I've used pcbcart.com and I think it's the best I've found. It's located in China, and is far, far cheaper than most other places. The board houses located in the USA are ridiculously overpriced; for the price of one or two boards here, I can get 500 from China, complete with soldermask, silkscreen on both sides, and scoring (my boards are typically very small, around 1 square inch).
Olimex is pretty decent too, but last time I used them they had a ridiculously cumbersome ordering process which required the use of a fax machine to send in the order. Who uses faxes any more? How 20th century. Pcbcard.com has a nice web interface that gives you a quote based on board size, and many other factors (layers, finish (HASL, gold immersion, lead-free, etc.), and then tells you the price for many different quantities. The only problem is that it's hard to get away with much less than $100, but you can get a lot of boards for that price. Olimex isn't that cheap any more, either, like it used to be. They switched their prices to Euros, and you're probably looking at more like $50 for a minimum order. Batchpcb.com looks promising, but they don't accept Kicad files or gerbers. Their web interface isn't compatible with the NC drill files that Kicad produces, and you have to doctor them by hand. Even so, I tried getting an online quote this weekend from them, and my 1 square inch board came up on their web interface as over 5 square inches, so there's still something wrong with their Gerber file reader. Don't even bother with the American places like 4pcb.com (Advanced Circuits). Their prices are insane. I haven't tried any large boards, but maybe their prices start making more sense if your boards are 10 square inches or more, just guessing. For tiny boards, they're ridiculous. Dan --- In kicad-users@yahoogroups.com, "benjaminrohland" <benjaminrohl...@...> wrote: > > Can you tell me which contractor is the best for producing my conductor > board prototype? I found some in the internet, but the prices are > similar. Are there any pros and cons I have to pay attention to? >
