Cheap PCB's from JLC PCB, including cheap postage.

[Nigel Goodwin]

There's often been mention of the price of PCB's from the Chinese manufacturers, in this case JLC PCB.

Now while the boards are cheap (and excellent quality), the cost of getting them from China isn't

I order quite a lot of boards from work, and I've recently used the last of the hundred boards I last ordered for one of our products, so took the opportunity to change the board slightly - as such, I only ordered 5 boards to test, rather than 100 to find out I've messed up, and the boards are useless.

The boards are well under their 100mm x 100mm special offer price of $2, so it seemed a shame to pay $20+ to get them delivered.

Normally we pay for DHL delivery, because we like them to arrive quickly (usually a week from order, or even 5/6 days), but in this case there's no rush, as we're already waiting for other parts, and we've got a stock of 'mostly' built units waiting for those parts. So I went for the cheapest delivery offered - although this only seems available on low cost, or perhaps low weight?, orders.

So this is the actual cost, cut and pasted from the invoice at JLC PCB.

Merchandise Total: USD $2.00 (￡1.58)

Shipping: USD $1.55 (￡1.22)

Subtotal: USD $3.55 (￡2.80)

Import Taxes(20%): USD $0.71 (￡0.56)

Grand Total: USD $4.26 (￡3.36)

So, £3.36 for 5 boards delivered from China, including UK VAT paid (20%), you can't really grumble at that

I placed the order on 8th November, and according to the tracking they are in the UK, have cleared customs, and are in the hands of the local carrier, I imagine they will arrive tomorrow, or even this afternoon.

For a comparison, the 100 similar boards I ordered previously cost this:

Merchandise Total: USD $52.10 (￡41.04)

Shipping: USD $67.32 (￡53.03)

Subtotal: USD $119.42 (￡94.07)

Import Taxes(20%): USD $23.89 (￡18.82)

Grand Total: USD $143.31 (￡112.89)

To be fair, that works out at £1.13 per board, compared to £0.67 per board for the 5 on the special offer with slow postage. It is annoying though when the postage is more than the goods

 

[For The Popcorn]

I've had pretty good success with their low cost shipping options. Sometimes it does seem to take forever from "in your country –:being transferred to postal service" and the postal service receiving the package.

But.... compare the cost of 5 boards with DLI shipping to having the boards made domestically. Even with expensive shipping, the difference with be substantial! Last time I looked, to get the per board cost about the same, I'd have to order more than 500 boards locally.

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

I've had pretty good success with their low cost shipping options. Sometimes it does seem to take forever from "in your country –:being transferred to postal service" and the postal service receiving the package.

But.... compare the cost of 5 boards with DLI shipping to having the boards made domestically. Even with expensive shipping, the difference with be substantial! Last time I looked, to get the per board cost about the same, I'd have to order more than 500 boards locally.

When I first started working where I do now, one of my first projects was to redesign the PCB for this same unit - I'd originally done a rough PCB design at home, for this unit, which I'd designed entirely at home. Gave all the files to my friend (now my boss as well) and told him to modify the PCB files as required, as we didn't even have the LCD module at the time.

So when I started working for him, I discovered he'd just used the PCB design exactly as I'd originally created it - so I said "well I'm not building those"

So my first job was redoing the PCB, and moving to Designspark from the (cheap and nasty) program he's given me to use for the original prototype.

So next I asked where do we get the boards made?, and he gave me the email address for the UK company he'd used - this was on Monday (my first day), so I emailed the gerbers off and asked for a quote and delivery time. However, I mentioned to him that I'd seen an advert a few days earlier for cheap PCB's from JLC PCB, so we sent an order off to them as well, for the cheap 5 boards special offer.

The UK company didn't even send us a quote until later on in the week, and the delivery time was weeks, not days - meanwhile, JLC had already manufactured the boards, and they were on the way to us. Their prices were also considerably more expensive than JLC PCB - so needless to say, we've continued to use JLC PCB for all our PCB requirements.

The postal service in the UK is usually very good, although it does vary somewhat regionally (down south can be quite bad), the JLC PCB boards usually come via either The Post Office, or Evri (a bit of a crap courier company), but either are generally pretty fast.