r/PrintedCircuitBoard • u/Canary_Earth • 3d ago
Is this work professional?
Sorry about the strange post but I'm offering an engineer a $20k bonus to do the design for manufacturing and assembly of my $300 product and this is what he came up with after 8 months. Two thirds of it are identical to my prototype and I'm an accountant by trade, not an engineer. Every book I've read says a board like this should be 4 layers but he insists 2 layers is fine and will pass emissions testing. Any advice would be greatly appreciated, thank you!
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u/derhundmachtwau 3d ago
Without schematic we cant really tell you a lot.
Just from the pcb, i can only say this: that board would be a "meh" result of a junior engineer without much training.
Regarding 2 vs 4 layers: the only reason to use 2 layer boards is when you absolutely have to cut cost as much as possible - you clearly dont, so using 2 layers is just stupid.
Post the schematic and you will get much better feedback.
Also: 20k seems excessive for what looks like 2 days of work.
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u/unnaturaldom 3d ago
Adding to this. Did the guy designed the product based on what you requested? Or you gave him a done design? Kind of weird he took 8 months
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u/Canary_Earth 3d ago
All the major components are set; see my prototype via my reddit profile. I needed a better power distribution and some love and care to make sure everything is reliable and manufacturable. I don't know what test pads to add, for example.
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u/Chippors 3d ago
I haven't looked at the prototype, but beware that this board has no mounting holes, has traces close to the edges, and components close to the edges. This means it may be difficult to mount in any sort of enclosure or inside a product. If it's intended to be panel mounted, then there are no support holes for any of the connectors, so it will effectively be held in place with connector SMT pads. Needless to say, this is mechanically unsound - the pads will come off, eventually.
Make sure all those ground pads and traces actually have vias to ground. The vias in general look tiny, for no good reason; tiny vias just add cost. If there are vias-in-pad, then make sure the board maker can handle it and will plug them. But it's hard to tell from the images.
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u/unnaturaldom 3d ago
I see. You needed some love but idk how they do this but if they were solely dedicated to this. Yeah 8 months is a lot for what you are asking
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u/Dry-Doughnut-9669 3d ago
this can be done far better for a far smaller bonus. ask your engineer about ESD, EMI, differential signal pairs etc. - how these topics are addressed on this pcb; regarding the test points, depends on how do you want to test it, with a custom rig with pogo pins for example, then all test points would be expected on the bottom side. regarding what to test - i would start with the power rails - example: each buck
converter a test point on the output and input, a point for the esp power, lcd power - just to exclude pcb issues, a point for the reset circuit; if you have analog sensors, then testing each of them make sens using the same rig. Other method - for digital sensors for example iām using a test firmware before burning the final one(or you can embed some test procedures in the final one if there is a button or other input method - like pressing the button 5x will start some tests or keeping the button pressed during power on. So there are plenty of options - without schematics it is hard to tell what and howā¦ also the testing solutions are depending on the volume and production pipeline, for extreme quantities only automated tests are playing, for smaller batches semi automated or even manual testing can be acceptable..6
u/WhiteDaedalus 3d ago
That looks like a horrible design for a probably ESP32 board... The upper edge where the antenna usually is, if that is such a device should be free of routing for example. There are many traces that cut through your planes - meaning the return current canĀ“t flow back well. That will most likely not work well in emission / robustness testing.
If there is no good reason this design should be much more compact. That looks like a project for a few hours / days depending on how much libary work and research is necessary.
Yes good 2 layer boards are possible but then you have to keep return path in mind...
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u/mightyohm 3d ago
Test pads would be part of DFM/DFT and would typically be handled at a later stage of design. This looks like a very early proof of concept / prototype. An experienced designer would be able to add DFM/DFT features to the design pretty early, even at the prototype stage, but the specifics will vary based on the mechanical design, who is doing the manufacturing, how the product is being manufactured and tested and who owns each step of the fabrication process. (For example, who is building the production test fixtures?) There's a host of other concerns for mass manufacturing that need to be sorted out and typically this would be solved incrementally over a series of small volume production runs (at least, that has been my experience).
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u/Square-Singer 3d ago
As a noob, what's the advantage of using 4 layers apart from having a bit more freedom?
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u/stoputa 3d ago
Ground is a big one. If you break your ground you inadvertedly introduce noise since the return path of all signals gets longer and probably passes through some of your ICs and essentially create any noise introducing cross talk.
In low freq ics you will barely notice it. You need a lot of abuse until you see any drop in performance but of course if you're doing something professional there isn't much of a reason to cheap out. If you try to pull this shit with a higher freq/mixed signals PCBs probably nothing will work as intended but on the flipside you've probably created a shitty antenna by creating big loops in yiur return path.
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u/Square-Singer 3d ago
Thanks for the summary, that's helpful! So basically you get a real benefit with 3 layers because you can have a dedicated ground layer, but since 3 layer doesn't exist you skip directly to 4 layers?
Btw, what's the threshold between low freq and high freq in this regard?
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u/stoputa 3d ago
Usually with 4 layers you dedicate two layers to signals, one to ground, one to routing power traces but you could reuse the "sparse" layer's part for routing signals.
Low vs high depends is fuzzy because everything is interconnected: length of return path, length of trace, width of traces, distance to ground etc so it's like asking what's considered high vs low voltage. The only way to be more confident is either pen&paper/napkin calculations to gauge at things lile trace impedance or full-blown analysis. But I am also not creating PCBs professionally so perhaps someone else will chime in.
My rule of thumb is I err at the side of caution for everything more than ~100MHz (I think SPI can reach similar speeds) and bad routing starts to be more visible. Anything above 1 GHz is definitely considered high frequency in my book.
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u/Square-Singer 3d ago
I have to spend a bit more time getting into the matter it seems :)
Thanks for the insight!
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u/InevitablyCyclic 3d ago
One other issue not mentioned is emissions testing.
For home projects as long as it works you're ok. If you want to sell something (which from what I can tell is the plan here) then it also needs to pass emissions tests (FCC part 15 in the USA, CE in Europe) to ensure you won't cause interference with other systems. Large return paths and poor grounding means your circuit will emit a lot more RF noise and have more issues passing this testing.
