Hey Richard, I have used AP Circuits about a dozen times now and only finding one problem (some improperly etched cu that left a "blob" on a trace, although it did not affect the operation of the board). Actually, my experiences have been nothing but good - send the gerbers, aperture and Drill files and three days later FedEx delivers the boards by 10:30 AM. Andy Kunz summarized quite well what AP will and won't do for you, but here are my two cents. - Understand why you are doing this. I find that spending $80 Canadian (what two small boards always seem to end up costing me) to be worth not having to prototype the cards either as vector boards or wire wrapping. I have really only gone into production quantities on one board. As a hobbyist/author, using AP circuits to try out my designs works well for me. - AP Circuits is a prototype shop. They are not a production house. As such, their board tolerances are quite poor when compared to what's possible if you're willing to wait 2 to 10 weeks. - read through all the online stuff (not just the AP circuits stuff). There's a lot of good information out there. - AP Circuits are not there to critique your designs or point out potential problems. If you are doing this for the first time, then learn from the experience. Before going with AP, I used to make my own boards with fair success, but if there was a problem, I didn't have anybody to blame but myself. I've learned a *lot* from having my own boards built. - Ask questions. While the guys at AP circuits are not there to critique your designs, they will give you some good pointers. And, you can probably get answers to general questions from the various people on this list. - Follow their design rules. The proto1 boards are guaranteed to 10 mil spacing/minimum traces, don't violate it. The same goes with specifying drill sizes - I found the best results when only using the proto1 "Standards" (marked with a splat on the web page). - Use the GCPREVUE program to make sure your board looks good before you send it out. This includes creating a correct .APR file for it. I go through the design three ways. First, each side of the board individually with and without the .APR file (without the .APR file will give you line drawings and I find I can identify problems (such as unconnected nets) easier this way) and then with both sides together (and the .APR file) to make sure everything lines up correctly. I also print out oversize images of the boards onto overhead plastic to help with this checkout. - Use the right tool. I have done boards with up to four connectors (IDC and D-Shell) and six active components. With using Easytrax, this is about as complex as I would want to go. For anything else, I'll use an integrated package like Ulti-Board for schematic capture and board layout. - I find it good practice to spend a lot of time up front figuring out the best component placement before wiring the card. The measure of success is not having any vias. Actually, my first few boards only had two drill sizes (0.0420" for chips and connectors (although, I use 0.0350" now for chips) and 0.125" for tooling holes). Now, I'm comfortable having four (0.0280" for vias, 0.0350" for chip pins, 0.0420" for Connectors, and 0.125" for Tooling Holes). The more time you spend figuring out the best layout of the card, the easier time you'll have wiring it. The easier time you have wiring the board, the higher the probability it will work without any problems. In the course of wiring a board, I will ditch a design several times if I see a better way of putting the components. Oh, one word on this, I always keep the chips orientated the same way, if I have a choice between orientating the chips the same way or simplifying the wiring, I will always keep the chips orientated the same way. These boards are not silkscreened and I don't want to have an issue where I can't visually check the orientation before soldering the boards. You probably feel incented to keep the boards as small as possible (lower cost), but note that AP Circuits has an extra cost for very dense boards, so you may want to stretch things out and make things easier on your self. As part of this, always try to make all your traces accessible to EC (cut and add wires). - Last note. As the designer, you are the ultimate authority, don't expect an "Expert" to know what you want to do better than you do. For one of the designs in my book, I had a couple of hundred boards built by another company, using the same Gerbers that I gave to AP Circuits. This other company decided that they could improve on the design by tweaking some traces and changing drill sizes. Not having a lot of experience with designing boards (although lots of experience critiquing others), I let them go ahead and the end result was 200 unusable boards (which the company did take back and rebuilt using the original design). Sorry, lots of pontificating here and probably a basic tutorial on designing cards the myke predko way. But, I guess the basic message is, don't whip up a design and expect it to come out perfectly without truly understanding what you have done. Getting your homework done will guarantee no problems when you get your boards back from AP Circuits. Good luck, myke >>Use apcircuits at > >>E-Mail: staff@apcircuits.com >>WEB Page: http://www.apcircuits.com > >>You can download a free Easytrax PC Board design program, lay out a double >>sided plated through board, FTP your gerber file and drill files to >>apcircuits, then get the completed boards about a week later. I got 6 >>3.5"x3.5" boards for around $100US. A double sided plated-through board is a > >I just finished bringing up some boards I had done by apcircutis and I was >VERY dissatified with the results. Over 60% of my vias were not thru >connected and about 20-30% of my pads as well. My jumper per inch ratio for >this board is very high and it was very, very frustating. > >In defense of ap however I don't know if it was something that I did wrong >with my board specifications that caused it or if it was just apcircuits >quality. Has any one else experienced this? > >One thing that really chapped me was that I had a part that the pad size and >the hole size were equal and ended up a big via from my power plane to my >ground plane. I would have thought that they would have caught such a >glaring error when doing the film. > >-- >Richard A. Smith Always remember to pillage >Contract Monkey & BEFORE you burn. >Head Pryo Technician >ras2@tant.com > > "My ancestors didn't spend millions of years clawing their way to the top of the food chain, just so I could become a vegetarian"