Hi everyone! I hope you're all doing very well.
I'm not used to do so but today I made a great discovery that I really wanted to share with you.
Whether you are a DIY-projects addict, a creative IT/electronics engineer or just a curious dude, it'll make your day if you don't already come across it.
Have you ever been facing situations in which you need electronics components that you can't find anywhere else?
Or let say you might find some more or less suitable ones but they would bring many more constraints to your project.
Well, that where comes JLCPCB.
In a few words (and among many other things they can do), you design your own PCB, you choose your components and here you go, few weeks later (depending on your location), you get your new babies home, well packed and double checked.
It was my first time dealing with them and I've got to say I'm genuinely not disappointed. But first, let me briefly outline the situation in a nutshell.
As part of some project, I needed a lightstrip with very specific dimensions and design, so, obviously it sounded obvious to me to build my own one!
I opted for a free software (EasyEDA) to design & to test my PCB, it didn't take me more than a few hours (and most likely it wouldn't exceed one hour today).
Within literally one click and directly from the software itself, I was proposed to send my project file to either JLCPCB (or couple of competitors, the reputation of JLCPCB and a quick search made my choice easy).
After creating my account, I have been proposed several customization options but in my case, the default ones were quite enough so I validated everything and created an order for 5 PCBs with SMT assembly option.
Let me say a word about the quite surprising SMT assembly option. With this option, not only you will get a very neat PCB but JLCPCB will mount all your components on your board as well, which means you won't have to solder anything by yourself, you get it ready, done with great attention, and with high-end tools, which is awesome.
So after a few days, I started to follow the advancement of the process on my account and was positively surprised that you've got an eye on any single step, the status being updated in real-time. So, definitely, it helps to be patient.
Approximately 10 days after my order was placed, it was packed and shipped (I didn't choose the option to faster the delays, so it's more than decent IMO).
Unfortunately, it was right in the middle of the Chinese new year period so the delivery times were a bit longer than usual and it took 3 weeks till I got it home.
Well, I have to say that I'm impressed with what I got.
First of all, really really well protected (a cardboard external package, in which the PCBs were surrounded with a foam sheet and the foam sheet itself was protected with a good amount of bubbles paper).
I thoroughly inspected my PCBs right after unpacking it. As expected, every single component was here, well soldered, nothing to warn about. Something I also want to mention is that the silk layer quality was pretty awesome (neat details, everything completely legible), I didn't expect that.
Last but not least, I plugged my light strip, and no surprise, it works well!
Eventually and to conclude this quick article, as you probably guess, I'm utterly satisfied and I will clearly deal with JLCPCB again!
I'm adding some pictures to let you see! I hope that will you make your choice if you're still hesitating, and of course, keep being creative!