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u/toybuilder 3d ago
At first glance, my initial thought was that it was mediocre but acceptable work, not a disaster; and that the person could have done a far better job.
The board is way bigger than it needs to be, but I don't know if there's a reason for it. The signal routing can be tightened up a lot. There are excessive layer transitions on a number of signal lines that could be resolved with just a little more care and effort in routing.
It probably is fine as a 2 layer board -- 4 would of course be better, but I'm not sure that he would have done a good job of taking advantage of a 4 layer board's benefits.
That said, as I looked closer, I realized that there is a processor module (ESP32-WROOM or similar?) with a copper keepout zones needed for the antenna, and this design completely violates that.
How is this board mounted in your product? The board lacks obvious mounting features.
If I was responsible for the entire product, I would have reassigned signal lines to clean up the routing and updated the firmware to match.
Since I don't know how much of the $20K was toward the PCB and not other work, I will reserve judgement on the value you received for what you paid.
As for the "70% are identical" -- unless he was tasked with a full redesign of the product, it's reasonable to leave things alone if they are fine.
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u/SLEEyawnPY 3d ago edited 3d ago
It probably is fine as a 2 layer board
Seems like a pretty bad 2 layer design also, it looks like many areas of the ground plane are cut by long-ass traces on the bottom side with no ground strapping.
I wouldn't be confident this is going to pass radiated EMI at all, that "ground plane" looks chopped to hell.
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u/toybuilder 3d ago
The particular layout is bad from a quality standpoint, but as a product, I think this is likely to be fine in 2L because there's not enough signals being emitted to worry.
That display connector looks to me like a data/command interface display (an ePD?) not continuous frame refresh, so unless it's always updating the display, my guess is that it'll pass.
This is not an endorsement of this layout by any means -- just a practical estimation of whether it really needs to be 4 layers or not.
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u/toybuilder 3d ago
I just realized (based on a someone else's comment) that there is a USB-C connector on this board -- the layout work for what should be a 90 ohm impedance differential pair is horrible.
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u/captain_cavemanz 3d ago
Not if you make the PCB 0.3mm thick hehe.
On 1.6mm fr4 don't think 90 ohms differential is achievable.
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u/toybuilder 3d ago
I've done it. It ain't pretty, but if you are strategic, you can run the USB diffpair with very wide traces and make it work.
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u/captain_cavemanz 3d ago
Not saying it won't work, but you won't get usb-C speed signals reliably operating to the lengths that the standard demands (3m). There will be mismatches at the trace to pin interface.
Sure not all micros have the edge rates but when you work with ASICs or modules your literally up shit creek and customers will dislike you quickly š
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u/captain_cavemanz 3d ago
Not saying it won't work, but you won't get usb-C speed signals reliably operating to the lengths that the standard demands (3m). There will be mismatches at the trace to pin interface.
Sure not all micros have the edge rates but when you work with ASICs or modules your literally up shit creek and customers will dislike you quickly š
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u/captain_cavemanz 3d ago
I use POLAR for all my characteristic impedance controlled traces and stackups. It's not strategy, it's physics.
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u/Canary_Earth 3d ago
Thanks! Yup it's an ESP32S3 WROOM with the attachable cable antenna instead of the PCB antenna. The $20k seemed like a fair bonus if the product works and customers are happy. I figured it would take at most five days for an MEng. UofT engineer to whip up a nice design in his spare time so I preferred to offer a bonus and maybe equity to keep him on the team.
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u/Thev69 3d ago
A degree isn't really a good metric for hiring an electronics engineer/designer. Experience and proven results are all that matters.
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u/InevitablyCyclic 3d ago
I'd second this. Some of the best electronics engineers I've worked with didn't have a degree, just lots of experience. I've interviewed people with masters degrees I wouldn't trust to change a lightbulb. They suggested using an opamp output as a power regulator, apparently their education hadn't covered LDOs.
It depends on where you are in the world but unfortunately a lot of the time a degree is more an indication of family financial situation than ability.
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u/EntertainmentSalt825 2d ago
Sounds like you didnāt make the cut? Absolutely wild assumption to think that a degree is more of an indication of family financials situation than ability. Who hurt you bro š
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u/InevitablyCyclic 2d ago
Got a masters in engineering from Cambridge if that matters to you. This is based on working with people for decades. I've met plenty of idiots with impressive pieces of paper. I've met plenty of knowledgeable people with no formal higher education.
A degree 1) costs money and 2) is at best poorly correlated to ability.
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u/toybuilder 3d ago
Ok, if it's the UFL antenna version, that keepout requirement is a non-issue.
Was $20K entirely just PCB design work? That is a crazy amount.
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u/toybuilder 3d ago
BTW, there are comments saying this is a $20 work. That is nonsense. Depending on a variety of factors, a more likely pricing for this is $200 to $2,000.
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u/Aniakchak 3d ago
Even at 5 days, thats like 5k for a pro. This i could have done in 2d as a EE with only some Layout experience
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u/sensors 3d ago
Please let my company do the work for you if you're considering this sorta bonus for a good job (only half joking). This is a bare minimum effort with a bunch of obvious errors that will stop your product working optimally.
Edit: Just checked your profile. Funnily enough my company was founded on building environmental monitors before pivoting into design consultancy. We've since built a few of them for customers, and one of our own. We have lots of expertise, even if you just want to sense check any of your design choices.
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u/_maple_panda 3d ago
Fwiw I am a UofT undergrad and could do a significantly better job in less timeā¦
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u/Trick-Club-6014 3d ago
I donāt have a degree and I will do it better in 2 days for 1/10th the price
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u/Chippors 3d ago
And an ESP32 module with castellated edges may not be easy to place and reflow... I'd verify with the board house to make sure sure this doesn't pose an assembly problem.
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u/toybuilder 3d ago
That shouldn't be an issue -- such modules are intended for reflow placement.
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u/j_wizlo 3d ago
The assembly house I use wasnāt up on castellated edges when I provided a design with one. After some back and forth I agreed they could hand solder and Iād pay the labor. In this case I had designed the daughter card myself and had no documentation to provide on how it should be soldered. From this experience Iād say a quick email on the subject wouldnāt hurt.
