NAKED proto service is no longer available since June 2019

Not all good ideas lead to success. As we have always done, we listened to customers who explained that a service without solder mask would be useful in some cases. Hence the birth of the NAKED proto PCB service in 2015 with the specifications and ideas as explained below.

Unfortunately, NAKED proto has never attracted enough customers to function as a full-fledged order pooling service. The latter was needed to make the service profitable as prices were low and delivery terms short.

The fact remains that the bulk of our customers are committed to our PCB proto and STANDARD pool services where they find what they are looking for. After 4 years we have removed NAKED proto from our services.

All our PCB and Assembly services can be found at the bottom of this page.

Are you looking for cheap MAKER boards as an alternative for NAKED proto? These can be ordered here: www.PCB4MAKER.com

NAKED proto PCB

We have introduced our NAKED proto PCB service to help design engineers who have told us that they need to modify their proof-of-concept PCBs “on the bench” by cutting tracks and soldering on wire-links. Soldermasks and silkscreens make this more difficult, so our NAKED proto service delivers 2-layer boards without mask or legend. Of course, if you need fully finished 2- and 4-layer prototypes, then continue to use our well-established PCB proto service.

NAKED proto brings other benefits:

Almost 50% lower costs:

NAKED PCBs are priced around 50% lower than fully-finished PCBs. As well as dropping masks and legends, the NAKED proto service restricts boards to 2 layers and the quantities available to 1, 2 or 5 pieces. This allows us to leverage the maximum benefit from order-pooling. Also, NAKED PCBs have to start from “known good” data. Before you place a NAKED proto order, you must run your data-set through PCB Visualizer. If PCB Visualizer raises any issues, fix them and upload the data again. As soon as PCB Visualizer confirms that the data is good, place your order.

1 day delivery:

By starting from known-good data and dropping the mask and legend printing and curing cycles, we can offer 1 day deliveries.  Upload your data and place your order before midnight CET and we will ship the next working day by overnight courier.  So if you order on Monday, we will ship on Tuesday and you will receive the boards on Wednesday in all parts of Europe where couriers provide a next working day service.  Otherwise order on 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, or 7 day deliveries.

The introduction of NAKED proto is part of our mission to provide professional PCB designers with the tools they need to develop their designs and bring them to market on time and on budget.  But, as a responsible European company, we also have a duty to encourage and develop new generations of PCB engineers..  We already sponsor student projects all over Europe (see our blogs).  We see NAKED proto as another part of this duty.  We can help tomorrow’s engineers, whether students or hobbyists, by providing affordable prototype PCBs for their personal projects.  Lower cost cannot mean lower quality: they need to debug their designs, not their fabricator’s PCBs.  NAKED proto gives students and hobbyists access to low-cost PCBs of proven quality on reliable deliveries from a leading European supplier, who can also support them with technical back-up from white-papers and blogs to online chat with PCB engineers.

NAKED Proto service parameters

Number of layers

1, 2

Quantities

1, 2, 5

Delivery terms

1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 days

Maximum PCB dimension

580mm x 425mm and equal of customer panels

Minimum PCB dimension

5mm x 5mm  for boards – 50 mm x 50 mm for panels

Base material

FR-4, Td>=325°C, T260>=60’, T288>=10’,  CTEz=<3.5%, Tg>=150°C

Base material thickness

1.55mm

Base copper foil– outer layers

18µm/½oz

Surface finish

Any lead free

Min. track width/spacing

0.150mm / 0.175mm

Min. finished hole size

0.25mm

Minimum outer layer pad diameter = finished hole size + listed value

0.350mm – PTH – 0.250mm – NPTH

Minimum copper to board-edge clearance – outer layers

0.250mm (routed)

Slots and cut-outs

2.0, 1.2 and 0.5mm tool

Delivery panels

2.0mm break-routed or V-cut

Stencil material

100µm and 130µm

595 x 595 mm

The NAKED proto calculator only allows calculations with the values described in this article.

Explore all PCB Pooling services from Eurocircuits

PCB proto

1 to 5 PCB’s in 2 or 3 working days

STANDARD pool

FR-4 lead-free soldering compatible material up to 16 layers

RF pool

Isola I-TERA and Rogers 4000 series material

SEMI-FLEX pool

4 layer, 100 micron FR4 core with two specially treated copper layers

IMS pool

Single layer Insulated Metal Substrate PCBs (ALU)

BINDI pool

Medium volume boards from our new plant in India