Not happy with PCBWAY (pics included) - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: Corporate666
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 24, 2017, 02:13:33 am
content: I needed a quick batch of PCB's before Chinese NY and decided to try PCB Way. I did the online chat with Daphne on Jan 12th and asked if they can make 1,000 boards in time - was told 50/50, but upload the PCB files and they will take a look. Was also told they only approve boards during a 5 hour window, so if I can wait for them to approve and pay right away, they will get them into production and should be able to ship before they leave for the holiday.The online quote on their site said $153 (not including shipping). I uploaded the files and literally within a minute upload, they were approved and waiting for payment. But in my shopping cart the price was $266 (not including shipping). I asked why the price was so much higher. Was told they will check... suddenly the price in my cart dropped to $233. The answer back was this is the normal price.Asked why it's over 50% above the online quote price, and was told "because of the technology of the board". This board is 2 layer, 35mm x 23mm, 66 SMD pads in total, two 0.4mm vias, one 4mm hole, 8 mil trace/space. 1.6mm FR-4, TG130/140, white soldermask, black silkscreen on one side, ENIG plated, tented vias (already done in GERBERS), 1oz copper. About as bog standard as you can get for a PCB. Asked what about the board was more complicated than the standard 2 layer quote necessitating the >50% price increase... only answer "the technology of the board. Quotes are estimates, prices are based on board review". Rubbed me the wrong way since it was obvious nobody reviewed the board in the <1 minute it took to approve and I felt they knew I needed them urgently and bumped the price 50%. But I needed them so I paid up. Asked for confirmation they can ship before the holiday.... no reply - chat disconnected.But, to their credit - they went into production and the site kept me updated on status, and they shipped out on Friday the 20th. They arrived today, January 23rd, within the timeframe they were promised, so thumbs up for production in time and delivery on time.However...On the bad side... of all the suppliers I've had make these same boards for me - these are the worst. The registration of the silkscreen is terrible on about 25% of the boards. On another 25% it's great. And on the remaining 50% it's passable but off by a good 10-15 mil. On the worst 25%, there is actually silkscreen on the SMD pads! (see pics)What is worse than that is the soldermask. On maybe 20% of the boards, the soldermask is pretty much spot on for one side of the PCB. For another 50%, it's off so much that I'd call it really sloppy but usable. Then for another 20%, it's so far off that the soldermask is right on the edge of the copper adjacent to the SMD pad. These boards will hopefully work OK, but I don't like using boards like that. Then for the remaining 10%, the soldermask is so far off that the copper adjacent to the SMD pad is actually exposed. These boards are unusable. I've dealt with this once before a long time ago, and it is an insidious problem.. you get solder bridges under the legs of your chips that you can't even see due to the solder fillet. And you can't really see the bad soldermask registration visually by eye so we need to go through all 1000 boards and pull out the ones that we can't use. I'll pull out any that are iffy too and toss them.And last, and least I guess, the routed perimeter of the boards is rough and ratty compared to other suppliers I've used. Maybe this is normal but I've never seen that sort of rough jagged edge on routed PCB's before.I ordered another 1,000 of these PCB's from PCB Joint at the same time - they didn't commit to delivery before the Chinese NY Holiday, but happily they were able to do them - they will be here Wednesday, so hopefully the quality will be better. Someone please look at my pics and let me know - am I overreacting or expecting too much here? Or am I right that this is unacceptable quality on any PCB?

author: A
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: January 24, 2017, 02:22:01 am
content: RIP

author: DerekG
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 24, 2017, 03:35:34 am
content: Quote from: Corporate666 on January 24, 2017, 02:13:33 amOne reason I immediately see for the increased cost is the circular board. It is likely that the original person looking at your order was unaware that the individual routing to do this would take up a lot more time on the NC machine.I don't believe you can complain about the cost. If you had asked, PCBWAY would have refunded your money & cancelled your order.Did you discuss the poor solder mask & component overlay registration with PCBWAY?If you had they would have concurred that this was outside of their usual spec & would then re manufacture & ship the replacement boards at no further cost to you.PCBWAY don't always get it right, but when they don't they are usually quite happy to rectify their faults at no further cost to yourself.

author: Monadnock
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: January 24, 2017, 03:57:11 am
content: The registration issues you are seeing seem to be quite common with PCBWay. I've seen it on boards I've ordered and I've seen it on boards friends have ordered. I only use them for protos, so for me it isn't a big deal, but I certainly would be upset if I ordered 1,000.

