After seeing this post on Dangerous Prototypes, I decided to order a one-off PCB I needed from Smart-Prototyping. Here is my review.

Order one:

Production Time: 10 Days

DHL Express Shipping: 2 Days

Order Two:

Production Time: 7 Days

DHL Express Shipping: 2 Days

Now on to the scope pictures:

10mil (0.254mm) isolation between two copper pours. 6mil (0.1524mm) is the minimum, with 10mil being the recommended isolation spacing. I would be comfortable going down to 6mil when 10mil looks this good.

Via with 15mil (0.381mm) hole and 30mil (0.762mm) diameter. This board was made using the HASL (Hot Air Solder Level) process, not ENIG (Electroless Nickel Emersion Gold). As a result some of the excess solder ran down the trace before being stopped by the solder resist. Drill hit accuracy is very good.

4 way via with 20mil (0.508mm) hole and 50 mil (1.27mm) diameter. The three small traces are 10mil, while the large trace is 50mil. The drill hit isn’t perfect here, but it’s nowhere close to the edge, where it would cause problems.

Via connecting copper pours, 20mil hole and 50mil diameter. The drill hit isn’t perfectly centered, but it’s still far from the edge.

A via of the same size, this time tented.

Small (15mil ID 30mil OD) tented via, with nearby trace.

They do silkscreen cleanup before manufacturing the board. Text is 45mils (1.143mm) in height with 8mil (0.203mm) line width and was placed over a 15mil ID 30mil OD via.

The text over a tented via is correctly left in place.

8mil silkscreen line is solid, minimum supported line with is 6mils and should be fine.

Plated slot 21.7mil x 33.5mil (0.55mm x 0.85mm) Minimum value for milled slot is 12mil, and that is probably safe.

Trace from a plated slot to pad has some solder running but ends cleanly where the solder resist begins.

Floating 15.7mil x 53.15mil (0.40mm x 1.35mm) pad, with 25.6mil (0.65mm) pin pitch.

Pad for a SOT23 package.

0805 pad.

PLCC4 pad.

Here are the 3 floating pads from above with a USB Micro B connector mounted and soldered. There is no solder bridging.

The same solder joints at an angle. Since the USB connector is too large for the solder to drag into place, the slight misalignment is from my hand placement.

The first set of boards I received had the board edge cut slightly too large, preventing the USB port from being mounted. Smart-Prototyping seems to be set up mainly for Eagle produced files, so the files I sent which were produced by Altium may have been the problem. Customer service was great in fixing the issue, and I received the free replacement boards quickly.