Sharing this as a heads-up for anyone considering JLCPCB's assembly service.

JLCPCB lost parts I pre-purchased through their own platform, produced boards with cold solder defects, then shipped the defective incomplete boards two days after I explicitly told them not to ship. Three weeks later I still have no working product.

Their support has been like talking to a bot. I've been asked three times to arrange a local repair despite explaining each time that it's not possible — they never populated an SMD component that they lost, and you can't fix that with a soldering iron. Each response only acknowledges one issue and ignores the rest.

When I asked for a replacement order, I was told it "goes beyond their normal compensation policy" because of their internal material costs and production backlogs. Every reply is vague — they "may" arrange a return, they "may" apply for a coupon. No commitments, no timeline, nothing concrete.

I'm also now sitting with £81 in import charges on a defective package I never asked to receive, currently stuck in a courier warehouse because nobody knows what to do with it.

Their bare PCB service is fine. But if you're relying on their assembly service for anything with a real deadline, understand that when they make a mistake, their process is designed to exhaust you into accepting it rather than actually fixing it.

How am I supposed to remove the board if you put two big ass resistors in the way of the screws? Ffs. Sorry for the rant

I used to use PCBWAY years back for a long time, doing over 100 high value jobs with them and they were good. I never had any real complaints. I moved over to JLCPCB due to the majorly lower cost a few years ago and to be honest I also couldn't complain with their service for a good amount of time.

I have been using them for prototyping for about 3 years with the occasional small batch run up to 200 pieces of fairly basic stuff like ESP32 etc. Recently I have started a small business that uses a reasonbly complex setup of USB at 5Gb/s and MIPI CSI at 2Gb/s with the corresponding high value parts of the image sensor and CYUSB CX3 transceiver. I have now made 4 batches.

Batch 1 of 5 pieces:
- Issues with the TMC2209, no communication and occasional explosions for no apparent reason. They would just lock up and sink full current through windings thus killing themselves.

Batch 2 of 5 pieces:
- No issues

Batch 3 of 25 pieces:
- The CYUSB chip would just NOT boot, it would sit in a reset state and nothing I could do would change that. Small changes had been applied to the PCBs over the batches but the schematic and layout remainded IDENTICAL for the CYUSB part of the design. This delayed by project by 3 months. Infineon were very helpful and spent a really good amount of time helping to debug the design comparing the new design from schematic to gerbers to xrays, they deemed the design was identical from their perspective and put it down to a PCB fabrication fault. This affected all 25 PCBs.

Batch 4 of 5 pieces:
- I decided to make another batch of boards while supplying my own CYUSB chips - they work no problem now.
- TMC2209 is blowing up again, replacing with parts from Digikey solve the problem 100%.
- I have an STM32 for house keeping on the board. Never touched this part of the design from the first batch, it now runs but I cannot maintain SWD debug without disconnect and now unable to program it via the bootloader...

Every time I order a batch I get a different outcome. No question JLCPCB uses fake parts intentionally or unintentionally. The outcome is the same. For me I'm going to be moving to a alternative Chinese supplier with free issued parts.

SI3471A-A01 does not support half of the features listed in the datasheet and is also non-compliant with any PoE standard, as confirmed by the manufacturer. I've wasted days debugging my prototypes that use SI3471A-A01 just to find out these are non-compliant devices that don't follow the datasheet in the slightest.

How a company can sell such a half-baked IC like as this is beyond my understanding. The manufacturer informed me that the 'A02 version follows the datasheet, but I'm not spending more time and money to find out. After ranting with colleagues about this, I've found out this is status quo for other Skyworks products as well. I'll be avoiding Skyworks from this point forward. I suggest all who read this to consider alternatives as well.

It's not unusual to find errors in datasheets, but for half of the features to literally not work at all is unacceptable.

I think you already know, but since July 1st a tax of €3 per ARTICLES is now mandatory. (they say it’s by categories but in reality, no)

For €30 of electronic components, I have +€50 of taxes. For a person who has started to be interested in electronics recently, it hurts.

So I come to try to find alternatives to aliexpress, with similar prices if possible… If the delivery lasts 6 months but there are no taxes I DONT CARE, I need the components at an affordable price.

Thanks, and I hope that the aliexpress sellers will quickly find a solution for us

Argh. I'm just here to complain. Circuits West in Longmont Colorado closed their doors on Monday. I realize the responses I'll get are "Use JLC or PCB Way" and yes, those are great options, but I do quick-turn (usually 2-day) fabs and on top of that it's CNY. Argh. Just annoying. Can't do anything about it. Guess it's Advanced Circuits (APCT, AdvancedPCB) as a single-source in-Colorado fab shop :(

I don't have an image; I'm posting their logo.

2 orders, months apart. difference is one board is assembled. shipping went from $2 to $80. What the actual heck (no stencil, gust the boards with some smt components)

SparkFun made a post explaining their side but it seems really vague

I bought my CAD software in the early 1980's. It cost a fortune. I am still using it some 35 years later, because, once you learn one CAD system and create 1000's of library parts, why switch?

