There are now PCB fabricator companies. You mail or post to them your Gerber files and pay them, and they ship you the boards 16 days later. This is, in a word, awesome. Yes, some makers may prefer to make their own masks and pour out chemicals to etch their own boards, but we are focusing on building a satellite, not smithing your own parts. We are in a golden age of DIY electronics!
My plan was to cheaply acquire good-quality PCB boards sufficient for two TubeSats—the mission satellite and a flight spare. Many companies can turn your plans into small quantities of finished PCB boards, at reasonable cost, in just a few weeks. What is reasonable cost? For boards a few inches in size, as low as $25 for a single board. This is the result of my “experiment” trying multiple PCB fabricators. Ultimately I settled on three best candidates and then checked who delivered the best final product.
For my Calliope satellite, I started with the eight printed circuit boards (PCBs) fabricated for the solar cells. These cells are also the main satellite structural beams. The specs: these solar cell panels are about 1 inch × 4 inches. The satellite needs 8 of them, which means I need 10 (2 spares in case I screw up). Oh, actually, I want 20—enough for a flight spare. (See Figure 2-1.)
For those of you too impatient to find out why and how, here’s my summary. My favorite for price/performance was http://PCBInternational.com, whose DIY special of 100 square inches of board for $99 rocked. I would also recommend http://PCBNet.com if you need just one or two boards, as the intro special of $25 per board is very hobbyist-friendly. And a nod to http://Sunstone.com for the web interface and reasonable prices; while slightly more costly than the others, the company offered the easiest ordering process for a novice like me.
And now to brass tacks—the whys and hows and who elses.
My criteria were the following:
- Price
- Ease of ordering/confidence with web-based tools
- No need to use the telephone. Sorry, if I need to talk to a salesperson to order a board, you’re off my list. I’m a hobbyist, not a factory.
If you mix my criteria #2 and #3, you’ll also see fairness—I wanted a straight price known in advance. Call this clarity, perhaps.
I wanted at least two sets each of 4 boards (so I’d have a flight spare), plus 20 solar panels, so my orders ranged from 2 boards to 20, never more. Most came in at $25–50 per board shipped. Really, the price breaks kick in at 10+ or 20+ boards, but I wasn’t able to get enough response from other TubeSat builders to really build a group order, so these are my solo prices (see Batch Ordering).
For the three, here are the prices.
- PCBInternational
- 3 each of 3 designs for $184 (implying $20 per board)
- Futurlec
- 2 4 × 4-inch for $47 per board
- Sunstone
- $50 per board
This includes shipping, on a 10+ day order (no rush).
The total TubeSat set via PCBInternational is just $370 (that, admittedly, also gives you a few extra spares). Futurlec is competitive—all four main boards, two per, will run you $354 including shipping. Add 20 solar panel blanks for $102 and it’s still under $500 ($456) for two full sets of everything you need for a TubeSat. Sunstone was the priciest (8 boards = $400 plus $14 per for the 20 solar panels = almost $700), but I found the web-based interface easy to use, and the company will do quantities as small as 1–2 boards.
A clarification on PCBInternational: they sell a set of square inches, on which you can do three designs per. I’d estimated 8 main boards on a 100-inch-square slab and they gave me 11, so they do a better job fitting than I do! So, all else being equal, one path is to order two 100-square-inch sets from PCBInternational:
- (10 or so) solar cells, plus two copies of two of the main boards
- (10 or so) solar cells, plus two copies of the other two main boards
And for only $35 per slab, you can increase it to 175 square inches each, which nearly doubles your yield and gives you enough for 3–4 satellites. The company has the best price point for this sort of “multiple designs, small quantities” needed, the web interface was good enough, and the shipping time was on par with the others.
Some web discussion boards have reported erratic quality with small-batch runs, so spreading your order among multiple vendors is a good way to ensure against quality control problems. Plus I like shopping.
A dealbreaker was places that said “email for quote,” or whose quotes deviated from their advertised rates. For example, one vendor’s front page advertised a 4-board minimum order, at $29 per board ($116 total), but their actual quote for a 3.54 × 3.54-inch board says $20.91 per board with a 10-board minimum ($209 total). I’m not sure what the shipping would have been. Since the ordering process is “email us the Gerber files and we’ll send back a quote,” the company doesn’t pass my “novice test,” and raises some red flags: quote doesn’t match hype, order requires intervention of a sales agent before you know what the final deal is, ordering process not clear, quantity minimums seem inconsistent.
Again, I invoke clarity. If I can’t navigate your site, supply my Gerber files, and get the boards at the price you tout, I’m sorry, you’re off the list. Extra fees, unclear specifications, or weird quantity breaks will not help you close the deal. A PCB board expert might handle that, but as a DIY-er, I want clarity.
And yes, I accept that “PCB board” is redundant, like saying “ATM machine.”