Introduction: PCBWay Service Review

This is a quick review / Instruction on PCBWay board making service.

PCBWay: http://www.pcbway.com/ is a Full feature custom PCB prototype service. They basically do everything and extremely quickly and reasonably priced

PCBWay has a new feature full Online Gerber Viewer.

https://www.pcbway.com/project/OnlineGerberViewer This reads all your Gerber files and allows you to double check your board layout, substrate, copper layers, mask and silk screens all in your browser! The boards came out great and they shipped really fast. Their pricing is also a great value. I will be using their service for future product runs on Tindie

Step 1: Designing Your PCB Board

So this is the hard part but there are plenty of other places to look for designing circuits (including here on instructables!)

Once you are ready, open up your programs CAM. Here I use EAGLE but others are about the same

PCBWay uses GERBER_RS274X files so thats what I have chosen

Step 2: Reviewing Your Boards and Ordering

Once you have your gerber files ready head to:

https://www.pcbway.com/project/OnlineGerberViewer

Simply upload your gerber files and you can easily check your board layout. Here you can see:

  • Substrate (FR4)
  • Copper layers (Traces and pour)
  • Solder Mask (The color)
  • Silk screen (text, images)

From here you can order the boards easily!

Step 3: Delivery!

The boards came extremely fast and it was surely a highlight of the day. The blue color i chose was very vibrant and all the pads and traces were correct.

Step 4: Assembly

I did not have any solder paste on hand so it was time to break out the iron!

I used a fine tip at 315 degrees and some very thin pb-free solder since i like to stay RoHS

Step 5: And Finish!

This is a simple emf reader that im designing for sale on Tindie. The top 4 pads connect to a pair of inductors but that how they are attached is being saved for another time

Here are some samples


EMF Reader by supertroopa86