OSH Park

OSH Park
Name	OSH Park
Industry	Electronics manufacturing
Founded	2011
Founder	Mike Ossmann
Headquarters	Portland, Oregon, United States
Products	Printed circuit boards, PCB services

OSH Park is a United States–based small-batch printed circuit board fabrication and assembly service. Founded in the early 2010s, it serves hobbyist designers, professional engineers, and open hardware projects by offering compact run manufacturing, community tools, and shared panelization. The company connects to a network of fabrication partners, maker spaces, and online communities, influencing modern prototyping and distributed manufacturing.

History

OSH Park was founded in the 2010s in Portland, Oregon by Mike Ossmann, who previously worked on projects linked to Great Scott Gadgets, HackRF One, USRP, and other radio hardware efforts. Early adoption stemmed from communities around Make: magazine, Adafruit Industries, SparkFun Electronics, Arduino, and Raspberry Pi hobbyist ecosystems. The service grew alongside platforms like GitHub, Hackaday, Thingiverse, and Instructables as designers sought shared manufacturing options similar to Ponoko and Shapeways in the maker economy. Partnerships and mentions in outlets like Wired (magazine), Make:, EE Times, and Hackaday Prize raised its profile among startups incubated at Techstars, Y Combinator-backed companies, and university labs such as MIT Media Lab and Stanford University research groups. The model contrasted with large fabs like Advanced Circuits, JLCPCB, PCBWay, and Eurocircuits by emphasizing community panels and transparent pricing. Over time, OSH Park intersected with movements around Open Source Hardware Association, OpenCores, OSHWA, and the broader open-source hardware community.

Services and Products

OSH Park provides printed circuit board fabrication, including multi-layer and single-sided variants used by projects from Arduino Uno clones to BeagleBone capes and Raspberry Pi HATs. It offers PCB finishing options comparable to services found at Advanced Circuits, Sunstone Circuits, and JLCPCB, targeting customers from Massachusetts Institute of Technology students to professionals at Intel Corporation, NVIDIA, Texas Instruments, and Analog Devices. The company supports Gerber and ODB++ workflows familiar to users of EAGLE (software), KiCad, Altium Designer, OrCAD, and Cadence Allegro. Ancillary services and integrations relate to solder mask color choices, board thickness, and surface finishes used by designers working with ARM (company) MCUs, Atmel, Microchip Technology, and STMicroelectronics components. Community-driven projects such as BeagleBoard, PocketBeagle, and Teensy boards have been among the many designs produced through its service.

Manufacturing Process and Technology

The fabrication process employed by OSH Park uses photolithographic patterning, chemical etching, and surface finishing steps common to the PCB industry, paralleling workflows at companies like TTM Technologies and Sanmina Corporation. Panelization consolidates multiple small PCBs onto shared panels similar to practices at Flextronics and Jabil, improving yield and reducing waste in contrast to single-board production at larger fabs such as Foxconn. Designers submit files compatible with tools such as Gerber RS-274X and IPC-2581 standards, which interface with CAM software used by technicians experienced with Mentor Graphics and Zuken systems. Quality control draws on inspection methods used across the industry, including automated optical inspection similar to that found at Nordson Corporation facilities and manual inspection techniques used in academic labs like Caltech prototyping centers. The service balances lead times against throughput to meet needs of clients from NASA research teams to independent makers.

Community and Open Hardware Involvement

Community engagement has been central, with ties to Hackaday, Make: magazine, Adafruit Industries, SparkFun Electronics, and events such as Maker Faire and DEF CON where hardware hackers, educators from Harvard and University of California, Berkeley, and startup founders converge. OSH Park’s practices align with the Open Source Hardware Association and the Open Compute Project ethos by encouraging shared designs and reproducible manufacturing. The company’s users publish projects on platforms like GitHub, GitLab, and Thingiverse, while discussions occur on forums including Stack Exchange, Reddit, and Hackaday.io. Educational initiatives at institutions such as Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and maker spaces like NYC Resistor and Noisebridge have leveraged the service for coursework and workshops.

Business Model and Pricing

OSH Park’s business model focuses on community-shared panel fabrication and transparent per-square-inch pricing resembling approaches used by Shapeways in 3D printing. The model contrasts with bulk-oriented fabs such as JLCPCB and PCBWay by prioritizing small runs and hobbyist orders similar to Seeed Studio’s Fusion service. Cost structure is influenced by partnerships with substrate suppliers and downstream assemblers known to companies like Digi-Key, Mouser Electronics, Arrow Electronics, and RS Components. Integration with design toolchains from Autodesk EAGLE and KiCad reduces friction for makers, while ordering workflows mirror e-commerce practices employed by Shopify and Etsy for small vendor transactions. Pricing transparency has been noted in forums frequented by professionals from Texas Instruments, Analog Devices, and Maxim Integrated.

Reception and Impact

OSH Park has been praised by communities around Hackaday, Make: magazine, Adafruit Industries, and SparkFun Electronics for enabling rapid prototyping used by startups incubated at Y Combinator and Techstars as well as academic researchers from MIT and Stanford. Reviews in publications such as Wired (magazine) and EE Times highlighted its niche among small-batch services contrasted with large manufacturers like Foxconn and Jabil. The platform influenced open hardware dissemination through projects akin to Arduino, BeagleBoard, and OpenBCI, supporting contributors in the Open Source Hardware Association community. Its impact extends to educators at Georgia Institute of Technology and Carnegie Mellon University who adopt shared fabrication in curriculum, and to global maker communities participating in Maker Faire and Hackaday Prize competitions.

Category:Electronics manufacturing companies