I was buying a lot of custom, fully populated hobby PCBs and the price has skyrocketed so much that it’s too cost prohibitive to order from JLCPCB. You can order PCBs from Oshpark however the boards don’t come fully populated with all of your components so you would need to order from like Mouser and surface mount all of them yourself (for my application)

To put it in perspective, used to pay about $85-$90 for 10 completed boards —- shipped —- now it is $316ish for 10 boards shipped.

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Renaud 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

It seems Circuit Hub is an alternative. Still more expensive than JLC, but not as high as other US alternatives.

https://www.circuithub.com/

Their CEO Andrew Seddon was recently on the AmpHour podcast:

https://theamphour.com/699-circuithub-12-years-later-with-an...

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firesteelrain 2 days ago | parent [-]

Thank you for the tip!

My project uses gerbers and they do not accept them. Will see what I can do

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bangaladore 2 days ago | parent [-]

I would be surprised if they didn't manually accept them, but it is a bit strange they don't mention it on their website.

I'd be very surprised if any of these companies they list are willing to give project files for manufacture. I assume they do this because smaller companies and hobbyist see it as more convienient, and to CircuitHub it means less mistakes / time dealing with the customer when they generate their own outputs.

	▲	firesteelrain 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		It is on their website that gerbers are not accepted. It’s their policy unfortunately I didn’t design the PCB so all I have are gerbers and BOMs (as CSV)

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ncr100 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Do you care to speculate the impact?

I speculate this is going to slow down the small hardware hobbyist small business space, by maybe 50%.

To expand, in too many words:

Personally I have a penchant for music synthesizers and many of them are from a one-person shop. I imagine these 3x price increases are going to slow people down. Determined and cost agnostic people will power through this. People who just have an idea and are actually motivated by the past inexpensive PCB prototyping universe, will a lot more about cost and prototyping and a lot less about the problem that they're solving. And I just can't imagine it being anything less than a 50% slowdown for those folks.

	▲	firesteelrain 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		It’s more ham radio related for a niche part of the hobby. Less people will be able to participate due to the higher than normal costs

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CamperBob2 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Still an incredible bargain compared to any US-based production house.

That's always been my problem with buying American. I'd be willing to pay 2x as much to support manufacturers in my own country. Maybe 3x. But 10x-15x as much? EABOD, I'll stick with China. While infuriating, the Trump tariffs are nowhere near enough to alter the outcome of that calculation.

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com2kid 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

On one project I worked on, we tried sourcing prototype boards from an American supplier and they put a bunch of knock-off parts on it.

Meanwhile our Chinese suppliers were honest with us.

The one benefit the American places are supposed to have, they managed to squander through either sheer greed or incompetence.

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firesteelrain 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I can’t even find somewhere in the US equivalent to JLCPCB for fully populated hobby PCBs!

Plus these are going on high altitude balloons aka throwaway so a lot of people have a hard time spending that

	▲	CamperBob2 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		I've heard good things about MacroFab in Houston, but no personal experience with them.

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ycui1986 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

the US assembler cost would be $4000 minimum.

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varispeed 2 days ago | parent [-]

Probably after weeks of back and forth and then probably needing rework anyway. Also anything over 4 layers would probably need a mortgage.

	▲	c22 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		I can confirm that stateside fab is insanely expensive compared to China, but I've gotten same-day turnaround on multiple occasions. It's literally the value prop of going local.