3 ms·
This is anecdotal but I have yet to find a PCB manufacturer in the US that can do it cheaper than Chinese fabs at anything less than ridiculous scale - high spe
by akiselev 7y ago
This is anecdotal but I have yet to find a PCB manufacturer in the US that can do it cheaper than Chinese fabs at anything less than ridiculous scale - high speed digital/RF included. I still use US manufacturers half the time because of IP, timeline, or quality concerns (its just easier to get on the phone with someone who can help) but I don't see how the other manufacturers could be within 5% of China's cost when circuit boards at anywhere from 2x to 10x more expensive here.
- Aloha 7y agoI'm curious, what run size are you looking at?
- akiselev 7y agoFrom ten to about one million. There are major caveats though: The middle volume boards (4-5 figures) were far more complex mixed signal boards with 10-20 layers and clock speeds ranging from several hundred Mhz for RAM busses to 1 ghz for MIPI to 2-50ghz for radios. Those projects had special needs and required quite a bit more manpower during the fabrication stage for layer alignment and in the assembly stage for tuning, since they exploited some nonlinearities in different components for high precision synchronization. The large volume boards (6-7 figures) where consumer electronics focused and extremely price sensitive so the combined savings from colocation of fab and assembly were often significantly more than any savings automation or logistics in the United States, especially accounting for risk.
- bananasbandanas 7y agoYou probably know them, but oshpark is great! You pay by the square inch, which was really fortunate for me because I needed a (very) small pcb for a project, and they made and shipped it to me (to Germany!) for less than 2$ at the time. Though I think they since implemented a lower bound on size/price. Also, the purple/gold finish is gorgeous.