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Buying your own pick&place is quite similar to buying an FDM 3D printer. It doesn't make any sense at low scale, unless you want to spend endless time tinkering

by jwr 9y ago

Buying your own pick&place is quite similar to buying an FDM 3D printer. It doesn't make any sense at low scale, unless you want to spend endless time tinkering with the machine proper. Pick&place, as well as 3D printing, begins to make sense at industrial scale, with huge expensive machines. Sparkfun might be a borderline case, but I suspect even they won't use these cheap pnp machines in the longer term. If you are a hobbyist or a low-scale manufacturing operation, you are much better off using MacroFab, PCBNG, Small Batch Assembly or AISLER.net for electronics production, and Shapeways for 3D printing (SLS). Alternatively, for quantities of ~10 of electronics devices, it makes sense to order your boards and stencils from OSHpark or AISLER, place components yourself using tweezers, and either use a modified oven or a hot air soldering iron for reflow. This is speaking from experience (as a hobbyist/maker, electronics design engineer designing proof-of-concept and small-scale production devices, and https://PartsBox.io/ https://PartsBox.io/ founder).

lgbr 9y ago
> It doesn't make any sense at low scale, unless you want to spend endless time tinkering with the machine proper. For 3D printing this is becoming less true every day. 3D Printers are now extremely cheap, where sub-$300 printers make sense at low scale usage. A typical print from an outsourced printer like Shapeways might cost you about $20, and once you factor in the cost of the material when you print yourself, it only takes about 20 prints for the printer to pay for itself, and you have the added benefit of having your print in an hour rather than a week.
- donkeyd 9y ago
  Exacly! I have an FDM printer (~$300) and it's great to have it at home. When I design something, I can do a partial print at low quality to check for clearances within an hour. Then I can modify the design and print an optimized version. It makes for a really short feedback loop and if I mess something up, I don't need to pay the base fee again. And I'm a true hobbyist, I don't do anything hardware or CAD related professionally. Also, it's just lots of fun to work with the printer.
  - goty2 9y ago
    That is still, as you say, a hobby though. The future of hardware design is decreasing the difference between prototype and production. Similar to what containers have done for software. 3d printed parts and PCBs can be done in as little as 12 hours. You can then without any modification do small production runs anywhere from ten to a thousand pieces (which isn't unrealistic outside consumer hardware). You could even 3d print moulds and do injection moulding. I think partly why people say that hardware isn't iterative enough is that they are doing it the wrong way. They spend too much time on prototyping, which means they then have to make everything perfect for a large production runs to average out the costs.
    - milesvp 9y ago
      I think you may he missing the parent's point, which is he's using the printer to speed up his design loop. This has heen one of the biggest driving forces I've seen in the commercial use of 3d printers. Sure you can outsource your 3d printing to get much better and higher volume printing, but when you're designing you don't need volume, and often don't need quality either. Quick turn around often is key in design work, and having an in house printer can really reduce total turnaround time.
      - goty2 9y ago
        I am disagreeing with the parents point (or not really because they were talking about doing it as a hobby, which is great). Yes, you can do design prototype revision A, B and C, then do production prototype A, B and C, and finally production version A, B and C. But then you have spent a significant amount of time and money refining prototypes and adding features. That forces you to large production runs with huge risk, because you have already made the investment. What I am saying is that you should just make the production prototype with less features and ship that. Because that is how you go to market quickly, which is usually the larger point of such development. This is also why Shenzhen wins over hackerspaces (which are also great btw) but that is another story.
  - StavrosK 9y ago

by jwr 9y ago

lgbr 9y ago

> It doesn't make any sense at low scale, unless you want to spend endless time tinkering with the machine proper. For 3D printing this is becoming less true every day. 3D Printers are now extremely cheap, where sub-$300 printers make sense at low scale usage. A typical print from an outsourced printer like Shapeways might cost you about $20, and once you factor in the cost of the material when you print yourself, it only takes about 20 prints for the printer to pay for itself, and you have the added benefit of having your print in an hour rather than a week.

donkeyd 9y ago
Exacly! I have an FDM printer (~$300) and it's great to have it at home. When I design something, I can do a partial print at low quality to check for clearances within an hour. Then I can modify the design and print an optimized version. It makes for a really short feedback loop and if I mess something up, I don't need to pay the base fee again. And I'm a true hobbyist, I don't do anything hardware or CAD related professionally. Also, it's just lots of fun to work with the printer.
- goty2 9y ago
  That is still, as you say, a hobby though. The future of hardware design is decreasing the difference between prototype and production. Similar to what containers have done for software. 3d printed parts and PCBs can be done in as little as 12 hours. You can then without any modification do small production runs anywhere from ten to a thousand pieces (which isn't unrealistic outside consumer hardware). You could even 3d print moulds and do injection moulding. I think partly why people say that hardware isn't iterative enough is that they are doing it the wrong way. They spend too much time on prototyping, which means they then have to make everything perfect for a large production runs to average out the costs.
  - milesvp 9y ago
    I think you may he missing the parent's point, which is he's using the printer to speed up his design loop. This has heen one of the biggest driving forces I've seen in the commercial use of 3d printers. Sure you can outsource your 3d printing to get much better and higher volume printing, but when you're designing you don't need volume, and often don't need quality either. Quick turn around often is key in design work, and having an in house printer can really reduce total turnaround time.
    - goty2 9y ago
      I am disagreeing with the parents point (or not really because they were talking about doing it as a hobby, which is great). Yes, you can do design prototype revision A, B and C, then do production prototype A, B and C, and finally production version A, B and C. But then you have spent a significant amount of time and money refining prototypes and adding features. That forces you to large production runs with huge risk, because you have already made the investment. What I am saying is that you should just make the production prototype with less features and ship that. Because that is how you go to market quickly, which is usually the larger point of such development. This is also why Shenzhen wins over hackerspaces (which are also great btw) but that is another story.
- StavrosK 9y ago