Carl Denk wrote:
> I sent Gerbers for a board roughly 2.5" x 2.5" to PCBFABEXPRESS to get 5 
> boards fabbed. This was my 2nd order with them, the first order came 
> back perfect, except I had some holes that were too small. Reordered 
> with the fixes, when that order came back, there were apprroximately 50 
> on the top copper, and 7 on the bottom copper of 50 mil squares. All are 
> covered with  green mask. Non of the squares affect the electrical 
> characteristics of the board, but are very unsightly in particular under 
> the board label info. Checking the  copper  Gerbers, they are clean of 
> these squares. What is the cause of these?? Is this common, and should 
> it be tolerated?
>
> In 3 days my efforts to contact PCBFABEXPRESS including E-Mail from 
> their web site and several phone messages to the automated answering 
> have gone unanswered. I would not recommend anyone go their direction at 
> this point. From this list's archives, I have since learned they do no 
> work themself, but broker everything. If I would have known that ahead, 
> I would not have gone their way. I like talking to the horse's mouth 
> end, and not other.
>   
I've dealt with them for some time now, though not continuously.

They don't have a PCB shop at their office. The only thing they have is 
a computer and some PCB
software. Rather, they locate bigger shops that have spare capacity and 
purchase processing of
panels as needed. Its an interesting idea, but it causes some strange 
results.

For example, if you do a job once then do the same job later, the 
results will NOT be identical.
So they are not useful for production. But for prototypes, it is fine 
inexpensive source.

Their customer service is almost non-existent (I think you found that out).

--Bob
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