RE: PCB production

> Does anyone have any opinions as to a good PCB production facility in
> the US? Say for a small run of the deflection protection hacks that
> Atari developed. I think a few of you guys have used
> PCBexpress, but I
> didn't know what sort of job they do.

"Small run" can vary more than a bit, but if you're talking less than 50
pieces you're probably going to be best off using a prototype house like AP
Circuits up in Canada. (Otherwise setup charges will burden your per-piece
price rather heavily.) You'll pay "more" per square inch, but if you just
want a couple dozen parts that's cheap compared to adding ~$10-40 per board
in setup charges. Prices, setup charges, and whatnot can vary *wildly* from
builder to builder and depend heavily on the type of process, how busy the
shop is, etc...

There's probably some domestic suppliers that would work cheap, but I don't
know any off the top of my head (best bet is probably just someone local to
you and see if they'll run your boards when they have some down-time on the
machines so it doesn't cost them "other" business).

The smallest run I do for a "production" board is a minumum 100 piece run.
I use Taiwanese factories for cost reasons on those (Pacman 284/285
daughtercards, Tempest Multigame, AVG replacment, etc) -- otherwise I just
use AP Circuits (display corrector, SW/ESB kit, Sega Multigame, etc.).

-Clay
Received on Mon Nov 29 14:51:31 1999