Think OSH Park PCBs are Made in China?
Think Again…
(BTW, they’re making flex now, too. :)
When I discuss PCB manufacturers with my industry buddies, the conversation always comes to a head when talking about OSH Park’s purple boards.
Me: I think it is cool to order PCBs from OSH Park because they are located in the Northwest and manufactured in the USA.
Industry Buddy: No, OSH Park PCBs are panelized in Oregon and then transferred to China for fabrication…
Me: But their website says they are made in the USA…
IB: That’s because they are panelized there.
Me: ???
I finally took it upon myself to ask directly, and found out SO much more… (OSH Park doesn’t have time for much fanfare, but gave me the go-ahead to post our exchange.)
To: OSH Park Support
All my industry buddies are convinced that OSH Park panelizes boards to be sent to China for manufacturing. (Perhaps there was a past video describing this process?) However, I see that it clearly states on your website that the boards are now manufactured in the USA. May I please ask when, how, and why you switched? Even faster, are there any articles you could point me to which describe the transformation you guys went through?
- Christina
Hi Christina,
Your industry buddies are wrong! We do _all_ fabrication in the US, and always have. This has been the case since before OSHPark proper was founded, back when it was the “Dorkbot PDX Board Order” running out of Laen’s garage. We have ethical, environmental, and logistical reasons for staying in the US, and have no plans on using overseas fabs.
Also of note, we’re going to launch Flex soon. Probably today. Our production for this is ALSO based in the US, which was actually a lot harder than we expected it to be. There’s not a lot of US fabs that do flex in-house, and a number of US based fabs we talked to tried to silently subcontract us out, which was really frustrating.
As a fun trivia, we didn’t know about the subcontracting until our initial Flex test panel came back from an obviously Chinese shipper after months of delays. Obviously, not fabs we’re going to use, because the production isn’t in the US. We did, however, give those boards to some folks. Which actually makes our Flex Trial Panel 1 the first and only overseas panel we’ve distributed. However, since the boards were free as part of our testing and trial process, technically they weren’t given to customers because no one paid for them. :)
To clarify where your buddies went wrong, it’s probable that they saw some purple boards from overseas. Frustratingly, in the last year or so some overseas boards (Seeed and Blackbird I think) actually make boards with purple mask. But those aren’t by or for us, it’s just some other fabs cashing in on our trade dress, as it were.
- Dan Sheadel <support@oshpark.com>
Mon 11/26/2018 1:10 PM
