Raw PCB Only

For small PCB designs with few components it may be desired to assemble a raw PCB at home rather than [pay for] and receive a completed PCB. The assembly process includes significant overhead that may greatly exceed a single assembled PCB's value. Assembly at home requires:

A raw PCB
A stencil (if there are very many SMDs)
Parts procurement
Solder Paste
Solder flux (useful but may be included in paste)
Hot Plate or other soldering station (possible to do by hand with a very small iron but not preferred)

For all the PCB designs the .bin kit from the Material List includes a .zip file containing all the Gerber files. These are all that is necessary to create a raw PCB. It can be extracted or often even the entire .zip file can simply be dragged&dropped onto a PCB fabricator's site such as OSHPark . As for the complete JLCPCB assembly method, this can give a user a complete raw PCB in a few days. This will generally eliminate all the one-time setup, fixturing, parts placement, shipping charges and VAT that can easily dominate total cost for low quantity assembled boards from China. Stencils used to apply solder paste are available from various sources such as OSH Stencils.

A big advantage of raw PCB and home kit construction can be the cost advantage from local, in-country, fabrication. However, for designs with many components and many PCBs, home assembly can easily become intractable since simply placing components on a raw PCB after using a stencil to apply solder paste can take more than 10 hours and be extremely exhausting even for only a single PCB.

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