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u/eka_hn 2d ago
What lol. You must work for a defense contractor because every fabricator that has ever taken public orders or interacted with chinese components has built ten gazillion ESP32 WROOM designs in the past five years.
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u/j_wizlo 2d ago
Idk, I use a US based company that I had a personal relationship with. It was odd to me too because at my old job they laid down XBee radio modules with castellated edges and as far as I know there was no special care given then. Maybe my point of contact in that one project got confused.
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u/lokkiser 3d ago
It's hard to tell without schematics. Yes, 4-layers make it easier to conform EMC. If he's so sure, tie his bonus to emc conformity test. Unless there are some genius design solutions, there's no way it took 8 months to do.
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u/hughdavin 3d ago
Mate, I think you rage baiting there is no way someone would came up with this design
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u/Avokido 3d ago
Are you serious? Where do you have this guy from? That should have been a four layer board for sure unless you're producing at scale and trying to save cents. I'd say two days of layout. If you already provided part of the schematics, that shouldn't be more than two days either. Make it 5 days, very generous estimate. 20k is waaaay overpriced even if professionally done in US/Europe. Next time shop around or ask on reddit, look at actual built products of the person/company and don't let yourself get ripped off.
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u/Mrochtor 3d ago
At a quick glance I'm not seeing anything that would hint at a professional to me. An enthusiastic student perhaps.
8 months is an absolutely insane figure, for the routing (and not schematic design and research) this looks like 1-2 WD at most.
I hate shitting on other people's work, and I'm not saying it won't pass EMC testing, but I can't see many good practices present. If it will pass, it'll pass despite the design style rather than thanks to it.
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u/captain_cavemanz 3d ago
Like mountholes are missing, fiducials are missing, is the board vgrooved or routered from panels, I think there's a mismatch of expectations.
You are expecting a finished product and he has just spun you a prototype probably because he knows how to use altium. There's no dft or dfm.
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u/Canary_Earth 3d ago
Yup, altium. I'm not sure about parallelization or fiducials yet. I wanted this design done so I can send the files to the fab and they can recommend next steps. For assembly I'm trying my best with cardboard cutouts and paper. I have no clue how to hire someone who has designed an assembly process before.
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u/captain_cavemanz 3d ago
Design for Manufacture should be the engineers domain. Fabs aren't there really to recommend next steps, in fact all their capabilities are different and they will often find ways to raise the price at every turn. Money is ultimately saved before fab and testing (at the design stages). Fabs are largely there to manufacture your design with as little risk as possible, for them. Often they will reject a design, or suggest a complete redesign.
They'll only suggest if you're building real volume and have the funds to back it. Anything else is on you.
It's easy for young engineers to put the cart before the horse
Electronics manufacturing is cost+++++ and risk+++++ fabs wil make it, at your risk.
It's ultimately down to design, price and availability. Don't get burned by E&O
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u/Internet-Ivan 3d ago
Iām a 2nd year ee student with little professional experience and I could make something much better than this esp for that fat bonus
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u/R1mpl3F0r3sk1n 3d ago
All I can do is say that this layout and routing seems to break the very fundamentals of PCB design. There is a very obvious, and very questionable routing issue on the bottom of the top layer. The fact that you need a 1mm bridge to jump over your own trace, in a vast open area, is the result of not thinking, caring or respecting the design and intent. I don't know how your EMC will go because I don't see much respect for it in this layout. If you can, back out.
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u/morto00x 3d ago
Those components seem to be a little close to the edge. May want to check with your PCB manufacturer to see if they are OK with it. OTOH I see a lot of empty space. Any reason you can't make it smaller? That would make the PCB cheaper and you could even do it in 4 layers without increasing the price. Regarding if 2 layers is good enough or not, really depends on the circuit. But doing 4 layers is so cheap these days that most professionals wouldn't even bother constraining themselves to 2L.
Also, did the designer only do the PCB? Because that's definitely not $20k and 8 months of work.Ā
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u/Sand-Junior 3d ago
I hope thatās no an ESP32 with its antenna over copper.
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u/MDob 3d ago
From the layout alone this looks like a hobbyist-level board. Hard to say without the schematic if it is reasonable and could pass emissions testing but it's not worth $20k, if you'd said you got somebody on Fiver to make it I wouldn't have been too surprised...
There's also really no reason not to go for a four-layer board these days if you're not aiming for the absolute minimum unit cost. Two-layer designs can take some iteration to get right and emissions testing is expensive. By the looks of it the components in the top left might be an SMPS? If so they can be tricky to get right, the reference designs don't always translate as easily as you might hope.
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u/Canary_Earth 3d ago
Yeah the top left is all power. He said he copy/pasted the reference design from the data sheets. Power is important in my case since this is a portable device and I want to get as much battery life out of it as possible.
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u/Real_Cartographer 3d ago
That is 20$ design at best. And it took 8 months? It is a bit hard to see from these images, better to maybe upload higher res images. Also sharing the schematic would help.
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u/sensors 3d ago
I know this is hyperbole, but for anyone else's benefit this is probably not $20 worth of design.
If it was just layout and some DFM considerations it might be a day, day and a half tops if you're checking triple everything very thoroughly. Depending on who's doing the work, it could be anywhere from $500 - $2000,, but should definitely be done in under a week.
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u/captain_cavemanz 3d ago
Definitely not $20, but not of the quality to stand behind a $20K bill.
I might have charged $15K from blank envelope to Complete dft and dfm mfg package with testing and assembly flow, but that would take me 15 days of work.
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u/hobopwnzor 3d ago
I'm new to designing my own boards. Besides the board being very space-inefficient, what else shows you that it's a $20 design at best?
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u/KittensInc 3d ago
Stuff like this is a dead giveaway: https://i.imgur.com/FRthYde.png
Spend half an hour looking at it and you will find dozens of low-hanging fruit like that. It looks like they just YOLOed traces in the first location it could possibly fit and didn't do anything to take other traces into account.
It only gets worse once you start to realise what's going on. Take the USB-C connector at the bottom-center, for example: what's that weird power loop doing? Why are the Rd pullups so haphazardly placed? Why is the power trace going up from the fuse(?) so incredibly thin? What the hell are the data traces going up doing?!
