Are there any other pcb mfg that support Fritzing files for assembly?

fab
1

Hi all, don’t mean to stir up trouble but I have a few questions.

I assume the Fritzing project gets some benefit from the Aisler integration, so if this topic is off limits please just say so.

Are there any other board houses that can take Frizing pick and place & BOM files along with the Gerbers and assemble complete boards?

SeeedStudio and JLCPCB both handle Fritzing Gerbers just fine. A BOM for SEED is relatively easy to generate by hand, or with a little python next time I’m feeling creative. The JLC pnp and BOM on the other hand are a pain.

Seeed/Aisler assembly pricing isn’t bad but it’s still prohibitive for small batches. (Yeah I know that can’t really be helped.)

So I’m wondering, are there currently any alternatives?

2

Yes AFAIK some portion of that revenue is returned to Fritzing to support ongoing development (along with the funds from the paywall.) Support from Aisler is also the reason that development restarted. That said, there is a post in the forums (without many details nor working code that I am aware of) by someone that got JLC (I think!) to work with Fritzing. The major pain was likely the pnp file and I think he hand modified the version to do what he needed. I expect a search of the forums may turn up that post although I don’t know what keywords would work (perhaps pick and place?)

edit this is likely the post I was thinking of (found by a search for pick and place):

Peter

3

I have shared @rc3105 the project that I did assemble at JLCPCB. There was no code involved, it was manual work inside LibreOffice to get the required Excel file. But basically the steps are:

  • Import the pnp file into a speadsheet
  • Add the right column names
  • Remove vias, labels and images
  • Negate the Y coördinates
  • Correct the rotation of some parts. This is trial and error until they appear correctly on the preview at JLCPCB.
  • Export as XLS
4

Apparently the Gerber viewer at JLCPCB is kaput at the moment.

It’s not even properly displaying basic Gerber files so there’s no way to check and see if my examples work. I’ve tried from Firefox, Chrome, Safari on Mac and Edge & Chrome on W11.

Durnit