On Feb 12, 2006, at 7:43 PM, Brooke Clarke wrote:

> So for now I'll stay with http://www.ExpressPCB.com
>
Then you are stuck with their policies and restrictions (which is
presumably the whole point of having a "free" design package.)

I didn't understand your original question.  Yes, of course a
board can have both SMT and through-hole parts or areas.  No,
you probably can't get multiple boards with different mixes of
SMT/TH built for you as a single prototype; most of the board
houses seem to be very fussy about that.  "It's a prototyping
service for single boards, not a low volume manufacturing service"
I'm not sure what the difference is (although, based on sparkfun's
experiences, it may have something to do with customers commonly
being able to reject a PCB when it doesn't work.  Having six
designs on one panel would multiple the chances of failure by
six (looking at it from one possible direction.))

>> 2.50 per square inch plus $10.00 setup fee
>
> Is it just me, or is that price very high?
> I've been considering ordering from http://www.custompcb.com/
> They charge $78 for 2 8x11 panel, with no setup fee.
> That works out to 44 cents/sq inch.
>
The batchpcb price is expensive on a per-sq-in basis, and cheap
on a per-board basis.  I could get SEVERAL of the boards I've
designed built by batchpcb (they also allow you to panelize, IIRC)
for less than the price of a single board from anywhere else (not
that most other places offer the alternative of a single board...)

BillW
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