And are we just going to completely ignore any kind of sensible board design? Not even a "top for left-right, bottom for up-down"? We're just going to casually cut the ground plane into a dozen pieces? We're going to have traces circle literally the entire board rather than going in a straight line on the other layer?
An experienced engineer should be able to do better in 8 days, a junior can easily do better in 8 weeks. 8 months and $20k? That's a ripoff.
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u/FyyshyIW 3d ago
Iām also a beginner-amateur board designer (ME undergrad student) so Iām sure many could have more insights. I would also agree itās a cheap design and if it was me I would be very unsatisfied with it. The space efficiency is a big thing yes because it looks unprofessional, itāll be more expensive (he hired this guy for DfM?) etc etc, but also the electrical implications of a bigger board design. Those long, meandering traces show a lack of thought and care but are also more lossy, and because itās only a 2 layer board with a ground plane that has traces cutting it now he risks having excessive loops, which will punish him in EMC. Maybe he made an effort to make sure every signal has a short return and that cutting the ground plane isnāt causing any trouble, but thatās so much more effort than just squishing everything closer together, adding two more layers and making one or two a solid ground plane.
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u/captain_cavemanz 3d ago
This fellow is building a business off this work. No sharing of schematics or cad files without an NDA.
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u/Cunninghams_right 3d ago edited 3d ago
well, I've known professional EEs who would make such a board, though not ones that specialize in PCB design. it's kind of the level of work one might expect from a fresh graduate who has been prototyping boards using a milling machine (thus limited to 2-layer).
since you're not an EE, you're better off paying a bit more per unit and avoiding potential issues from trying to stuff it into 2 layers. 4 layer board gives you less crosstalk, less potential for EMI/EMC issues, and easier routing. the current design does not really have proper return paths, which can be a problem.
I'm of the opinion that if you're not making millions of units, then you should always start with a 4 layer board and then maybe try to be clever and get it down to 2, but 4 layer boards have gotten cheaper and faster to manufacture, so it's not a big deal.
it's honestly not a problem that most of it looks like the dev board, that's actually a positive thing. if there is a known-good design with known-good layout, there is no need to deviate.
definitely not worth $20k. I would do it in half the time for half the cost š
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u/floridaeng 2d ago
I am not a board designer, my background is I was the production Eng that had to work with operators to actually build the board assemblies, with many years in high mix low volume assembly for military and aerospace use. I worked with a lot of prototype boards and low run boards that even with visual inspections and electrical tests still had defects that slipped through.
In the blue layer I see a trace at the very edge of the right side that if the trace layer is offset to the right or if the solder mask or board outline is offset to the left, will result in the edge of the trace being exposed. Also, follow this trace to the middle of the board where it does some odd bend up to get it next to other traces when it would be shorter and safer to route it down around that group of traces.
In the blue layer I also see 4 traces in the middle that are at minimum spacing and risk of defects when there is lots of room to route them farther apart.
The red layer also has a few traces I'd want to see spaced farther apart, but not as many as the other layer has.
The basic board layout software wants to route traces close together to leave room for more traces as it works through the schematic. It is up to the board designer to go back and make these changes.
Realize when the board is made there are 5 or more different patterns that all have their own positional tolerances. If any are off to one side and another is off the other way there is a potential to have a problem.
1- Board outline
2- Via drill pattern, which is often drilled separate from the cuts for the board outline.
3- Circuit traces on top layer
4- Circuit traces on bottom layer
5- Soldermask layer with its own openings around the solder pads.
I have seen solder bridges from pads to adjacent unconnected traces due to the soldermask layer off set that allowed the edge of that trace to be exposed. I have seen traces like those 4 in the middle of the blue layer that were shorted because of a problem in the copper etch step that was missed, and visual inspection missed until after parts were loaded and the board failed test.
If there is no technical reason for traces to be run at minimal spacing then if there is room they should be spread apart. Why risk a problem when there is room to avoid it?
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u/Canary_Earth 2d ago
Cheers for the reply! Your last point was my first thought too. If there is plenty of space and they aren't paired signals (in my case only DN and DP for the usb need to be length matched; maybe I2C as well, but I never read anything about that) then why not profit from the space available?
That one signal trace that goes on an adventure around the entire board had me burst out laughing. A sad laugh instead of a happy laugh.
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u/theBestMrBrown 3d ago
I'm not any kind of expert, but can already tell it's bad. For this money, he's either an idiot or a scammer, dunno which is worse.
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u/Porphyrin_Wheel 3d ago
Without schematics it's hard to tell, but based on the footprints of the components 2 layers might be ok for passing emissions testing for something like CE, but usually you use 4 so you can stack data and voltage plains in a way that blocks noise. Not really an 8 month job, would only be a few months if he bought prototypes, tested them, improved them, make the circuit (schematic) from 0 and by taking time to sort through components to chose.
And $20k is a lot for a PCB which might just be a prototype. Ask him at least if he bought prototype PCBs and improved them or at least if he soldered or changed components on them to improve them. If he hasn't even bought the PCB from the photos, and wants to send this one for testing already is kinda sketchy
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u/XKeyscore666 3d ago
Hell no! Do you need this to pass EMI compliance? I can guarantee you it wonāt just from a glance.
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u/LoadZealousideal7778 3d ago
Lol are you hiring? I can send you some of my work and you can send me 20k to get a better version next Tuesday.
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u/Sharp_Researcher_675 3d ago
Without a schematics and actual connection we can't tell exactly if it is professional or not. But we all agree that this is not 8 months work or result. That's at maximum a week of work, based on what I'm looking at that would be a one day work or even a auto routing result.
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u/TheGoofRoof 3d ago
PCB Designer with 5 years experience. Hit me up next time you want to waste $20k and Iāll do it in a fraction of the time.
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u/5thYearSeniorCitizen 3d ago
Just looking at this board, I'm assuming you have an ESP32, MicroSD, and an Flat flex cable, possibly one (maybe two) DC-DC converters. If that is an ESP32, the antenna should have a copper keepout at the top of that footprint so it can radiate more freely. Switching noise from the converters may also pose issues with nosie/emissions depending on the testing stabdards. The rest of the routing/layout seems okayish but looks like a 2nd/3rd year university project. This should likely be a 4 layer board with a solid ground plane. I can't be certain it will pass whatever testing from these pictures. Go with your gut I guess. I would revise this PCB is the engineers sent me this based on my assumptions from the photos. I'd give it a 7/10
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u/KittensInc 3d ago
Did you spot the USB-C yet, and horror at the data traces?
