Last year I taught myself how to use the Eagle computer assisted design (CAD) program, which supports design of electronic circuit schematics and corresponding printed circuit board (PCB) designs.
Then last winter I researched affordable sources of small quantities of PCBs made from Eagle files. I settled on OSH Park, a small firm in the Portland Oregon area that converts a given Eagle board description (“.brd”) file into a complete set of Gerber photoplot and CNC drill files necessary for commercial PCB production. OSH Park combines designs sent to them with surrounding “slot” specifications and joins them all together into a large “panel” design. They send the completed panel description files to their supplier. The supplier creates three finished panels of PCBs corresponding to the panel design and sends them to OSH Park, which breaks the panels up into the individual boards and mails three copies of each board design out by US mail. The turnaround time has been gradually improving and now stands at around 10 days from hitting ‘submit’ to pulling boards out of my mail box. Three boards roughly 2×2″ costs $20. The quality is astonishing. If you look closely at an Arduino Uno, for example, you’ll see very fine detail, precise solder masks and silk screening, etc. Add to this a gold finish making soldering a breeze and you can appreciate the fine quality of boards from OSH Park. They are in every respect professional quality if the design involved follows best practices for layout.