Recommended PCB houses / Assemblers

I've used Advanced Circuits (www.4pcb.com) before (located in Colorado). They have a pretty good special I've used a lot. 4 layer boards for $66 each (qty 4+). They also have a FreeDFM service that checks your gerbers for errors.

They also do assembly, but I've found that assembly costs are sometimes more expensive than the board itself. If you're doing this for a hobby, I've heard of folks using toaster ovens for SMD parts.

Assembly can get very expensive unless you are making 1K or more pieces. At 1K pieces the setup costs start to amortize to reasonable values. If you can get to 10K pieces then you could source the parts from China too.

I have had Gold Phoenix and E-Teknet quote on a job. They both had similar quotes. Since I only wanted to do 1K pieces the pricing did not work out and I did not do the project.

Neil Munzinger ( [email protected] ) at E-Teknet was very responsive to my questions and made recommendations about cost saving opportunities. Unfortunately the numbers didn't work.

You can use http://batchpcb.com/ from Sparkfun. It's made from small quantity as prototype.

They have a bot who check if your pcb is valid.

But they do not the smd assembly, and it take between 20-30 days to receive your pcb.