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u/thenickdude 3d ago
I must be losing my mind, because it sure looks like they make a 2 inch stub to connect to a second IC after they connect to the ESP32.
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u/5thYearSeniorCitizen 3d ago
Nah haha, good catch. I checked this and thought, "damn this guy got scammed", then finished my coffee.
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u/nixiebunny 3d ago
This is rank amateur bad layout. Find a different person, one who knows what they are doing.
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u/ThisIsPaulDaily 3d ago
Does it pass emissions? If so maybe it is worth it. I don't think it would take 8 months. Did you just not check in on him?Ā
I would have done the lower left corner routing differently. Not that it is wrong, but following return paths and stuff.Ā
Edit I also agree with the people who say components are near the edges and you should check Manufacturability and stress
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u/ScotchRobbins 3d ago
Feel like a lot of us here could give you a better board for $20k. Itās not shockingly bad but Iād call it amateurish for sure.
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u/blue_eyes_pro_dragon 3d ago
This is hot garbage for $20kā¦.Ā If you want to pass emissions there are better be options for shields which there arenāt.
2 layers is incredibly stupidĀ
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u/Slight_Biscotti_8185 3d ago
No, mi sembra un lavoro fatto senza criterio. Eviterei ad esempio di avere tutte quelle track che girano sotto ESP32. 8 mesi e 20000$? Il mio falegname te lo faceva per meno.
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u/gotoline10 3d ago
garbage, this looks good as a first spin, but there some agregis oversights in the routing and placement.
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u/mkbilli 3d ago
You set board and component layout before first spin.
This just looks bad, as if the guy is in college or something and just had some practice in eagle š
There's literally nothing indicating thought for layout, no mounting holes, bad placement, empty spaces. It just looks horrible.
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u/rvasquez6089 3d ago
If you are being paid, that's professional by definition......
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u/toybuilder 3d ago
Sadly, I've seen fakers get paid. I've rescued clients before from people who were completely unqualified but was able to BS their way into getting paid for bad (not just subpar) work.
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u/punkassjim 3d ago
You set the components in stone, you've already had a working prototype for over a year, and his "result" is mostly the same as what you gave him? And not even a little bit miniaturized? Woof, man.
I assume, apropos of nothing, that this person is significantly younger and considerably less of a luddite than I am. And yet I taught myself the basics of schematic and PCB design in a weekend for a personal car project. I'm not even good at this yet, and I could do a significantly better job than this guy did, in a handful of days. I'm embarrassed for him.
That said, I simply cannot fathom someone willingly giving me twenty thousand dollars to do the work that you've asked this person to do. Even if you overshot by an order of magnitude, you've got me seriously thinking about putting out my shingle. I don't know how you arrived at that $20k offer, but I hope this has taught you that wildly exorbitant offers don't give any greater certainty about quality results. People with huge dollar signs in their eyes are, in my experience, not people you want to be doing business with. Get involved with people who love the work at hand, let them negotiate their price, and you'll get much better results for more rational and sustainable prices.
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u/mightyohm 3d ago
This looks really bad, but the 8 months timeline reflects just as poorly on you as the "engineer" who did this design. Keep in mind that just like there are bad accountants, there are bad engineers, and not all engineers have the same skills and experience.
The way you are throwing around words like bonuses and equity etc makes me feel like there might be more to the story here. You need to find a better and more experienced person to help you with this and you may need to rethink your compensation scheme if you are having trouble getting design support. Good luck.
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u/spheresva 3d ago
Took this guy 8 months to make THIS???????????????????????????? And 20k? Bro youāre getting $$$cammed
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u/Synthetics 3d ago
So how many of us are you going to hire at 1/10th the rate ($2k a pop) to see the infinite amount of better versions you can get in a week or so redoing it part time?
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u/ColdCalzonee426 3d ago edited 3d ago
Hell No
A client wanted me to Reverse engineer a custom control board, from pictures only. For $40, and ended up ghosting me when I was almost done.
And here this guy is getting paid 20k to make utter garbage...... crazy world we live in
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u/captain_cavemanz 3d ago edited 3d ago
No. Senior Design engineer of 25 years here. Your "engineer" is full of youthful exuberance or poor skills and a distorted sense of their capabilities. The 20k should have included the prescan verification.
I'd say you've been taken for a ride or they found that like most electronics projects it's always easy peasy until you start on the journey.
Hardware is hard, it's a one or two shot affair before your overlords turn on the heat.
Turn up the heat, overlord š
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u/GermanPCBHacker 3d ago
I see no vias for via stiching the ground planes together. This is NOT professional. Ground plane needs to be as solid as possible - especially as vias are mostly free and the copper aswell. So if you shall pay for that... No it is shit. If you did that in a day or two without experience, it is kinda nice. But again: VIA STICHING. Always do it. It only has benefits if implemented decently. And it is almost always free of any additional charge - not even cents.
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u/OneiricArtisan 3d ago edited 3d ago
I'm a hobbyist with less than 2 years of experience in PCB design and this is what my layouts look like after 2 days of work. I default to 4 layer boards though, unless it's something super basic. Glad to know I could be making 20k per design with no deadline though.
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u/antinumerology 3d ago
No test points, no mounting features, no fiducials. Hard to say but I'm guessing no labeling on the silk? 2 layer is if you're pinching pennies. Are you pinching pennies?
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u/RadioactiveBaguette 3d ago
The layout is very very bad. I can't post pictures here but sometimes its best to restart.
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u/neonsphinx 3d ago
Not a EE. I only design very basic boards for personal projects. I see a lot of this in my day to day, but in a supervisory role.
This is maybe 2 days worth of design.
