4 ms·

This seems to apply across the entire Small Plastic-covered Electronics sector. I worked for an instrumentation/sporting goods manufacturer among others and th

by edrxty 4y ago

This seems to apply across the entire Small Plastic-covered Electronics sector. I worked for an instrumentation/sporting goods manufacturer among others and this reads like I wrote it myself. The CEO, even of a small operation, likely has no idea what the performance characteristics of their devices are. They exist to raise capital and deal with paperwork. We operated at about a 25% bom cost which was muuuuch higher than it needed to be but we were the aforementioned $50 components assembled by baboons case. The products were very high end meters and sensors with the electrical sophistication of a McDonalds toy, just using whatever the highest end parts Arrow et al would sell us. Like they aluded to, ultimately it's all the little stuff that gets you. Packaging, whatever voodoo the S&M team is up to, random IT bullshit, heath insurance, random FCC compliance stuff, etc.

mschuster91 4y ago
> random FCC compliance stuff Nothing better than designing a product and actually producing a batch of it... and then finding out you have some EMI problem requiring a redesign. If you're lucky, you can remedy it by manually adding some shielding tape, if not... you might as well file for bankruptcy in the worst case.
- edrxty 4y ago
  Ha! I've seen this. We had one screw that was close enough to a trace on the board that it would lock up the device and fail ESD testing. Ended up plugging the top of that one screw hole with RTV on the whole batch.
  - buescher 4y ago
    Precompliance EMI test is cheaper than ever to put together, but a proper ESD setup is still going to be impossible to justify on a shoestring. I’ve seen other people use leak detectors and record zappers and I won’t even get into the things that won’t credibly work. I feel your pain.
- nomel 4y ago
  I worked in a semi anechoic test chamber for measuring radiated emissions. We had a few cases like this that one of the engineers was especially good at solving. In one, we had a cheaper network switch that was failing one of the limits. One of our engineers walked in with a can of metalized spray paint, applied a single squirt to the inside of the plastic case, and fixed the issue. If you bought one and opened it, you would see a single squirt of silver looking paint on the inside, right where he put his. I've seen a few of these squirts in the devices I've taken apart, so I guess it's not a secret.
  - edrxty 4y ago
    I know the ham folks will sometimes coat the insides of radios with that stuff to fix cheap radio emi issues
  - post-it 4y ago
    Oh huh, I've certainly seen that before when I've opened a device.
- bane 4y ago
  Ancient history, but the way Apple skirted around FCC regulations for the Apple II while Atari got bogged down in expensive remediations for their 400/800 systems that added to the BOM is an interesting business study.
  - gregsadetsky 4y ago
    Fascinating and didn't know about this, thanks! This goes into the Apple/Atari/FCC story a bit (search for FCC): https://www.fastcompany.com/90432140/how-atari-took-on-apple-in-the-1980s-home-pc-wars https://www.fastcompany.com/90432140/how-atari-took-on-apple...
    - jamiek88 4y ago
      They used a 3rd party dongle to save y’all a click.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
teuobk 4y ago
Ain't this the truth. If COGS for the electronic gizmo is over about 10% of retail price, and you're making boutique-scale runs (<10k units) of whatever it is, good luck with that. I strongly suspect that, to a rounding error, 100% of new small-electronics products on, say, Kickstarter, sell at a massive per-unit loss. And yet people will still bitch about the price.
tarakat 4y ago
> whatever voodoo the S&M team is up to Those teams rarely justify their cost, especially if you factor in all the sexual harassment lawsuits that they're a breeding ground for.
- edrxty 4y ago
  They always held a lot of parties I wasn't invited to, but after being asked to change random text strings enough times to "make it easier for the customer to understand" I don't think I wanted to go anyway.
- confounded 4y ago
  That might be a different type of S&M team
  - yetihehe 4y ago
    Buyer definition, sales and marketing?

by edrxty 4y ago

mschuster91 4y ago

> random FCC compliance stuff Nothing better than designing a product and actually producing a batch of it... and then finding out you have some EMI problem requiring a redesign. If you're lucky, you can remedy it by manually adding some shielding tape, if not... you might as well file for bankruptcy in the worst case.

edrxty 4y ago
Ha! I've seen this. We had one screw that was close enough to a trace on the board that it would lock up the device and fail ESD testing. Ended up plugging the top of that one screw hole with RTV on the whole batch.
- buescher 4y ago
  Precompliance EMI test is cheaper than ever to put together, but a proper ESD setup is still going to be impossible to justify on a shoestring. I’ve seen other people use leak detectors and record zappers and I won’t even get into the things that won’t credibly work. I feel your pain.
nomel 4y ago
I worked in a semi anechoic test chamber for measuring radiated emissions. We had a few cases like this that one of the engineers was especially good at solving. In one, we had a cheaper network switch that was failing one of the limits. One of our engineers walked in with a can of metalized spray paint, applied a single squirt to the inside of the plastic case, and fixed the issue. If you bought one and opened it, you would see a single squirt of silver looking paint on the inside, right where he put his. I've seen a few of these squirts in the devices I've taken apart, so I guess it's not a secret.
- edrxty 4y ago
  I know the ham folks will sometimes coat the insides of radios with that stuff to fix cheap radio emi issues
- post-it 4y ago
  Oh huh, I've certainly seen that before when I've opened a device.
bane 4y ago
Ancient history, but the way Apple skirted around FCC regulations for the Apple II while Atari got bogged down in expensive remediations for their 400/800 systems that added to the BOM is an interesting business study.
- gregsadetsky 4y ago
  Fascinating and didn't know about this, thanks! This goes into the Apple/Atari/FCC story a bit (search for FCC): https://www.fastcompany.com/90432140/how-atari-took-on-apple-in-the-1980s-home-pc-wars https://www.fastcompany.com/90432140/how-atari-took-on-apple...
  - jamiek88 4y ago
    They used a 3rd party dongle to save y’all a click.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

teuobk 4y ago

Ain't this the truth. If COGS for the electronic gizmo is over about 10% of retail price, and you're making boutique-scale runs (<10k units) of whatever it is, good luck with that. I strongly suspect that, to a rounding error, 100% of new small-electronics products on, say, Kickstarter, sell at a massive per-unit loss. And yet people will still bitch about the price.

tarakat 4y ago

> whatever voodoo the S&M team is up to Those teams rarely justify their cost, especially if you factor in all the sexual harassment lawsuits that they're a breeding ground for.

edrxty 4y ago
They always held a lot of parties I wasn't invited to, but after being asked to change random text strings enough times to "make it easier for the customer to understand" I don't think I wanted to go anyway.
confounded 4y ago
That might be a different type of S&M team
- yetihehe 4y ago
  Buyer definition, sales and marketing?