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aelbric writes "PC Magazine is running an on some entrepreneurial businesses that are taking an interesting approach to prototyping and one-off manufacturing. Apparently, you can send in schematics for circuit boards to Pad2Pad, where they will quote, build and ship you a part based on your exact specifications. There is also reference to eMachineShop, for those of you more mechanically inclined, for building some home projects.
Design the part on your PC, send it to the shop electronically, recieve custom built component(s). "
Get a clue, editors.
Or, if you're so inclined to design your own printed circuit board (PCB), Express PCB offers a reasonably priced service.
I know this company in the UK can produce boards (not going to get a track between pads though with there board manafacture tolerances), who also apply FGPA's to the board and can do x-ray checks to ensure the device is secured, it's not cheep, but if you wanted cheep you wouln't be using BGA's :)
http://www.newburyelectronics.co.uk/
With freeware programs like Eagle available and really cheap circuit board manufacturing options, there's no reason to get locked into a service like Pad2Pad.
Check out my Digital Design & Construction Wiki for lots of resources on do-it-yourself electronics design.
At work, we use www.protoexpress.com. They're similar to pad2pad for what we use them for, 'no-touch' custom circuits. No-touch means they don't do any verification of the board, and is what lets you get your own board quickly and inexpensively. We've had them do some pretty complex stuff without any problems. Their turn-around times are also very good (generally less than one week), and they are affordable and don't have any problems with small runs -- we often do only 2 prints of a new design.
Of course, a significant portion of the time involved in this is in populating the board. Soldering 2,000 points is never any fun.
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It doesn't look like they offer testing services. Their software will catch errors such as overlapping traces, etc., though.
There is absolutely no way for them to check your design to make sure it works, however. Unless you sit there and explain every detail to them, in which case they can still only moderately check certain aspects. There are just way too many different things involved in the design process for them to check every design. It would be like handing a company millions of lines of source code and telling them to check if it works, without running it first.
I've used ExpressPCB for a lot of mini projects in the past. The rates are pretty good if you know how to maximize your layout properly, and you can get multiple boards out of 1 panel (ie: 5 silkscreened/soldermasked panels of 21sqin/ea are about $250, ($50/ea). But, if you can get 5 boards out of 1 panel (and you need 25 boards, give or take) then your per-board price is effectively $10/ea, which is reasonable for a small, custom job). The quality of the ExpressPCB boards has always been excellent.
.1uF caps?? WTF??), but the prices for boards with a few components soldered on is pretty reasonable (again, if you are ordering in a manner that spreads your cost over 25 or 30+ boards).
I converted one of my projects to pad2pad just last night. Their component selection is horribly small right now (no
FrontPanelExpress is another good option for custom metal panels.
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Not a representative of the company, just a really satisified customer.
You hit the nail right on the head. These kinds of services are the Kinkos of electrical/mechanical fabrication.
A full service PCB fab house, like a full service printing shop, looks over your design to make sure it makes sense and nothing will get lost in the tranfer from design to implementation.
Customers are never happy when they spend $5k and what they get back there's a completely bonehead error- even if it is their own fault! From what I see, Kinkos and PCBExpress specialize in orders under $1k.
There are a lot of companies who will do small runs of PC boards for you, but you have to give them finished layouts (gerber files). This gut provides the tools to do the layout as well as doing the boards, so it saves you a huge investment in software and learning a layout system.
Check Freshmeat for "circuit board", and you will find many CAD programs that don't involve large financial outlays. I use PCB, myself.
There's still a learning curve for the interface, but the time spent learning it is much less than the time spent actually designing boards.
Obligatory link to the previous slashdot post about the same article, five days ago.
For quick-turn plastic models from my 3D CAD drawings, I've used XPress3D. They broker the services of numerous prototyping houses, and their website is drop-dead simple to use. Just upload your file, and almost instantly you will see a rotating animation of your creation and quotes from several of their suppliers. Select the prototyping method and supplier you want to use, enter your credit card info, and in a couple days you have your prototype. It's the slickest, most well-thought-out web service I've seen in a long time.