Smart-Prototyping
Guan's Review
Smart-Prototyping has a relatively cheap PCB prototyping service. They aggregate small PCB orders from many customers and send off a large panel to the board house. Features include:
- Cheap express shipping to the US - often less than $30 (except for stencils)
- Up to 30×30 cm boards
- 1 to 6 layers
- 0.8mm, 1.0mm, 1.2mm and 1.6mm (standard) thickness
- HASL, lead free HASL and ENIG surface finish
- Selection of solder mask colors
- Stainless steel stencils
Boards are of high quality.
I have, from time to time, asked about special features such as plated edges. They have been able to accommodate many of them.
The stencils are of high quality. Unfortunately the only option is to have them in a large metal frame, which is great for applying solder paste, but expensive to ship and a hassle to store.
For all the boards I have received, the board outlines are completely and cleanly routed out. This is in contrast to, for example, OSH Park, which leaves breakoff tabs around the edges. Routed board outlines make for much nicer and better looking boards. If you have no straight edges at all, they can be a little harder to assemble.
They have 95% and 100% e-test pass options.
The website is very good. The only complaint I have is that the price doesn't immediately update when you change options. If you are exploring different options (for example, "how much extra would it cost to have gold finish?"), it's not always clear that the displayed price reflects your latest selection.
Their service is of high quality. You upload a Zip file with gerbers directly on the website. The only CAM problem I have ever hard was their initial tendency to use solder mask layer for the stencil instead of the separate stencil layer. On subsequent orders, I emailed them to remind of the correct stencil layer, and I have never had this problem again.
Overall they produce and ship fast. They will often ship the boards in about a week after the order is placed, which means the boards arrive in the US around 10 days later. My median Smart-Prototyping order-to-delivery time is lower than OSH Park. Occasionally, there are delays (as with all board houses), and they are relatively poor about notifying customers of this. (OSH Park is too, in my experience.) You have to email and follow up.
Sometimes they also forget to send out shipping notifications with tracking numbers. This can add to stress levels even when the boards actually shipped in a reasonable period of time.
I use Smart-Prototyping all the time, and so should you for this kind of order—quantities from 10 to 100 boards or board sizes that are uneconomical with OSH Park, 1 to 2 week lead time.