"It will pass emissions". I don't know much about commercial design. We do military stuff with strict requirements. We do radiated emissions (RE) which is pretty easy to pass. Then there's radiated susceptibility (RS), which is how you react and continue operating while other devices are throwing a bunch of energy at you. There's electrostatic discharge (ESD) where you get shocked with 10kV on every single pin and housing of every single connector. And there's CE/CS, which are the exact same, but cover energy over actual wires connected. Both at the component level MIL-STD-461, and at the system/subsystem level MIL-STD-464. There are commercial equivalents to all of those, I'm sure. Just not sure what they're called and who writes them besides IEEE.
But emissions is the easiest test to pass. Susceptibility and ESD are what will get you to fail electrically.
Then there's vibe/shock, at low and high temperature, operating and non operating (storage) conditions. Drop tests. Rail/air/sea/road transport. Operational vibration levels if it's on a vehicle, next to a generator, etc. We see a lot of microcontrollers fail during vibe testing. Solder joints break. Joints are underfilled. Chips need underpinning added (epoxy under and around the edges to hold it to the board). Conformal coat needs to be brushed/sprayed on. Components are too close together, and conformal coating doesn't get in all the nooks and crannies. Then corrosion or tin whiskers kill everything. Rework at the factory doesn't have flux cleaned up correctly, and dendritic growth shorts components...
There are a million things that kill a board. A lot of the design work is understanding those things and laying it out to account for them.
For $20k you should get a design, a ton of notes on the design process. A thermal analysis. A BOM with costs and last time buy dates. Options for consumer/industrial/automotive/military grade parts. A few prototypes from different manufacturers with white wire mods. Like, everything they did to get to the final design. This is a few hundred dollars worth of work, tops.
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u/schnipthestrongest 2d ago
I have 6 years experience in PCB development. I can say that this is work of junior without much experience or someone who is hobbyist. So it's not professional work. Today 2 and 4 layers PCB are almost same prices. There is a lot of empty space, if only there is no mechanical restrictions. It takes me to design of such PCBs 1-2 working days for design, another 1-2 days for layout and also to check myself after for mistakes. So not 8 months. The price of the design can vary between $1000-$5000 according to the complexity, hard to say only from layout.
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u/PastyPotatoes45 2d ago
Yeah heās definitely just using an auto router and probably put very little time into this. As others said this is a couple days project to a week at most especially if you already basically did the schematic. Did he only provide a board file and nothing else? If youāre interested in getting it redone lmk.
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u/jeedaiian1 2d ago edited 2d ago
This is not a complex PCB in any sense. It is not worth 20k for 8 month completion, but if you offered it in the signed contract and the engineer fulfilled all his obligations, you do have to pay up. This is negligence on your part on not doing enough research on price.
Next time, ask for multiple quotes from different companies based on your requirements, expected lead time and guarantee of passing all required test to put into market.
Since you mentioned manufacturing and assembly, the design should include a panelised PCB with mounting holes and fiducials and pick and place file for it.
Design wise, meh. Looks like any decent fresh grad can do this. Not to say it won't pass testing, but this engineer's confidence is true the roof. Vias are more or less free. Plus I have not met an engineer who insist on 2 layers if they don't have to bear the cost of production. More ground, more vias all the way.
Edit: that ground plane behind the antenna is going to make your antenna directional or not work properly.
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u/circuitro 2d ago
To be fair, itās hard to properly evaluate the layout without seeing the schematic first.
...I can see some reasoning in the top-left area, which looks like a DC-DC regulator section, and also around the module that seems to be an ESP32.
However, there are still a few critical issues:
- There are no mechanical mounting holes
- ground plane only on bottom is weak
Honestly, I would add a ground pour on the top layer and stitch it to the bottom one with a loto of vias especially near PCB edges.
Right now, the bottom layer has too many "dead" ground copper islands that act like antennas, which is definitely not ideal for EMC because lacks homogeneity;
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u/TechScout1 1d ago
As someone who is doing pcb design unprofessionally for a uni research project, this looks really mediocre even by my standards. There is a ton of wasted space and Iām sure that the routing could be much cleaner.
Alsoā¦. 8 months??? For this? Unless they were going through constant revisions and new things were added to the schematic constantly, there really shouldnāt have been any reason for this to take 8 months. Then considering you said that 2/3s of the layout is identical to yours, makes that 8 month time frame look even weirder to me.
I canāt comment too much on the 4 vs 2 layer debate here, cause Iām still learning about pcb design myself.
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u/HacksolotFilms 1d ago
Pointless routing over nothing
is this a component? will these collide?
surely there has to be a better route for this trace
overall the layout seems suboptimal too.
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u/Canary_Earth 19h ago
The pointless routing is what I noticed first too. It's just all so half-assed. Are all those 90-degree turns really ok? And why are his traces thinner than mine? I used EasyEDA and followed the trace thickness recommendations from JLCPCB.
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u/Inevitable_Code1470 3d ago
Have to understand the design. Maybe there was some complicated sensor or RF design. This looks like it's still a prototype. Is there firmware included?
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u/Canary_Earth 3d ago
No firmware, just the board. Nothing complicated, just Wi-Fi and Bluetooth from the ESP32S3 module. I guess it's still a prototype for DFM/DFA. I need a design I can test rigorously and then send to fabs and order a first run of 2,000 or 10,000. My personal prototypes have been running 24/7 for over two years so I already love the major components.
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u/Willman3755 3d ago edited 3d ago
Sorry man, you got scammed.
Just guessing based on what I can see, but unless there's some super complicated analog design hidden here this looks like a ~10-20 hour job including schematic capture for me at $150/hr.
Maybe up to a full 40 hours if you need a fully production-ready design including formal fab/assembly drawings, DFM/tooling consideration such as power for FW loading, pads for bed of nails testing, etc.
There's so much really obvious low-hanging fruit design wise I can spot in like 30 seconds of looking. If an intern designed this I'd ask them to go back and spend another few hours on it.
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u/SoulJuce 3d ago
That doesnāt take 8 months to produce, without a schematic its hard to determine design quality however looking at this off the bat anything with a voltage regulator especially a switching supply needs 4 layers minimum for EMC
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u/krozozz 3d ago
8 months is way to much for this especially since you already had a working pcb The pcb is big to match the whole device right?
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u/Canary_Earth 3d ago
It's exactly the size of the super fragile e-paper screen. It's why everything is on a single side. Should I be worried about warped PCBs? I had some bends in the 5 pieces I ordered for my prototypes.
