, maybe I can help.

I'm in a China PCBs factory, can supply you high quality and low cost PCBs.

What we can do:

1. PCBs (1-10 layers)
2. Material: FR4,CEM-3,CEM-1
3. Surface Finish: HAL,HAL Lead Free, Gold/ Tin/ Silver plating/immersion, OSP/ENTEK, Bare Cu

For quotation, pls send gerber files to my mail box: pcbtracy@gmail.com
I'll give you a quotation for your reference.

[pcbtracy]

good questions!

1. we can ship HK airmail if you are not urgent. But many people like DHL,Fedex... they are quick and safe, we can get a good discount from our HK forwarder.
2. I'm in Shenzhen office. Our website is : www.kxkjpcb.com
3. No min quantity restrict, just tell me how many prototypes you want.
4. we can give you a rough price without gerber, you need let us know the size,thickness,quantity,processing demand and where to ship. Basically we need check your gerber files before quoting, so we are able to know whether can do your pcb or give you some suggestion.
5. we know how important is keeping files safety to you, all your files will be strictly confidential by our administration.In addition, all our manufacturing processes are all done in-house. So we are able to keep tight control on the designs as well as the manufacturing.

Is it clear?

[Ivan2280]

Tracy is a friend,the pcb quality is excellent and service is very fast,the pcb are cheap.I have ordered many pcb from him.Thanks TRACY!Ivan from Italy. :)

[Malc C]

Can you work directly from Eagle brd files rather than gerber files ?

[Chippie]

Can you work directly from Eagle brd files rather than gerber files ?

Now that would be good...I have a few designs that I could have made if the price was right...:)

[Ivan2280]

Is very simple with eagle for generate gerber file,it take less than 2 minute.Gerber file is accepted from any high quality pcb manufacturer.

[Malc C]

Is very simple with eagle for generate gerber file,it take less than 2 minute.Gerber file is accepted from any high quality pcb manufacturer.

I know that... but it can be troublesome and for a beginner who is making their first "production run" so it would be nice if all they need to do is send the Eagle files in their default format. Olimex have recognized that Eagle is one of the preferred applications for hobby and semi-commercial use and support the production of PCB's from native Eagle files. As far as I know Olimex are the only company offering this service, and for me makes my life easy.

[The_Todd]

I know that... but it can be troublesome and for a beginner who is making their first "production run" so it would be nice if all they need to do is send the Eagle files in their default format. Olimex have recognized that Eagle is one of the preferred applications for hobby and semi-commercial use and support the production of PCB's from native Eagle files. As far as I know Olimex are the only company offering this service, and for me makes my life easy.

Gerbers are a integral part of producing PCB's. When you produce a gerber, its like producing a PDF from a word document, in that you will likely get the best result printing the PDF from multiple computers rather than emailing out a DOC. Anyways, Its not something thats hard, and to ensure the design is the way you like, you should make your own gerbers. There are many options you need to decide about and should not leave to board houses, like whether to silk over via's, text resolution, etc... Leaving this to board houses may result in a lower quality board which is cheaper for them to make, but same price to you.

[pcbtracy]

Hi,Ivan. Thank you for your support! Aren't you on holiday now?

[pcbtracy]

Can you work directly from Eagle brd files rather than gerber files ?

We can not open Eagle brd files, gerber is the most popular. Also Pad2005, DXP, Power, Protel99SE,Gccam, Cam350, Genesis2000 can be accepted.

[Ivan2280]

yes Tracy i am on holiday now,i use my netbook with wireless card for internet for read forum and my e-mail. :)

[pldaniels]

Creating Gerbers from Eagle isn't a big job but it does require some repackaging on the user side, however consider it a bit of a step into the wider world of PCB/electronics production.

You'll also want a gerber-viewer for your PC to check what you produce before you submit it. I use gerbv in Linux which is a great piece of software (recently updated to have a brand new interface which is much nicer and more useful), if you don't have Linux/BSD/OSX I think there's some $$$ commercial viewers out there too.

Once you understand the process things are pretty easy. I can generate a 'sample' gerber package (zip) for people to look at if they're interested.

Perhaps I should write up a guide, though there's already quite a few out there.

Paul.

[JohnMuchow]

For Windows, GCPrevue is pretty well the standard for Gerber file viewing. And it's free. :)

http://www.graphicode.com/pages/home.cfm?variable=18#_GC-Prevue

[rich smith]

For Windows, GCPrevue is pretty well the standard for Gerber file viewing. And it's free. :)

http://www.graphicode.com/pages/home.cfm?variable=18#_GC-Prevue

I've been using GCPrevue for 20 years now. MSDOS version.

Actually Gerbers are a horrible format for this purpose due to possibilty of confusion and errors in choice of apertures, tool numbers, etc.. JPG, PDF, BMP, Postscript, or just about anything else would have been much better. But it's the industry standard so we are stuck with it.

[pldaniels]

Well, beyond GERBER it's a bit tricky finding an alternative standard, depending on what magic you plan to work on the resulting PCBs. DXF is fairly much the same in concept (even more long-winded though), HPGL could have been an option... though my vote would have been for Postscript, yes. The downside of Postscript is that it requires too much intelligence on the machine side. It's very easy to construct a machine that'll decode GERBER and HPGL commands, substantially more complex and subsequently potentialy more bug-prone to do PS/PDF or raster formats.

SVG could have been an interesting option.

Ah, so easy to speculate :D

Paul.

[rich smith]

The downside of Postscript is that it requires too much intelligence on the machine side. It's very easy to construct a machine that'll decode GERBER and HPGL commands, substantially more complex and subsequently potentialy more bug-prone to do PS/PDF or raster formats.


I think that was true back in the days of mechnical phototypsetters but if we were to start over from scratch today these graphic formats would be WONDERFUL. Though I must admit Gerbers are easier to scale and step with simple C or BASIC code being little more than text files with lists of coordinates.