Cheap custom PCBs

[Jair]

This site was suggested to me at work today. Super cheap compared to everything else I've seen. It's run by the sparkfun people. They gather up a bunch of orders and batch them out to a chinese board house. Biggest downside is that it takes 3-4 weeks to get your boards. Anyone ever give them a try before?

http://batchpcb.com/index.php
$10 setup fee (per order - appears as a handling fee), 2 layer - $2.50/sq. inch 4 layer - $8.00/sq. inch

 

[CraigHB]

I've been tempted to use them before. That service is relatively new, started up only a few years ago. It's the cheapest way I've seen to get one-off PCBs. The down side is you have to wait for your order to "batch" and it can take a week or two to just to go to manufacturing.

For commercial PCB production, I've been using ExpressPCB for quite a while. They have a "mini-board" option that's inexpensive, but it's for three boards, usually fine for me because I rarely want to build just one of something. Plus, you can usually fit more than one project on each board since it's a set size, just cut them yourself once you get them. The turn-around is amazingly fast, but it is more expensive than BatchPCB. Personally, I'm too impatient and would rather spend the money to get it fast. For someone more patient, it's a great way to get manufactured PCBs inexpensively.

Getting them manufactured over making them myself is totally worth it for, but then my home-brew PCBs can't compare to Java_Az's =]