JLCSMT

Hive13 Project
Using JLC SMT Fab
Status: Planning
Project Owner: user:Blundar
Project Location: online
Start Date: 11/28/2020

Intro

This page is being created in advance of the December 2020 Sparks! meeting, which will focus on using and working with the JLCPCB.com SMT fabrication service. If you want to get a couple of boards made and you can play by their rules, it's incredible value.

What are we talking about?

https://jlcpcb.com/smt-assembly

2, 4, 6 layer 1oz copper boards, lead free soldering, components from a select list, DIRT CHEAP.

Designing around JLC limitations

You can only get up to 50pcs (maybe even 30pcs?) of PCB assembled, then you need to panelize.

JLC do not do ANY through hole components.

MOST IMPORTANTLY JLC do not do ANY components not in their library. This means that if you know you want to have JLC build the boards, you should do your best to pick components in their library.

The JLC SMT Library

JLC's SMT library is very hard to navigate IMHO. There is little - no parametric searching. It's primarily indexed by part number. Because of JLC and LCSC being owned by the same parent company, investigation on LCSC's website often but not always will turn up useful information for JLC SMT.

Fortunately someone was kind enough to put together a searchable index on github. jlcsmt search