Before you order your circuit boards, visit our PCB Price Calculator. You can enter the size, layers, and quantity of your board and get prices from 19 different PCB manufacturers instantly.
Visit Smart Prototyping.
There are 16 reviews with an average rating of 4.1. 
To ensure high-quality reviews and ratings, we moderate every review. To write a review, you must include a valid e-mail address. We will not post your e-mail address, and we will never give it to anyone else or use it to spam you. We might send you an e-mail to verify the information in your review.
Submit your review | |
The boards were completed quickly, packaged well and arrived safely. The boards looked great. And they worked exactly as designed. Very useful for me because of their flexible options and quick turnaround time. I'll be using them again.
4 commandes passées pour la fabrication de PCB, très bon rapport qualité prix, rapide, parfait.
(In English: 4 orders placed for PCB manufacturing, very good value for money, fast, perfect.)
After an initial good experience with a PCB order, I tried ordering a PCBA. Big mistake! I sent in the CAM files and a BOM in their format. The way it was supposed to go, I order a PCB and then submit information for the assembly (BOM, placement, DXF, etc...), the information is used to create a binding quote for the assembly, I make payment and viola the boards are assembled and delivered.
The information was sent nearly a month ago! So far, no invoice, nothing in my Smart-Prototyping account about the costs for the assembly. I do not want to pull the trigger until I know the total costs -- board plus assembly.
I have repeatedly emailed requesting the assembly invoice. I was told the link was previously sent. I cannot find it anywhere in my emails. Despite saying several times that I cannot find the link, the only response I get is that it was sent and please check my emails. Very frustrating!!!
Smart Prototyping delivered a PCB of which I only could have dream of, in the days of (horrible, frustrating, but most of all time consuming) homemade PCB-manufacturing. Where I could only buy a bag of fine etch crystals then, now I get ten pieces of great quality PCB's, for about $1,20 each (including shipping) of max. 100 x 100 mm. (I ordered five and got six, but five pieces or ten pieces are priced equaly! I noticed that afterwards though.)
Silkscreen is of high resolution and sharp. They problably improved their production line.
No file extension requirements or whatsoever; just sending a zip with KiCad gerbers and they are going on.
Ordering till delivery took 23 days.
Took about 10 days to finish producing the board, and another 1-2 days with DHL express to my doorstep. Consider the board came from China, the time it took to finish is actually the same as or even faster than order locally in Germany (also cost >6x-10x more).
Got a bit surprise that i have to pay large amount of import tax (probably because the board house attached 2 identical copies of the invoice with the package).
* I also believe the board produced here actually came from the same factory as EasyEDA, because i have tried both of them
This is the first time I've had a PCB manufactured, normally I do it myself. For this bespoke project though, rather than a DIY double-sided board, I opted for a 4-layer board, which would allow me to use smaller SMD parts and have some spares.
The boards themselves went through the processing queue quickly, despite being the cheapest option they were done in 10 days. The quality is far above anything I can achieve with the tools I have here.
Only hiccup was the shipping: I opted for Swiss Post, and at first, it showed the parcel as being destined for Canada not Australia. Turns out this is normal practice, the tracking system shows the transit country rather than the destination.
The parcel took a while, but it did get here on-time (15 days after the "shipping" email arrived, exactly as stated) -- one just needs to be patient. Good things come to those who wait.
I ordered a batch of simple 2-sided boards for a project to be built by teenagers, so it's a simple board with no hard tolerances. I opted for the cheapest postage - 15-30 working days.
To my surprise, the boards arrived 12 calendar days after I placed the order. They look perfect. I can just see what the other reviewers mean about fuzzy silk screen but it's not a problem. The batch number they added to the silk screen is underneath a connector so will be hidden once assembled.
As I said, this is for teenagers on a summer camp, so I've not actually built any up yet, but everything looks good so far.
I love Smart-Prototyping, especially their PCBA services. You can send them your gerber files and a Mouser/Digikey BOM, and get back completed, populated, tested boards in 2 weeks. Their service is very affordable and the boards are high quality. Be sure to ask for DHL shipping if you want to get the boards fast.
I agree with some of the other reviewers that the silk screen quality is not as good as other manufacturers. However, if you stick with larger font sizes you should be okay. The actual solder mask and copper layers are crisp and clean. Moreover, if you have them do assembly for you, the quality of the silkscreen becomes even less of an issue.
I got quote on November 3rd, and I'm holding the working assembled boards in my hands right now on November 18th 🙂
Ordered a 1.6mm 2-layer board + 0.8mm 2-layer board.
Quality is better than it should be considering you get 10cm-10cm * 10pcs for $12.
Pics or it didn't happen: http://imgur.com/a/eYxDG
Timeline :
- I submitted the order on Sunday ( they're off on Sunday I think ).
- On Monday around 3:00PM Shenzen time I was contacted about an issue with my design (I put in some 1 mil-spaced traces for testing).
- I sent updated gerbers and my boards were sent off for production within 30-60 min.
- Got a notification next Sunday that my boards were shipped - tracking showed they were shipped on Saturday.
- Boards were delivered Monday morning - 8 days after I placed the order.
Pro's:
- Relatively fast - basically 1 week turn-around using DHL shipping. I had a 0.8mm design in my order so it might have been even faster if I only had the standard 1.6mm.
- I got an extra board + a free PCB ruler
- Communication was great
- All my vias were 12-24 & all turned out great
Heads ups:
- They do silkscreen cleaning - they remove all silkscreen around 3-4 mil of any exposed copper.
- They extended my guard gap from 1 mil to around 3 mil.
- Silkscreen quality is not production quality(see pics).
Ordered begin of july got the boards back two weeks later with normal swiss post which makes it the fastest service I experienced till now.
Quality is ok for hobby, not for business but the price is excellent (low).
Lowlights:
- via's drill are not always aligned, found some boards with 10% shift below so make the pads of the via's larger than the standard to be sure.
- the silkscreen text was 32 mil and is very rough (dots visible) not as nice as the ones I had from seeed studio.
Highlights:
-fine boards, with good e-test, work as promised
-stainless steel stencil is excellent quality up to par with pro pcb fabs
Overall very happy with this fab, will use them more often esp. when I need stencils. Won't use them for extremely delicate designs.