Fractal Plant – Boards Ordered

Over the last week I rerouted the traces in my PCB design. Following feedback during class that the auto-router feature in Eagle isn’t very smart I did manage to make some cleaner routing manually. As part of the process I went through each component and made sure they were placed a closely as possible to the other components on their sub circuits.

While looking for guidance around PCB design I came across the website PCBArtist.com that has some helpful articles and provided some schematics for working with USB C to replace micro USB.

After doing a review of the board during office hours with Andy I was unsure whether to order from OSH Park or JLCPCB, so I ordered so both. This struck me as a good experiment to see which will arrive faster. From the past experience I have been more impressed with the build quality from JLCPCB but OSH Park being located in the US gives them the benefit of reduced shipping time and cost.

I placed orders from both in the evening of April 13th along with an order for a steel solder stencil from OSH Stencils. The stencil arrived promptly three days later on April 16th.

The PCB from OSH park is still in production and waiting to return from fabrication while JLCPBC finished production within two days and is in en route from China with an ETA of April 27th.