author: Corporate666
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 24, 2017, 05:31:58 am
content: Quote from: DerekG on January 24, 2017, 03:35:34 amWhat do you mean "the original person looking at your order"? Their online quote page offers the option for individually routed boards and illustrates square or circular boards. I chose individually routed boards and entered the correct dimensions, and correctly chose all the criteria of my board and was quoted $153. I engaged in online chat with sales to ask if the boards can ship before Chinese NY. In the online chat, the sales person requested I upload my Gerbers so they can approve them and get started making them ASAP. I uploaded them and wrote in chat I had done so. Almost immediately I got a reply that it was approved and ready for payment - except the price was now $266 (before shipping). When I asked why, the price almost immediately dropped to $233. Then I was told "the technology".I agree that I wasn't forced to proceed with the order, but just because I bit the bullet and paid their 50% price premium doesn't mean I lose the right to be unhappy about it and voice my unhappiness about the price. Especially since I never did get a reasonable explanation why the price was 50% higher. I asked if it was a rush processing fee and was told no. Of course, I voluntarily paid the price and I am not claiming I was cheated or anything of the sort. I am simply claiming they jacked the price up over their online quote - because they did. I also ordered an equal number of PCB's from PCB Joint whose price exactly matched their online quote.I have not talked to PCB Way yet, but whatever their response is, it doesn't change what happened, nor does it make it right. Shipping out junk PCB's and fixing it after the fact doesn't help me. I needed 1,000 PCB's before Chinese NY to do a production run. If they agree to ship me replacement PCB's, they will be made after they return on February 3rd, which means I'll get them around the 16th. That doesn't help me make my production run this week.A serious PCB fabricator shouldn't be making these mistakes, but when they do, they should be picked up in QC and not get shipped out. When I've bad bad PCB's made in the past, they arrive along with my other PCB's in a separate container, marked by the PCB fab as rejects and given to me as extras for whatever I choose to do with them. That's the way it should be done.

author: Corporate666
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 24, 2017, 05:37:45 am
content: Quote from: Monadnock on January 24, 2017, 03:57:11 amI chose them largely because they have good reviews on PCB shopper. But after I placed this order, I saw that they have some system where they will give you a variable discount based on how good of a review you give them. They want you to show them a link to your review and then they will give you up to a $50 discount on your order.So any reviews of this company need to be taken with a HUUUUUGE grain of salt. They are buying positive reviews.

author: SMdude
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 24, 2017, 06:41:14 am
content: I must agree, they buy their positive feedback!I won't go onto a forum and put up pictures and blow wind up their backsides to get a $50 discount, or any discount for that matter. I find it plain rude for this system to exist. If a customer is genuinely happy he will tell his mates for nothing!Last year I got a batch of boards made up. One of the boards had a through hole trimmer, rotated to a specific angle. The square pads came out rotated completely wrong(opposite direction) and shorting with the nearby ground plane. I would have done something about it, however, there were enough errors on that board that were my fault to just deem them a complete failure, even if the boards had the incorrect pads fixed. I checked the gerbers and the copper layer was correct.I was charged more for V scores(kind of fair enough) and I was charged more for my stencil (because it included more than one design)which I made the paste file for to specifically include several other designs, was told that the stencil dimensions are not what is stated(eg the stencil usable area is smaller than what is claimed to be the stencil size).All in all it left a very bad taste in my mouth after spending about $1000 Aud on my pcb's.I will be getting another batch made soon and will be seriously checking other options.Cheers

author: neil t
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 24, 2017, 07:22:30 am
content: Sloppy Work is only acceptable if that is what you ordered.

author: SMdude
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 24, 2017, 07:52:17 am
content: Quote from: neil t on January 24, 2017, 07:22:30 amTrue, but even if their stuff up was fixed, the boards would have been useless still anyway, so it would have been semi pointless.The quality of the rest of the boards I ordered was good, it was more all the hidden charges that were added here and there without the ability to reduce the quantity of panels to reduce overall cost. I ended up spending almost twice what I expected to.I see that they have updated their quote page to accommodate more options for panels etc and even reducing the panel amount now reduces the overall cost as it should.Might give them another try, we'll see.

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 24, 2017, 08:55:46 am
content: Although PCBway certainly have better quality than Elecrow, their solder mask sucks. Aliment usually is bad and sometimes have mousebites on edges. There may be dust under the solder mask and a lot of scratches as well. So I no longer use them, although might consider them as an option if I need PCBs very fast. So far I've ordered 5 batches of different panels at PCBwin (like 50 ~15x20cm panels of each type in average). And, although, I noticed some very minor issues on a few boards, they are very good. Especially solder mask alignment, solder mask between 0.5mm pin pich pads can be safely used. Seems you could do this with 0.4mm as well. They will make solder mask on boards with 1 mil guard gap 100% perfect all of the time.

