The Order
Once you have your quote, it’s easy enough to order your boards. Just click on “RFQ Status & Place New Order”, and you’ll see all your quotes there. Expand the details for the one you want to order and add it to your cart. Then click the checkout button at the bottom and follow the directions.
For payment, they accept PayPal and credit cards. I recommend the latter; they charge an extra fee for PayPal. Enter your information, submit the order, and off you go. Note that your bank may charge an “International Service Assessment” fee; for me, it was $1.44.
Once your order is placed, you can use their excellent order tracking system to keep an eye on the progress. To get at it, click on “Order Status” in the Existing Orders menu, and then the “Check Status” link on the order in question. This will give you a nice, easy to read progress bar that tells you what’s going on with your order.
Now all you have to do is wait…
The Boards
My order was submitted on Monday evening, June 4, and it was accepted by Gold Phoenix the following day. It was quoted with a 5 day manufacturing + 3 day shipping lead time. I received a shipping notification on Saturday, June 9. The boards arrived on Tuesday, June 12.
For those keeping score, that’s just about exactly a week. To me, that’s an excellent turnaround time, especially considering that they were made in China.
They arrived in a nice little FedEx bag (FedEx shipping is included in the price, by the way; there’s no additional charge). Inside that was giant log of taped-over bubble wrap that I had to dig through to extract the boards. The boards themselves were in 4 nice stacks atop a piece of cardboard, and the whole thing was shrink-wrapped to keep it all together.
At first glance, the boards appear to be of good quality – but how do they really stack up?
Gold Phoenix’s address in Oakville, Ontario is right around the corner from my office. It’s a residential street in a fairly well-off neighbourhood, so I think it’s safe to assume there’s no manufacturing going on there.
I’ve used them in the past – mostly the 155 square inch special. As a multi-project panel it came out to something like $140 for a few each of up to 5 different projects – not bad.
These days, though, I’m using Seeedstudio’s Fusion service. Great quality boards, and a 10 cm by 10 cm board runs about $25 for 10 pieces, though only 5 are tested. If you can keep it small, 5 cm by 5 cm is $10 for 10, 5 tested. Worth a look.
I’m somehow not surprised that it’s someone’s house. If I had to guess, I’d say it’s probably not unlike all those companies that incorporate in Delware.
Not sure what the business advantage would be for them in having a Canadian address, but I’m sure there is one.
As for Seeed, they’re definitely on my list to try, especially at those prices; now I just need another excuse. I do have a few ideas in the hopper…
white solder mask is standard color, should’ be add extra fee.also the board outline isn’t complex shape. I think the charge of Gold Phoenix is little much more. There are many PCB manufacturers in China specilize in prototype and small quantity PCB fabricate.like King Sun PCB (www.kingsunpcb.com), good quality and resonable. maybe you can try.