A board house is a printed circuit fabricator, the shop that takes Gerbers or ODB++ and makes bare boards: imaging, etching, lamination, drilling, plating, mask, finish, routing and electrical test. Designers talk about their board house the way machinists talk about their heat treater, by name and with strong opinions. Assembly usually happens elsewhere, at a contract manufacturer or assembly house.
Our usual board house can't do 3 mil lines, we'll have to send the HDI rev to the other shop.
Also heard as
- fab
- fab house
- fabricator
- PCB shop
Related terms
Quick-turn
Expedited board fabrication or assembly delivered in days instead of weeks, at a premium price.
DFM
Design for manufacturability: checking and adjusting a design so it can be built reliably at sensible cost.
Spin
To send a board design out to be fabricated; each build round is a spin, as in the first spin.