Nudge... nudge...

I've been eagerly watching the progress of my PCB through JLCPCB's production process. Or not progress, I should say.

I submitted the files Monday morning (US), which would be in the wee hours of Tuesday morning in China. When I next checked the order's status I saw that it had completed the first step of production, "MI", which appears to involve checks of the submitted Gerber files and identification of plated-through holes. With this complete I expected my order to progress rapidly, as had my previous order for the 2-layer fit-test board. But it hadn't.

Tuesday I saw no progress. Nor was there any activity Wednesday or Thursday. Fearing there was some sort of glitch in my Gerbers and wanting a chance to correct it before the weekend, I sent an email late Thursday night (Friday mid-day in eastern China) asking if there was a problem with my order. I received a reply at 5am this morning (6pm their time) assuring me that there was no problem. Sure enough, the order tracking showed that my board had jumped all the way from having completed only step 1 to having completed step 9, depositing the solder mask. Unless a production error causes the boards to fail the electrical connectivity testing (step 12), it seems reasonable for me to get them sometime next week.

The question I'll never get an answer for is whether production would have progressed just as it has without my email nudging things along. My board is 1.2mm (47 mils) thick rather than the more common 1.6mm (63 mils) and has controlled-impedance tracks, so they might have been holding it until there were enough similar orders to make it worth running a batch. It might have just gotten lost in the shuffle. Or it might have simply been scheduled for production today anyway.

I also ordered a solder paste stencil for this board. To reduce shipping costs I specified a custom size 10mm bigger in each dimension than the board. I expected this would result in a stencil that was basically the same as the board, but the Gerber file they generated from my "paste" layer appears to be offset so the average center of the holes is in the middle of the stencil. This means when I place the stencil over the board the "south" end of the board will be exposed and the "north" end of the stencil will hang off the board. Since I apply solder paste by hand this isn't a problem, just not quite what I expected. If I'd realized that's what they would do I would have made the stencil even smaller.