Free PCB Assembly Services - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: leonelabs
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: June 22, 2016, 09:38:46 pm
content: When I started making my own PCBs I was disheartened when I realized how much it would cost to have someone else do the PCB assembly. Board fab costs have plunged with the open doors to the chinese fabs but the PCB assembly costs are still hard to swallow for new designs or small lots, assembly looked like it would be 75% or more of the cost for a design (is that what others see?), and in some cases the turn around times seem painfully long. So I did what any DIYer does and bought all the equipment to do it myself., syringes, pastes, dispensers, manual screen printers, vacuum wands, oven, hotplate, basically a full manual SMD assembly line. And the results were good, but modest in scale, doing 10x boards became less of a chore and more of a satisfying exercise in small batch mfg. However, the equipment basically sits idle for 90% of the time and I'm itching to expand my skills and see if there's a way to create some new workflows that could benefit the broader PCB community (ala OSHpark) so I want to offer "free" PCB assembly services and see if I can wrangle anyone to give me a shot.Now I get the idea of "free" assembly sounds strange so hear me out. The customer would be pay for shipping both ways but provide the PCBs and components. I would absorb the cost of consumables, namely solder/solderpaste but do all the placement, soldering, reflow by hand. The customer would have to accept the risk of defects in the assembled PCBs, yield is something that would have to be established for each design and couldn't be guaranteed upfront (I'm not IPC-certified but maybe that's something that comes later). There would be limits on parts that could be assembled, through-hole is OK, 0402 is OK, 0.5mm is OK, but BGA probably is not. There would also be a cap on the number of parts/PCBs (100x components or 10pcbs?) that would fall under the "free" category. In exchange for the "freeness" the customer would allow me to take pictures of the assembled board and publicly post them, helping me to establish a reputation of quality and capability. This way there would be a level of transparency and neutral 3rd-parties could evaluate and provide feedback. I could probably provide very fast turn around times, and being in the USA the shipping costs would be low. The customer would have to trust I wouldn't just make off with his stuff but I think after a couple of public projects that level of trust could be established. And after some evaluations with a customer maybe I could offer "premium" paid services that could support more advanced designs or reoccurring lots.Of course if this were successful I would need to find a stable source of compensation as its certainly not scalable, but in the same way a friend can offer his services for free in limited quantities I'm in a position where I think I can offer a "friend" option for those that are willing to trust and try. This is certainly optimistic thinking, and probably naive, but to me it seems it might work in a limited way.I would be faced with some serious challenges of managing components and setup time and verifying that designs can be assembled "correctly" but maybe through this there will emerge some new ideas on how to address the challenges of small scale assembly and distribute risk within the supply chain. I'm game for the challenge but need some folks willing to try it out with me.How does this sound to you? Would you trust a stranger to assembly your PCB for "free"? Let me know what you think!p.s. The only reason I can consider this is because I have a lot of free time and a decent collection of equipment. I live in a small community isolated from the tech hubs so there's not much of a local community focused on PCB assembly so this is my way of reaching out. This is all very abstract but maybe you can help flesh out this idea or tell me how it would never work.

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: June 22, 2016, 09:59:13 pm
content: IMO for your own good, you'd better design/assemble your own stuff and sell on ebay for example. Assembling other people boards won't boost your skills in electronics but doing your own stuff will certainly do and likely give decent profit too. When it becomes large enough scale, you may already find your niche at that point and start a real business.

author: leonelabs
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: June 23, 2016, 12:46:43 am
content: I think what I'm after is not boosting my basic electronics skills but creating a workflow that can be beneficial to a larger or underserved user base. I think EEVBlog is great for building electronics skills but it feels like there's still a service gap when it comes to assembling PCBs. In the same way that OSHpark found a way to fab simple boards for a large group of people I want to see if there's a similar path for doing the assembly. Maybe a "free" service is a way to get the ball rolling?

author: MicroBlocks
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: June 23, 2016, 07:55:14 am
content: That sure sounds like an interesting project.Getting other peoples designs will help you understand much better what is 'out there'.When i design something i have a specific style and considerations for my own attempts to make assembly easier.The worst is having to assemble somewhere between 10 and 100 boards.Way to expensive to outsource it and way to much time (which can also be expensive) when you do it yourself.Finding a way to streamline assembly for those kind of quantities is very important as i think lots of people have that same problem.Unfortunately i am not based in the USA otherwise i would take you up on that offer. Shipping back and forth from Thailand would be expensive. That brings me to another point and that is distribution. If i sell an item the shipping is always the most time consuming. Combining assembly and distribution/warehousing might be another venue to consider studying.Most of my customers are in Australia and New Zealand and shipping although not to expensive is rather slow.If a group of people in different countries/regions would work together that would be awesome.

author: Wilksey
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 23, 2016, 11:42:23 am
content: Could you give an example of costs (shipping for example to various "popular" countries (i'm in the UK)) for say 10 x 100mm x 100mm boards (as typically obtained cheaply from Chinese manufacturers)?Sounds like an interesting proposition, but offering a "free" service is not sustainable in the long run, but there are options.For those of us not in the US of A, could you provide us with a rough location (state or zip code of your local postal office for example) so we can see how much it would cost our end to send.I don't think taking pictures of completed boards would bother anyone, and it would boost your portfolio, most of the stuff made these days contain a micro of some kind, so if they didn't want anyone to know what it did, they could just leave off the silk screen description, as most of the "intelligence" is likely to be code which wouldn't necessarily be programmed until shipped back.

author: hendorog
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 23, 2016, 10:24:19 pm
content: Sounds pretty good to me.Shipping might not be too much of a problem - even to the likes of NZ. The parts and the boards could be shipped direct to you from the distributor and board manufacturer respectively. Ordinary post would take care of the rest, not sure what that costs but it can't be as bad as courier even if the odd one goes astray.For example I ordered a filter kit from MiniCircuits and the cheapest postage cost was USD80. The kit I was buying was only about $100. If that was delivered to you instead it would be much faster and much cheaper.Once you have some volume you might be able to source some parts yourself. Which would offer another income stream, and maybe reduce the turnaround time if you can eventually hold some stock of parts.

author: iampoor
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 25, 2016, 03:19:02 am
content: Where are you in the US? I have quite a few designs that need assembly (I can currently starting a small business manufacturing and building audio products). I would be very interested as I have been backlogged with assembly work!

author: leonelabs
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: June 25, 2016, 11:50:14 pm
content: I'll look into some international shipping costs but from my experience its usually in the $30 range. If you want to look into from your end my zip is 83002, Wyoming, USA.@MicroBlocks - Totally agree on the challenge of 10-100x board assembly. Distribution/shipping is a challenge, adding test/verification would be necessary to make sure "known-good-parts" are being distributed. That would probably need to be decided on a case-by-case basis but it may be an option. I like the OSHpark model of "batching" together orders, I think if there's a way to get a critical mass for a region then shipping then that might be an interesting approach for international orders.@hendorog - I like the idea of sourcing parts. That could be a "added-value" service.@iampoor - Feel free to shoot me a msg!

author: technotronix
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: September 30, 2016, 02:51:04 pm
content: This sounds good to me. I think I should trust and try some of my pcb assembly work for free.