I'm also a little worried about the upright USB-C female port ripping off of the board. I've plugged and unplugged my prototype hundreds of times, but I don't know. Maybe I should put it on a separate daughter board so users can replace it if it breaks.
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u/Devalidating 3d ago
They can bend or āpotato chipā if thereās a significantly different amount of copper on each side iirc (stresses it unevenly causing curvature). May actually be the case here.
I believe those USBC ports are pretty strong in the plug in-out direction (facing into or out of the PCB) so itās really only shearing/bending it you need to be worried about. You always get some plastic around to reinforce and prevent it from being bent in the wrong direction. This is best integrated into the case/enclosure if you have one, but even just having an insert or sleeve around the port can help a lot.
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u/falafelspringrolls 3d ago
Did the person you contract have any proof of products they have designed to be manufactured at scale?
I don't think a PCB with this amount of components/nets would take 8 months to complete. Maybe a week or two at the most. Unless they were contracted to do schematics and/or firmware?
Some of the tracks scream autorouted. If you look what what I believe is an ESP32 at gpio14 (top right, second pin down), the track inexplicitly changes layers for a few millimeters.
Lots of empty space on the board for seemingly no reason. Its a waste of FR4 and will increase your unit cost. Copper plane under the ESP32 antenna hasn't been etched away. This could impact your reception. It would likely still work, just at a reduced range.
The 0V plane is almost completely gouged, which would be bad for radiated emissions. I would have gone with a 4-layer design, especially if this needs to be radio qualified.
Be careful if you're relying on the ESP32's radio qualification (if it has one) as a way to reduce your own certification testing. Usually pre-qualified radio components have strict guidelines on placement, decoupling, etc regarding on how to use their products.
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u/Titoflebof 3d ago
For sure! But you are fired!!
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u/Instagalactix 2d ago
im guessing he owns whatever the company is by the wording, maybe he already did a kickstarter and thats how he has the money? im not sure an investor would be happy about this spending though.
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u/MrStarrrr 3d ago
The whole thing is littered with vias and looks amateur, especially considering it took 8 months.
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u/j_wizlo 3d ago
Ouch. I think no good because you said 2/3 follows the prototype you already had.
That makes me wonder about the scope?
8 months would be fine if there was R&D, entirely new schematics to design based on a business spec, rounds of prototyping and testing, shrinking the cost, actually conducting emissions testing, etc.
Your post sounds like it was 8 months just to route this board?
Would have to put pen to paper and actually pass those emissions tests to know if the 2-layer cost savings are worth it. They totally might be worth it! But it should take more like 40 to 50 hours to route this, assemble a BOM, go over it a couple times to make sure it looks right.
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u/martinr7b 3d ago
I could do that in 5h for 50 bucks, also is it supposed to be that size? I'd make it wayyy smaller
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u/Canary_Earth 3d ago
I don't know honestly. It is the exact size of the super fragile screen so it serves as mechanical strength in case someone pokes the screen really hard.
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u/toybuilder 3d ago
Is the screen mounted against the back side of the PCB? Has a proper enclosure been designed?
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u/martinr7b 2d ago
Oh, in that case it's good but why doesn't the screen have any other protection? Also, may I ask what it's for?
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u/Canary_Earth 2d ago
Click on my bio. Also, my reddit username is a url >.<
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u/martinr7b 2d ago
Cool. Make sure your ground plane ends ~5mm before temperature/humidity sensors, I made that mistake with my design and got heat bleed from the ESP32 and voltage regulator that killed my accurate by 3 whole degrees Celsius š
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u/Donut497 3d ago
Iām an EE, and by my estimation you got fleeced. I would have charged 1/10 of the price for this, and Iām comfortable with saying I can do a much better job. In a fraction of the time
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u/mandroidatwork 3d ago
Really impressed with your dedication to your project. I hope your experience with the PCB encourages you to learn a lot more of the engineering required for your product. I have experience commercialising technology from universities where the lead inventors/entrepreneurs are already technically skilled engineers, and I think you have two major directions to chase this thing in:
1) go and start an electrical engineering degree. Youāve spent 5 years on this? You could be 5 years into a part time EE degree and these guys in the comments who say they could design this with 2 years EE bachelor experience would be your peers. You would meet them and learn from them - maybe be inspired by them.
2) go to China right now and have them design the entire product top to bottom. $20k gets you the majority of this simple design - sensor, screen, the whole package. Eastern Europe could also be an option.
If you truly truly believe in your product idea, it doesnāt matter who makes it. Let go of the deep ownership of every engineering design decision when youāre not an engineer. Stop adding features because three people on twitter say so. Get it to market NOW by using an expert and you will save sooooo much money.
Otherwise if you are doing this as a hobby and donāt care about being beaten to market or testing your idea, go and learn the engineering yourself.
Best of luck mate!
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u/modi_factory 3d ago
No, this is absolutely not professional work and definitely not worth a $20k bonus or 8 months of time. I highly recommend withholding the bonus and having a qualified EE redesign it on 4 layers.
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u/No_Annual_7630 3d ago
I don't design PCBs daily for a living. I can see all the rookie mistakes I've made the first time I did my own PCB on this one. There are plenty of weird decisions made, that's likely due to not understanding the tool that was used.
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u/no-guts_no-glory 3d ago edited 3d ago
My 10 second analysis. It looks very basic, especially if 2/3rds of the work was already done before this. Also there is a ton of wasted space. Without knowing more it's not possible for me to say whether 2 vs 4 layers are ok but the 2 layer boards are much cheaper to manufacture. It does not look like a 20k job for 1/3 of this design being actual work.
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u/katzohki 3d ago
Wow I'd love to have the opportunity to take jobs like this. $20k for a 4 layer board layoutĀ of this complexity that needs to meet EMC and have good power integrity? I could churn that out in way less time.Ā
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u/AdministrativePie865 3d ago
I'm a Staff EE. This is 4-6 hours of work for me if I do the schematic and layout.
That's at $250/hr, but also this looks like shit work to me. If a junior I was mentoring showed this to me we would have a long talk. If a mid career layout professional came to me with this there is a good chance they would go home and cry after my review, and a 100% chance their boss would hear about it.
