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by krasin 785 days ago
> I'm building wearable tech, and the JLCPCB lead times are my biggest bottleneck for iteration. 3-4 weeks is way too long.

Hm... my experience with JLCPCB is that I get 7-10 days iterations from sending my gerbers to getting my boards in SF Bay Area. Still long, but much shorter than your experience.

Is it shipping, PCB manufacturing or PCB assembly that takes so much time?

1 comments

PCB manufacturing. They said the assembly is just about to start and they'll be shipping day after tomorrow. I'm in London so will have to see how long shipping takes!
In this case, it's not going to be changed by moving to Shenzhen, as you can really only cut on shipping times. But yeah, finding a vendor that can produce flexible boards faster than 2 weeks should be possible, even while you're in Europe.
Often Pcbway and similar have a simple (i.e. 4 layer, no special options that can go in the most regular batches) board-only order on a UK desk in about 6 days from order (order at the weekend, have it in-hand on Friday). So shipping is around 4 days in practice, and around £25 (depends on weight). You're not guaranteed to have it but it's often that fast.

If you have to move, move to a place near the start of your DHL driver's route as that can make the difference between 9am and 4pm delivery (and that goes for RS too).