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Guides for ordering boards that work
How to order assembled boards, what the materials and processes mean, how to work with an AI assistant, and a guide written for AI assistants.
6 guides
Ordering
What a factory needs from you to build the board you designed, and how to send it.
Ordering a PCBA step by step
What happens between your design files and boxes at your door, who does what at each step, and where time and money go.
Files for fabrication and assembly
What Gerber, drill, outline, BOM and placement files must contain, how to export them from four design tools, and the ten most common mistakes.
Writing a BOM a factory can buy
How to list parts so a buyer can purchase them without guessing, with alternates, do-not-place lines, consigned parts, lifecycle and minimum order quantities.
What drives the price of a PCBA
Which choices move the price of a bare board and an assembled one, why a single board costs so much more than ten, and what to change first.
Lead times and how to plan them
What makes up the lead time of an assembled board, which part usually sets it, and what makes an order slip.
Shipping and importing boards from China
How express shipping from China works, who pays duty and tax, what a commercial invoice says, and what to ask a customs broker. Not legal or tax advice.
4 guides
Materials
Laminates, copper, finishes and solder mask, and what each choice does to the board.
PCB base materials from FR-4 to Rogers and flex
What a board is made of, how FR-4 grades differ by Tg, and when aluminium or copper core, high-frequency laminates or flex are the right choice.
Copper weight, stack-ups and impedance
What copper weight means, how common 2-, 4- and 6-layer stack-ups are built, and when controlled impedance matters and what the factory needs for it.
Surface finishes compared
HASL, ENIG, OSP, immersion silver and tin, ENEPIG and hard gold side by side. What each protects, how flat it is, and when to choose it.
Solder mask, silkscreen and via treatments
What the green coating and the white print are for, why thin mask bridges and legend on pads fail, and what tented, plugged and filled vias mean.
5 guides
Manufacturing
How boards are fabricated and assembled, step by step, and what is checked on the way.
How a PCB is made
The steps that turn your Gerber files into a finished bare board, in order, with what can go wrong at each step.
How boards are assembled
Paste printing, placement, reflow, through-hole soldering, cleaning and coating in order, and what can go wrong at each step.
Inspection and test of assembled boards
What SPI, AOI, X-ray, flying probe, ICT, functional test and burn-in each find, what they miss, and how to choose what to order.
Design for manufacture: the mistakes we see
The 25 file checks grouped into families, with for each the mistake, why it fails in production and how to fix it.
Panelisation and small boards
How small boards are grouped into panels for assembly, V-cut against tab routing, rails, fiducials and tooling holes.
4 guides
AI assistants
Ordering with an AI assistant, and guides written for assistants to read.
Ordering boards with an AI assistant
What an AI assistant can do for your circuit board project today, what stays your decision, how to brief it, and what to check yourself.
What MCP is and how agents order
The Model Context Protocol in plain terms, why a factory offers tools to AI agents, our safety model, and the planned tools (not available yet).
- For AI assistants
API quickstart: upload, check, quote
The calls that take a board file to a file check report and a price preview, with curl and the JavaScript client, plus the errors you will meet.
- For AI assistants
PCB design guide for AI assistants
Instructions for an AI model that designs or reviews a PCB for a person, so that a factory can build it first time and the file check is clean.