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 24, 2017, 09:16:10 am
content: About silkscreen, to be frank, it does not seem to be designed in the way to accept tolerance you would normally expect from not very expensive service.

author: janekm
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 24, 2017, 10:11:25 am
content: Quote from: wraper on January 24, 2017, 09:16:10 amI have never seen silk screen alignment this bad from any Chinese PCB manufacturer, no exaggeration.Somebody here mentioned before they thought PCB Way was using the same factory as JDB-PCB in Shenzhen... But all the PCBs I've had made by JDB-PCB have been excellent quality (though relatively expensive), so I'm not sure that makes sense.But... JDB-PCB's factory had been closed recently (some environmental audit-related fixes?) and only opened briefly before spring festival, so the most likely explanation is that the seasoned operators had already left home for spring festival, and they tried to produce rush orders with a skeleton crew, which is pretty much a recipe for disaster.Quote from: Corporate666 on January 24, 2017, 02:13:33 amIncreasing the quote on order-review has become an annoyingly common practice for Chinese PCB factories. It's usually passing along the additional cost if your order doesn't fit into one of the batches they are already running. So if you order green solder mask, 1.6mm, HASL, no rush, you'll get the online quote. But if nobody else ordered black that day, and you need rush, you're likely to get an extra cost added on. In your case, there may have also been extra salary costs Which is arguably a bad idea from a customer satisfaction point of view... But good to know if you don't want to pay extra, just leave everything on the defaults...I completely agree the quality is completely unacceptable, and I'd be surprised if it was reflective of their quality during the rest of the year (not that it's really sensible to accept your order if they can't deliver it properly, likely a lack of communication between the sales people and the factory floor)...

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 24, 2017, 10:26:59 am
content: Quote from: janekm on January 24, 2017, 10:11:25 amActually it's not THAT bad to be unacceptable for most of the orders, the thing is those footprints are small and there is a very little of the gap between the pad and silkscreen. If that was a TH or board with 0805 parts or larger, offset would be barely a problem at all. And placing silkscreen rectangles around the pads is IMO ridiculous and just asking for trouble. That silkscreen offset looks like about 0.2 - 0.3 mm worst case.QuoteA lot of the photos on PCBway website have JDBpcb logo on them. I've ordered PCBs from pcbgogo which explicitly says they are "Shenzhen JDB Technology Co., LTD". And ordered some additional free proto boards which had pcbway written on them. It's a hit and miss, probably you just had a good luck before.PCBway had been closed as well.

author: rea5245
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 24, 2017, 01:53:44 pm
content: Quote from: Corporate666 on January 24, 2017, 05:37:45 amI runPCBShopper.comI have discussed this issue with PCBWay. Their answer is that their deal does not include reviews on PCBShopper. I'm a little skeptical about that, but I'll do them the courtesy of taking them at their word. I'll also note that their deal requires reviews to be 500 words long, and reviews on PCBShopper are generally shorter.Nonetheless, I told them that it casts doubt on the integrity of the PCBShopper reviews which in turns casts doubt on PCBShopper itself. I don't like that. So almost a year ago (Feb. 2016) I stopped accepting new reviews of PCBWay on PCBShopper.com. They are the only company whose reviews I have disabled.As for the reviews that are up there: I forget when I first became aware of PCBWay's policy, but once I did I contacted every reviewer and asked him if he was influenced by PCBWay's discount. They all said they were not. I took them at their word (but, as I said, I eventually ended the issue by refusing new PCBWay reviews).I told PCBWay a year ago that I'm not accepting their reviews until they end their policy.BTW, I get a fair number of reviews that are clearly from corporate shills. I discard them. I do other checks oneveryreview that's submitted. I can't guarantee that fakes don't slip through, but I really vet each one and I do my best.- Bob AlexanderPCBShopper.com

author: zzattack
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 24, 2017, 02:25:15 pm
content: Quote from: wraper on January 24, 2017, 10:26:59 amWell that explains then why the text message DHL sends me on the delivery day mentions a package coming from "JDB TECH". Wondered about that for some time but never cared to look into it.

author: Monadnock
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: January 24, 2017, 02:38:29 pm
content: Quote from: zzattack on January 24, 2017, 02:25:15 pmNever really paid much attention, but now that I look, the DHL package that is supposed to be delivered today says it is from Shenzhen JDB Technology Co., LTD.

