Quality of cheap DIY PCB manufacturers vs. "good" manufacturers - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: AQUAMAN
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: October 06, 2025, 07:30:40 pm
content: I have never had a problem for DIY PCBs from suppliers like PCBway or JLCPCB in terms of board just working.I am wondering though if my PCB has to reliably work for long-term in extreme conditions (e.g., very high temperature, high humidity) and avoiding delamination, corrosion, etc, is it worth buying from a more expensive supplier?I do notice that in general, the surface finish, solder mask, etc just "looks" better or more uniform on PCBs from the "expensive" suppliers - and wondering if this would actually lead to better performance long term. I have no data on this

author: thm_w
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 06, 2025, 08:55:02 pm
content: If there is no regulation requirement, it depends on you, what risk you are willing to take on.Material spec wise, JLC offers high temperature and high precision options (look at the option Material Type and google the names).

author: ataradov
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 06, 2025, 09:14:41 pm
content: PcbWay and JlcPcb are not "DIY", they are world class manufactures. I'm also not sure about the differences in quality you are talking about. A very long time ago PcbWay used to manufacture cheap prototype PCBs on lower end equipment, which was noticeable in silk screen quality. But all that equipment is now retired, and there is no difference in quality.All those vendors specify exact material type they are using and give you options when ordering, you decide if that material is going to work for your requirements.

author: Rat_Patrol
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 07, 2025, 02:34:53 am
content: I've used JLC for many industrial boards in extreme environments, no problems yet.I've tried other companies, and truth be told, JLC has been better quality with lower prices than others inside and outside of China.

author: loki42
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 08, 2025, 04:31:46 am
content: You can get PCBs from fancy manufactures outside China if you want some combo of more expensive and lower quality. The one thing that you do need specialist manufactures for currently that I don't think JLCPCB do is HDI. PCBWay can do HDI though. Given the higher layer counts JLC can do now I assume they'll offer HDI at some point. I'm not sure how handy a 40 layer board with only through vias is but I've never needed super high layer counts.

author: Doctorandus_P
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 09, 2025, 05:01:28 pm
content: There are "reliability classes", but once you get into those, you're well beyond consumer stuff or even good lab equipment. Those are mostly intended for extreme environments such as medical, military or aerospace. For all the other stuff, those Chinese manufacturers are plenty good enough.

author: free_electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 09, 2025, 06:14:27 pm
content: Quote from: Doctorandus_P on October 09, 2025, 05:01:28 pmA lot of really high end boards ( nvidia graphics cards, server boards for HPE ) are all made in china.The only reason to stay inside the US is for military, and not because of quality but because of IP theft and security demands. From a technological perspective military is low-tech.China can do far more advanced stuff than the rest of the world.Try finding someone that can do 20 micron registration on soldermask using black mask. There aren't any outside of China. Pixdro/Meyer/Taiyo machinery and chemistry is all china bound. I had a lively discussion a couple of days ago asking many PCB fabs : Can you do black matte mask like Apple does ? They have immaculate registration on parts like 01005 and 008004 . Answer : we can't. They poured so much money into setting up lines that could do that and restricted diffusion of the technology.Only now is it becoming available. China has the lead start in this.Try finding a company that can do embedded passives. -> ChinaJetted mask -> ChinaMaskless imaging -> ChinaFlex with annealed copper -> ChinaThe reason for the above ? There is no market to set up a fab outside of China. Technologically we can do it, relatively easy. The cost to set up a factory, acquire the machinery and skill and train people is very high. The demand to actually build such products is very low. What i mean with that is : the volumes per product are very high, but the actual number of projects/customers is very low. Those factories run 1 board on one line 24/7 for years. They don't operate like protoshops or small scale factories where it's 2 panels of this, one panel of that, another panel with 5 projects for 3 customers. 1 line = 1 product.JLCPCB uses their fabs as a testbed to see what wave is coming. They snare protobuilds in the hope to run larger volumes later. It's a business model that works for them. Their fabs are huge.The board design is heavily optimized for the technical capabilities of the fab. Footprints are tweaked in respect to copper geometry, mask apertures and paste apertures to fit the technology.The same goes for assembly of boards. "simple stuff" sure. 0402 and larger , wave soldering. Once you go to 01005, laser welding , bonding, selective soldering using a fountain , there simply aren't any shops for smaller volume. Unless you have a shop in an area where there is a customer that needs those technologies you are out of luck. Even then, if there is a shop that has the machinery they won't talk to you. They are busy serving the big customer. Their line is occupied with mass production and it is not worth the risk, time or hassle to send a smaller project through. they risk upsetting the big contract for what ? zero to negative return. They don't want to deal with it.I've met several of these large board outfits (Tripod ,https://www.tripod-tech.com, TopSearchhttps://topsearch.com.hk/?) . Circuit boards for harddisks. volume ? 1 million boards per DAY. Nobody outside Asia can handle such volumes. We (the west) don't have the ecosystem. Technically we can do it but the cost is prohibitive, and the timeline doesn't work.As with anything : quality depends on what you pay for. Even in AsiaJLCPCB is not a DIY or protofab. It is a full blown mass production fab that has lowered accessibility to every one. So is PCBway.