Comments on: Gold Phoenix for EasyBright PCB Manufacturing

By: Cort

Cort — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 15:26:05 +0000

Thanks to Keith, I went directly to Gold Phoenix for my first job shopped out to a board house in about 15 years. I usually fabricate boards in my basement, but this one was just more than I could reasonably accommodate. Thanks to the VERY WELL written evaluation of service from Keith, I was able to make a MUCH better choice. Thanks Keith — I know you hear this a lot, but the clear, concise write-up saved me a lot of time and money in the end.

By: Jeff

Jeff — Thu, 27 May 2010 21:51:03 +0000

I used Gold Pheonix for my AVR HV Rescue Shields and I was very happy with the results.

By: Keith Neufeld

Keith Neufeld — Tue, 25 May 2010 12:48:45 +0000

Kevin, excellent point! Going a step further, there might be other combinations of “horizontal” and “vertical” tiling that would fit more tiles than a single row or column of leftovers — although it seems less likely that Gold Phoenix would have gone to that much trouble. I can believe they’d add a single extra column, though.

By: Kevin Reid

Kevin Reid — Tue, 25 May 2010 12:08:36 +0000

Another way you can get a prime number of small rectangles out of a big rectangle is, if after tiling the big rectangle with the small rectangles, there’s a strip left over that’s not wide enough for the long dimension but is for the short dimension — so more can be added there, and not all of the boards are in the same orientation.

By: Devlin

Devlin — Tue, 25 May 2010 04:44:32 +0000

I used to run BatchPCB from panelization to shipping and we used Gold Phoenix for all but one month when we tried out Advanced Circuits. I can tell you that there are some bizarre things that would happen to panels that we sent. I am pretty sure they reorganized the panels I sent them as there were missing boards that were very similar to boards that were doubled up. About 80% of the panels were doubled by GP. I have a few guesses why you received an odd number of boards. 1:) that they added test coupons and other fab-house needed areas but that those areas did not take up a whole row or column of your boards and so the area was filled-in. 2:) They had another order for some big boards that your boards could fit in-between. In either case, it is pretty safe to err on the side of too many boards than not enough and having to re-run a whole panel just for a few boards.

By: Marcelo

Marcelo — Tue, 25 May 2010 02:30:30 +0000

I use Gold Phoenix for every personal project I may have. It’s a lot cheaper than the local fabs (in Brazil, that is), quicker and they are of better quality.

Also, they screwed up one time (swapped top and bottom layers). One email with a photo and about 24 hours later they sent me a new batch. Free. No questions asked.