DIY or Contract... - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / projects

author: guimtl
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: November 16, 2018, 02:56:46 am
content: I'm a small industrial pc company that import embedded PC from Taiwan for more than 10 years now. some customer asked me to develop custom board, very simple Atmel based, witch I made in KiCAD. printed board at PCBWay, and hand soldered the thru hole parts myself for the first 30pcs .. now we are making a revision with and ESP32 and less than 20 surface mount parts.. we expect selling 500+ parts next year and even more the year after. board is small about 40x50mm. I'm waiting for a second customer to sign for an other more complex board development... this one should sell ruffly 500pcs/ year too...my business neighbor is a old school 70+ years old, tons experience in broadcast monitoring analog board development and he suggest I outsource all the assembly and fab,,, I trust him a lot. for his own product(witch he sell across the globe) he only does the large thru hole parts locally.. all smd are made in local fab house.butI would Love to have a reflow oven, semi manual pick and place pump, stencil manual machine and be able to do most my own... maybe >2000$CAD total from my calculation, but he suggest not to. not even try. he think time, parts ordering, quality control and so many other experienced advise makes me think I'm just stubborn and I should just do as he says....looking at many video online, a machine like T-962C ( or even the smaller A ) looks inexpensive and ''cool'' to have on the bench...what do you guys think.. is it still worth it to have such tools for my kind of projects with company like PCBways practically giving away boards ?Thanks

author: DaJMasta
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 16, 2018, 03:18:12 am
content: That estimate sounds pretty low for decent equipment, and you have to factor in the time you spend into the cost of production for each unit. Most PCB houses now offer an assembly service that can even source parts for you, for a reasonably fair price in smaller volumes (to hundreds of units), and you can always contact a third party fab service for the same thing.Yeah the equipment is neat, but do you have the time to spend to set everything up and assemble them, or is that time better spent managing other aspects of the business or as your own free time? I think in a lot of cases, a professional fab of some size can probably do it a fair bit cheaper than you can, with higher levels of automation (including automated testing), and to your specification.I'd give a PCB house's fab service or a dedicated one a trial run for a few units and see if they do a good job and can make reliably good boards. If it all goes well, then you can just make the calculations and see if it's a better financial choice, and if there are things they don't get right or issues in getting your specification, then you haven't invested a lot into trying it and have better justification for trying to jump into your own equipment. That's just me, though, maybe having the equipment could have some peripheral faster turn around time or higher cost efficiency for very small batches (10s to 100) that you couldn't get from an assembly house.