Adam,VK4GHZ wrote: Common niggles with iTeadstudio appear to be poor communication (I reckon it would help if you could speak Mandarin! and so-so silkscreen)
They're coming into their holiday schedule right now.
I just watched the video and was surprised to see the silkscreen that far off - out of all of my boards they are smack on. In fact for the ZLPLL boards the 0.5mm pitch QFP package is placed using the silkscreen as a reference and if it was out by 0.3mm I would experience issues.
Have only seen smudges on one board, and I do note that sometimes the silkscreen is of a variable thickness even between boards in the same batch.
The silkscreen overlay printing has a "dot matrix printer" look to it, so it is quite possible it is done using conventional printer techniques and not photo techniques to reduce the cost. Maybe that day the production line was slightly out of alignment.
Yes, you do need to be wary of the holiday periods - this applies to most chineese sellers even on eBay (which I have been caught out by a few times)
Communication has not been an issue so far.... yes it is strange english when they come back saying there is a problem with the board, but they have always attached a picture of the problem which also highlights the problem.
For the price you cannot complain, and it is certainly better than anything you can do at home. I also note that goldenpheonixpcb has Rogers 4350B substrate which is appealing for microwave and high power RF boards which I will keep in mind for the future.
73,
Wayne ZL2BKC
http://www.zl2bkc.com