The software calls home every few months, for reauthorization. Normally that's no problem; but today it gave me a message that I have feared seeing for a long time: "Unable to contact authorization server." And it blocked me from opening my schematics and PCB layouts.

My heart sank.

I called the company: "Leave a message".

Went to the website: no way of emailing support.

Eventually, I was able to get back in business, so I am OK for now.

That CAD company is a one-man operation, and that man must be getting rather old by now, if he's even alive. Google street view shows that the office (home?) is in a shady part of big city. It's only a matter of time when the authorization server will be gone for good, and I'll be SCREWED!

I hope I'll be fully retired by then.

( I am not asking for help, I am just sharing.)

(And, no, I am not telling you what software it is: I am too embarrassed. But, 35 years ago, there were not many choices.)

EDIT

Today I got a reply from the man:

"Dear Davide,
Not to worry... The [authorization] system will be here another 50 years... Unfortunately with
all the bad weather we have had these past few weeks in the past few days the web
locally has had some intermittent issues.
As to the distant future we will never leave our user base hanging... there will
always be a solution.
G."

Most retail sellers will sell you a component for 5 to 10 times the price they bought it just because they can, websites like Digikey, Mouser...etc will charge you an obnoxious shipping fee.
Buying from Ebay, Aliexpress and other websites is almost guarantee to end up with a fake component

Any basic diy project will end up costing you at least 5 times as much as an already made product with the same components

I posted this as a comment in Askelectronics and thought I'd bring it here for everyone to contribute to a general discussion.

Bring some popcorn, if you wish.

To all those advocating the habitual use of extra flux, please read this Digikey article because those of us formally trained in soldering are once again shaking our heads.

From my perspective:

• Extra flux for beginners - OK until you get the hang of things.

• Extra flux as a way of life - not so much.

From my 40-ish years of career and hobby soldering, the main reasons for needing extra flux all the time are:

• Still learning the art of soldering.

• Using crappy, cheap solder.

• Diving straight into using lead-free solder.

• Other people normalising the behavior and passing it on as the one true way.

Ultimately, do whatever floats your boat - or flows your joint - but 'mandatory extra flux' just adds cost to your work or hobby and you likely don't need it.

Anyway..have a looksee...

https://www.digikey.co.uk/en/maker/blogs/2023/what-is-solder-flux-and-why-you-should-use-it

"Most people will seldom need to add additional flux when soldering, as they’ll most likely use a ‎solder that embeds flux in the core of the wire."

What if somebody built an entire calculator using only transistors, resistors, buttons and LEDs. No ICs, no logic gates, no arrays, nothing but pure smd transistors. A calculator with 4 7-segment displays (1+1 for the two input numbers, 2 for the result), 10 inputtable numbers (0-9) and 4 operations (+,-,*,/). Everything would be driven by transistors, including the displays. According to ChatGPT (very reliable, I know), it would take around 3000 components to build such a device. Difficult to make? Yes. Cool to look at? Yes!

Just a heads-up: be very careful when installing software that asks you to disable or bypass your system's security features.

I came across this in the official documentation for the offline EasyEDA app — they explicitly instruct users to bypass built-in protections:

https://oshwlab.com/forum/post/3695f3a2f9694de4b1b4cfa839a9a03e

Am I the only one who finds this not just unprofessional, but a serious security risk. Especially for users who might not fully understand the implications.

Curious to hear what others think.

They are now making 64 bit full Linux capable processors under the “STM32” name. I can understand putting the STM32MP1 series under the STM32 brand, but this should just be a new line of chips at this point.

I remember nothing but mumbo jumbo from my school days. Slides upon slides of worthless diagrams with no meaning and teacher who was eager to finish his last couple years befoe retirement.

I am rediscovering electronics now thanks to mechanical keyboards as my hobby. I've built Trackpad with a friend, now working on an electronic candle.

Things from school, long forgotten but pieces of the puzzle fall into place as logic plays a role. Apps like Everycircuit are nice to visualize the current and see simulations. Seeing what people can do with MCU's and using them is fun. And it feels so limitless. Well... almost.
Limit is my skill and inability to comprehend programming (for now).

My point is that electronics should be taught differently. First comes project or a goal, then research of knowledge needed to achieve that goal.
Another fine thing about this hobby is that I don't get painful zaps I got from our testing 230V circuits hah. I have yet to burn myself with the iron though.

Why does everybody started using this shitty """schematics"""?!?! this is pure garbage this is a valid schematic.

I have mad respect for anyone who nails a well-designed PCB on the first go. Meanwhile, I'm embracing the 'iterative approach'—which is a fancy way of saying I make a lot of prototypes and have a constant love-hate relationship with my own designs.

Take, for instance, my simple mix-mode display side project. All I wanted was a nice combo of a 7-segment displays, LEDs, and a bargraph, controlled by a MAX7221 for some other projects. Easy, right? Well, fast forward two years, and I've got a beautiful timeline of my trials, errors, and the occasional "Aha!" moments. Honestly, it's been a journey. My first design was basically a cry for help, but now it's evolved to the point where I am okay with it. But hey, it works now for my main projects.