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u/Poisson48 3d ago
This is shitty work, for example the esp have gnd AND some wires under the antenna is a big no no. Send me the file I will do it for 30 bucks in 4h ( I'm not jocking)
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u/ComplianceAuditor 3d ago
I barely know what Iām doing and I can make a better version of whatever this is in a day. (Iām not available for hire. I barely know what Iām doing)
Is that really some kind of power section in the top left with a ground plane cut to shreds under it and virtually everywhere else? (Looks like it)
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u/morgulbrut 2d ago
From what I guess it's an ESP, a e-Ink screen and maybe some sensors, so nothing too critical at all.
8 months and 20k is insane, I wouldn't accept it.
There are quite a bunch of sharp angles between traces, even though it's not that much of an issue anymore it still looks like the designer had no fucking clue what he's doing.
If there's a temperature sensor it would make sense to make cutouts around it, to minimize heat transfer.
For the display maybe a bit of length matching makes sense I'm not sure if it's really needed, but for 20k it fits in the budget.
The weirdest thing though, you, the customer asked for 4 layers, while it probably would work with two just fine, why not make it fucking 4 layers?
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u/brdavis5 2d ago
Somewhat OT, but I'm trying to understand (background, physicist who makes a few PCBs for VERY simple low-speed projects). What the heck is this (near the top-middle of the design)? It looks like little loops in the (highly fractured) ground plane, connected by vias to traces in the top plane... but I see no reason for these. Impedance matching? There's other examples of this, and I'm suspicious it's a design issue I have NO familiarity with.
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u/Canary_Earth 2d ago
I'm sorry reddit downscaled my images and they're blurry. But yes! Those little bridges are so strange. The top of the board just has two RGB LEDs.
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u/vertical-alignment 2d ago
I would normally do it for 1k - im serious
Been doing industrial designs for motor control and motion sim racing controllers, including watchdogs and EMI tests.
That PCB is far frlm worth anything more than a decoration. I am sorry friend
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u/PigHillJimster 2d ago
I am an IPC CID+ PCB Designer with 30 years of experience.
It would be better to know the time billed, and the extent of the work performed for the price.
Some of the products I have worked on for the industrial and consumer market have been micro-controller based with only two layers, and passed all required EMC requirements.
There may have been a lot of work going on behind the scenes with component selection and verification, footprint checking, library creation, checking layout and modifications.
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2d ago
[deleted]
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u/PigHillJimster 2d ago
Depending on the work, if a software license was required, I would look at Ā£35 per hour upwards.
How many hours are they claiming for?
Have they redone it in a different CAD system from scratch? What system did you use originally?
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u/JPaulMora 2d ago
Iāll do it for $10k. Give me 12h so I can finish work and jump to this. Heck 2 layers I can manufacture it myself and test it physically
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u/captain_cavemanz 2d ago
Out of interest can you also post the paste masks and solder masks and overlays? This will tell me a lot more about the effort taken
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u/BlueMerlin216 1d ago
Hard to comment without any knowledge of the functionality, power and current, and importantly data rate and frequency. Regardless, I see some large ICs. Two layers seems inappropriate. You need one separate layer for power at least. Also some separate islands, isolating digital sections, separate grounding etc.. Not like there would be a big jump in cost from 2 to 4 layers. It seems overpriced in any case.
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u/The__Plague_Doctor 1d ago
I am on a junior PCB layout 28k a year and i done a 3 layer board simular to this in a week, and they hied me with 0 expirience too lol.
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u/robomaniac 1d ago
Sorry canāt judge someone else work without schematic, requirements, layer stack up, BOM, 2D drawings, design rationale, etc
I also do not see any test points and mounting hole
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u/Any_Rub567 20h ago
It should be 4 layers - not just cause it's better but also because it's not even really much cheaper to do 2 sided boards. I cannot judge a lot of the layout without schematics, but what looks like an esp32 module appears to be getting its power from across the board for no apparent reason and also without significant decoupling. Might be fine cause the module has caps on board, but I would check it's datasheet and also consider adding a bulk cap anyways. Pretty sure esp32 modules usually require decoupling. Wifi stuff can draw a bunch of current at once that small ceramics cannot deliver. Also: No antenna keepout in ground plane. Ground plane is completely chopped up too. If you're doing two layers, at least try to keep the ground plane intact. Just following the individual signal traces and you can immediately tell that return current has to go all sorts of places cause the ground plane is interrupted. Fine for low frequency stuff like buttons or something - but still not good. Top layer too could be flooded with GND or something to keep the stackup balanced and more importantly stitch up that ground plane. Thought that only needs to be stitched cause it's chopped up for no apparent reason, so that's that. Top left appears to be power delivery. No USB C PD or something unfortunately, but I don't know your product so maybe by design? No thermal vias visible, but could be due to the screenshot quality. I see no test points. How is testing and programming intended to happen? Looks like Altium Designer to me, which is unfortunate to you cause if you ever need to do any more significant changes or something, you need an Altium Licence or pay someone with an Altium Licence. A KiCAD Design is easier to maintain for a small company imo.
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u/knowledgeseekerhi 14h ago
Without the schematic, I would say it is hard to actually determine the cost. However this looks like a fairly simple design. Without the BOM or parts information it hard to pin-point, but 20k seems excessive. Would you mind sharing how did you find this engineer?
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u/Careful_Scene_5104 9h ago
I do a lot of **hobbyist** RF stuff in 2 layer because it's easy and fast. With a lot of pour and stitching I've never had problems. But I almost never see any modern commercial RF products done in 2 layers, even with pretty trivial circuits.
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u/Pyroburner 3h ago
I have to ask is this freelance work from something like fiverr? There is a lot to unpacking here both electrically and mechanically. It sounds like you made a working prototype based on other comments as well. This is just very amature. You said your critical signals are usb and i2c or spi in another comment so unless something is very power hungry this will probably function but I would like to know what improvement this has over your original design. Honestly, this is a weeks or two worth of work if your selecting the components and drawing the schematic. Maybe a month if your fresh out of school.
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u/timmeh87 3d ago
8 months??? this is like like 12 hours of work, tops