Boardfab
Places to get your circuitboards made, or even populated with parts:
if you just want to prototype a circuit ASAP you can do it at sudoroom (or noisebridge?) with this one neat trick
not a fab house link, but if you can read German you'll find a lot of information on this wiki
CLOSED but still has an IRC channel on freenode, #hackvana where you can talk with others for advice, and the website recommends other vendors
Jerkey used Elecrow in 2019 and the reslut was great. I ordered "ten" boards, then in the checkout isle, i changed the quantity (of orders of "ten") from "1" to "2", then ordered the same "ten" boards in a different color, changed the quantity again, repeat, and ended up with 100 boards in five colors for like $50. Including rushed 3-day shipping (the cheapest option for some reason) brought the total for 100 boards to under US$100 and the boards look great (haven't tested them yet)
Rab ordered 10pcs- 2 layer PCB ten times over 2015 to 2019. Each order was satisfactory. No extra charge for typical silkscreen colors. Faint marks on the pads indicate 100% e-test. No manufacturer's mark placed on either side. 1-4 extra copies were included with each order, possibly to offset any failures. No electrical failures. Some PCBs exhibited: light scratches in solder mask; minor inconsistencies in board outline milling; silkscreen faded or smudged. Shenzhen DHL shipping was 7 calendar day turnaround from order placed to received (multiple orders). With Registered Airmail, 21 calendar day turnaround (multiple orders). NOTE: Elecrow accidentally shipped one order via Registered Airmail, rather than Shenzhen DHL as requested. When contacted, Elecrow apologized and immediately refunded the difference in shipping charges. New website is operational and works fine.
Rab recommends careful review of order confirmation email. Also, Chinese New Year delaying February orders is a real phenomenon.
Rab abused their job preview function and noticed that it doesn't appear to display tented vias properly. (Renders as untented). Better check your gerbers with gerbv. Two of two orders placed had faster turnaround than expected. Good quality, a cheap option for tiny boards.
You work with a million-dollar truck that's also a one-of-a-kind scientific instrument. Every noteworthy function on this truck passes through a single PCB full of relays and optocouplers in an inaccessible location. Thanks to a PCB design flaw, the board fails in the middle of a three-million-dollar project on another continent. The spare board is also faulty. The manufacturer only made two boards.
After performing the field repair of your career and returning home victorious, you volunteer to reverse-engineer and create a clone of this goddamn board. One so much better designed and more reliable that it never fails again. Your reputation is on the line. Money is no object. And you need the PCBs in 72 hours. Where do you turn?
- Sierra Circuits. For when it's not your money.
(Also reportedly used by National Instruments for PCB prototypes)
Amatus:
I used Gold Phoenix for the AHA! badge v1, seems to be on the expensive side but they did good work. I didn't provide them with a pick-n-place file, they figured it out from the gerbers. They sent me a query about it because my footprint for my buttons had 5 pads but the buttons only had 4 legs. They edited my silk screen for the better, I had a label that collided with a diode and they moved it. They sent me 5 assembled boards to verify before they made the rest. They also gave me some resistors for free because I had the wrong quantity on my BOM. They pointed out the error and I was like "plz populate both those resistors, quote me for the extra parts" and they were all "don't worry about it," of course it was only like $0.14 worth of extra parts.
- Gold Phoenix For newbs who screw up their BOM and don't know how to make pick-n-place files.