The first thought you should be having is what are you actually protecting? Is the value of your product in the PCB? Keep in mind that even moderately complex PCBs can be reverse engineered relatively easily.

This.

If you are putting your secret sauce in the PCB, you’ve already lost. Doesn’t matter if your board is one later or twenty.

Still using OSH Park, never had an issue.

Your secret IP had better not be your circuit board. That’s a losing proposition.

OSH Park and OSH Stencils are both great!

If you open-source your "IP" (I'm quoting it, because the very name offends me), the problem magically goes away.

But then, that's something culturally almost impossible to even imagine from people who hark from the HW design world.

When you open source your hardware IP, you can buy it from Aliexpress few weeks later. That’s why I’ll never put final design on public github repository. For first prototype it’s ok. Final design brings in a cost of few thousand euros for electromagnetic compatibility measurement and I’ll definitely not give away this one.

> When you open source your hardware IP, you can buy it from Aliexpress few weeks later.

Sounds like an easy way to get others to do your work for you for free. Win win. Why go through the hassle of establishing a supply chain. So what's the catch? Why are we still labouring instead of waiting for our products to magically ship themselves through Aliexpress?

I do a lot of small-batch hobbyist stuff and I've had really good results from PCBWay and JLCPCB - boards usually show up in about a week via DHL.

Never seen my IP show up anywhere but it's generally not very interesting to begin with :P

Your IP is in more danger when sending your designs to China for cheap fab, but is safer when going with more expensive local options (PCBTrain, for example).

It's all about trust.

I use JLCPCB for most everything.

However, they're REALLY prickly about fabricating PCBs with lower tolerances (e.g. drills or cuts too close to PCB edges), and often refuse to fabricate them. I use ALLPCB in those cases.

As my designs are small hobbyist projects just for myself I don't really care about potential IP issues.

CircuitHub. They are manufactured in Massachusetts so US IP laws would apply.

1. I use PCBWay, a chinese fab that can manufacture small quantities for like $5 (+$18 shipping if you want them fast) but they arrive in five days.

2. Protecting your IP with your PCB design isn't something you can really do. Any PCB can be reverse engineered very easily. Besides, if you're asking this question on a random internet forum, I have to doubt you have any serious IP to worry about.

Can vouch for PCBWay, inexpensive and fast (even with DHL shipping from China).