This is good when you need a few like 10 or 50 boards and you can wait a bit for boards to ship from China.
It would be nice to have a local fast service for when you are in hurry, want to make a prototype or a one off project, or you are just tinkering, send the design and receive the board the next day.
Yes, you can fab the board at home but it takes a bit of skill and time.
Up till about 5 years ago it was cheaper and faster to get a turn out of Asia than the US. I have no idea now. This was true for anything more than 1-2 panels (24"x18") with 4layer 4mil trace/space and no blind/buried vias. You could easily get 4 day turn (2 day hot lot was double).
We really wanted to use local or US manufacture, but it had multiple problems:
1 US worked 9-5 so you had to deliver by 9 whereas China you could deliver at 5pm.
2 US didn't run equipment on weekends, and often better equipment only 1 time a week.
3 In US the equipment wasn't constantly running so calibrations went off and sometimes multiple runs were required to dial it in.
You could order a couple of panels form Asia on Friday at 5pm and have boards available by courier Monday before noon for <$4k. All of that assumed that there were no problems or questions on the gerbers so you needed to do a really good review and know their capabilities. There were places in Vietnam, Thailand, and Shenzhen that did the work. We stuffed (SMT) the PCBs locally, but that was moving to Asia as well since availability of some parts was easier there. I'd worry about counterfeits more now.
That was mostly a concern with the CMs. We had the advantage of owning the Main ASIC FW and the Driver so a serial# challenge response could detect fakes. Difficulty was doing that without implementing public key on a tiny micro and keeping reverse engineering difficult.
We have these in the UK, but they are prohibitively expensive. Like you are looking at £500 for a simple board overnight. For something more complex could easily be multiplies of that.
Even if you are not in the rush, most are stuck in the 90s when it comes to ordering, so before you agree everything, you'll probably get your boards delivered from China at a fraction of the price.
There used to be a great PCB manufacturer in the EU that had very short lead times, although still expensive, it was a good alternative if you were in a rush.
Now often you get your PCBs quicker in the UK from China than from the EU.
It's a shame such (one would think) crucial services are so underdeveloped locally.
I'd say one thing is that equipment is very expensive, the other is that nobody believes in engineering culture anymore here. Engineering has become just another blue collar profession and people's attitude has become hostile - population see an engineer as someone who sits by the computer all day (meaning not actually "working"), makes "a lot" of money and engages in tax avoidance.
> It's a shame such (one would think) crucial services are so underdeveloped locally.
Well, the domestic PCB shops are in a catch-22 local minimum. They don't move enough volume which means they can't optimize and automate every step which then means that they can't move the same volume as China which means ... This one infuriates me as it could be fixed but nobody does.
However ... PCBs have a lot of toxic glop and emissions. How do you contain and dispose of it all? How do you prevent people from breathing it? China doesn't really care all that much about those considerations and that adds quite a bit to prices.
I you are located close to a DHL hub, then the order from China can come in 2 days, which make the international order a moot point as disadvantage. JLCPCB provide 24-hour run on 2-layer board.
PCBway has an option for same-day fabbing and DHL takes about 3 days. That's not too bad for less than $100. The same service from Sierra Circuits or Imagineering would be $1000.
This is also the difference between JLCPCB and many others.
I go to JLC and they show me a price. First thing, in my face. Including the (very reasonable) constraints that I have to meet to get that specific price.
I go to PCBway... price, in my face.
I go to Aisler... "upload your Gerber file here". This is fine for returning hobbyists who already have a file, but if you're considering whether you want to invest the time into the project, not knowing whether it will be $2 or $200 puts a serious damper on even wanting to start.
With hobbyists, this isn't just a deciding factor to get customers choose the competitors, it creates customers: Seeing the JLCPCB prices actually motivated me to learn KiCAD and make my own PCB.
It would be nice to have a local fast service for when you are in hurry, want to make a prototype or a one off project, or you are just tinkering, send the design and receive the board the next day.
Yes, you can fab the board at home but it takes a bit of skill and time.