paddi91

Happy to answer that question! In the end it's a numbers game. Manufacturing gets cheaper with higher demand. For 6 layers the demand is rather low. We've figures from a US PCB comparison site and the share of 6 layers and more is below 5%, everything else is 2 and 4 layers. JLC serves a huge domestic market, so even with niche products they can do order pooling. That's not possible for us, thus the difference between 4 layers (€28.29) and 6 layers (€184.83). If there would be more demand in general, we could offer much lower prices.

Disclaimer: CTO & Co-Founder of AISLER here

We're trying to make electronic manufacturing (PCB & PCBA) simple, affordable and speedy. A high grade of automation allows prices starting at 12.20 Euros including VAT and shipping. Our software platform is completely built in-house, including state-of-the-art ODB++ integration. Let me know if you've any questions, happy to answer.

Keep it simple, just one call to solve every model.

KiCad provides a handy Plugin and Content Manager to find and install plugins and other extensions. However, beside the official KiCad repository, which is regulated, it is nearly impossible to provide a self-hosted repository. This application provides an easy to set up service to serve the KiCad PCM.

We're going to start assembly with shipment in march. Drop us a line if you're interested in our pilot.

KiCad Pcbnew files contain all required footprints etc., unlike the schematic files you need no libraries or such.

Creating Gerber files is sometimes hard as different fabs require different Gerber files. Starting with the file extension ending with floating point precision.

One argument against uploading KiCad files is copyright as the fab could reverse engineer the PCB. But this does not count for open source projects and is really unlikely to happen.

As I noticed some interest here, I'd like you to test the PCB service. Use coupon code 'hn102016' on checkout to get a 15% discount on your order. Would be happy to get some feedback on the PCB quality!

On the page is a pricing calculator, just scroll down a bit. As I said we're trying to get a low price on low quantities, if you only need 3 PCBs (e.g. for prototyping) we're cheaper than DirtyPCBs.