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 24, 2017, 03:17:29 pm
content: It's not 0.025"/0.63mm offset. Less than half of that. Don't forget about the guard gap too. And if it was that large, your SOT-23-5 on the pic would have openings in the solder mask in between of the pads/ overlapping over 2 pads.Quote from: Corporate666 on January 24, 2017, 02:13:33 am

author: Corporate666
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 24, 2017, 05:24:10 pm
content: Quote from: wraper on January 24, 2017, 09:16:10 amCould be... but in 15 years of doing PCB's, I've always used that size of text and roughly the same placement to my parts and I've never had that much variation in alignment. If you look at the 2nd picture and the 4th picture, notice the variation in placement of the R10 text.

author: Corporate666
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 24, 2017, 05:50:42 pm
content: Quote from: wraper on January 24, 2017, 03:17:29 pmMany of the boards are better than the one in the pictures. Some are worse. The silkscreen variation you mention in a previous post is varies by 0.75mm between just the two boards in the pictures shown.As for the SOT23-5, 4 of the pads are on copper pours so you aren't seeing the misalignment on all the pads. The fifth pad overlaps onto the adjacent copper pour.The point is - these boards are useless junk. As soon as soldermask is off so much that adjacent copper is showing, the board's only function is to go in the trash.

author: Corporate666
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 24, 2017, 05:53:33 pm
content: Quote from: rea5245 on January 24, 2017, 01:53:44 pmI like your site and find it useful. The only thing I would say about what you wrote above is that freezing the comments locks them in at a relatively good star rating (IIRC, one of the best on your site) and prevents bad experiences from being posted. I realize you can't allow bad comments without also allowing good ones, but it's a really small sample size so far.

author: rea5245
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 24, 2017, 06:06:42 pm
content: Quote from: Corporate666 on January 24, 2017, 05:53:33 pmThat has occurred to me. But what should I do? The reviews currently posted are, as far as I know, valid, so removing them would not be fair. A manufacturer's performance can change over time, so good ratings a year ago might not apply today, but the reviews all have dates on them so readers are able to take that into account.- Bob AlexanderPCBShopper.com

author: mrpackethead
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 24, 2017, 06:31:08 pm
content: For what its worth, i had more than 10000 pcbs from Pcbway last year, and only had issues with a couple of prototype boards which were resolvd.I dont' use a lot of silk and dont' label parts on boards... theres often no space and it doe'snt add anything to the production..

author: julian1
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 24, 2017, 06:50:16 pm
content: This is starting to sound like a witch hunt. Shenzhen JDB Technology Co., Ltd is officially listed at the bottom of the PCBway page. It's most likely the legal entity behind their web presence.

author: mrpackethead
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 24, 2017, 06:58:05 pm
content: Quote from: julian1 on January 24, 2017, 06:50:16 pmPCBWay is JDB. If you ask them they will tell you. PCBway is a brand name. That is all. They did that because they though it was easier for forigeners to remeber the name. In fact their offical registered name is in chinese, because thats how it works in china.

author: RGB255_0_0
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 24, 2017, 09:06:16 pm
content: Dave should remove them as advertisers on his site until all accusations can be verified.

author: mrpackethead
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 24, 2017, 09:34:00 pm
content: Quote from: RGB255_0_0 on January 24, 2017, 09:06:16 pmSO the concept of guilty till proven innocent is how you do things.. What exactly have they done wrong.. ( other than putting some silk screen in the wrong place )

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 24, 2017, 09:34:25 pm
content: Quote from: julian1 on January 24, 2017, 06:50:16 pmThey should have changed that recently. Company listed on the website was PCBway... something just a few months ago maximum, while manufactured by JDB. There was no witch hunt about the company name, just saying they are one and the same.

author: RGB255_0_0
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 24, 2017, 09:40:50 pm
content: Quote from: mrpackethead on January 24, 2017, 09:34:00 pmIt's been noted a few times that they supposedly buy reviews in lieu of cheaper sales. It's more about Dave's reputation more than anything.

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 24, 2017, 09:46:02 pm
content: Quote from: Corporate666 on January 24, 2017, 05:50:42 pmQuoteI perfectly see it, therefore estimated the offset purely on the fifth pad and other parts. The point is, you should measure registration offset from the pad edge position to the solder mask, not one max offset from opposite max offset. Then subtract 5 mil guard gap and get actual registration offset you have. I did not say those boards are fine as they are not, just that you get the numbers wrong.

author: janekm
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 25, 2017, 11:19:43 am
content: Quote from: julian1 on January 24, 2017, 06:50:16 pmIt's perfectly fine... Actually I didn't intend to mention that in a disparaging way at all, I rate JDB PCB highly based on my own experience (Always got good to excellent quality from them), so I was surprised to see such (comparatively) poor quality coming from them. Since they are apparently the same company, I would put it down to the pre-CNY jitters as I mentioned, and not representative of their regular quality.

author: glenenglish
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 29, 2017, 03:08:44 am
content: I think PCBWAY do an EXCELLENT job. especially for the moneyNo complaints. and of course...."you get what you pay for". get a quote from an all USA manufacturer....and I get them to do hard boards....as an alternative, try PCBCART. I used to use them, no complaints.