7 ms·

You can get a pretty high quality PCB built at Bay Area Circuits in Fremont, and assembled at Sierra in Sunnyvale. The speed is marginally slower than JLC, the

You can get a pretty high quality PCB built at Bay Area Circuits in Fremont, and assembled at Sierra in Sunnyvale. The speed is marginally slower than JLC, the cost is marginally higher and quality marginally lower than Compeq. But, you can drive there, and be on a first-name basis with your supplier. Given the extreme efficiency of international shipping logistics, I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect any given metro area to have competitive world class manufacturing of every type. The cost of real estate alone makes it hard to compete.

TaylorAlexander 3y ago
Last time I got a quote at Sierra it was hundreds of dollars for a basic PCB order, but that was 15 years ago. Have they gotten more competitive? And I’m not saying “every metro should have competitive world class manufacturing of every type”, which is such a strong claim as to feel strawman-ish (but I get the sense you didn’t mean to do so). I do however deeply wish we had Shenzhen-like manufacturing hubs on the east and west coasts.
- dharma1 3y ago
  If the initial outlay for setting up Shenzen like manufacturing/electronics hub in the US was partially incentivised with govt subsidies to get it going, could it become competitive (cost/quality/scale wise) with Chinese hubs on a reasonable time horizon? There is of course a large labour cost delta and probably a skills shortage in the US that might be an obstacle for making something like this be economically sustainable/competitive - but if it could be automated sufficiently so that labour cost is less of an issue, is this even feasible in theory? I know there are some fabs being built, but beyond that is some kind of broader electronics manufacturing hub in the US conceivable? From the article it sounds like the manufacturing is staying in Asia but moving to politically allied countries where new infra is being built for this. Is it still mainly a labour cost issue?
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- petsfed 3y ago
  Its been a couple of years since I last went to Sierra with an order, but they're pretty competitive with other domestic board houses. About 7 years ago, they were were the cheapest for quick-turn turn-key builds of low-complexity boards in ultra low-volumes (>50), so I had them do a lot of stuff for me.
  - TaylorAlexander 3y ago
    > they're pretty competitive with other domestic board houses My complaint is that domestic board houses are super expensive, so I meant competitive with Chinese production. The person replying to me above said they are "marginally more expensive" but another commenter here went through the full quoting process and got a price that is about 8x higher than a reputable fab in China, which is not "marginally more expensive".
    - petsfed 3y ago
      If your only constraint is cost, there's basically no argument for using a domestic PCB manufacturer or assembly house. You can't beat them. The closest you might get is "offshoring" to Mexico, and even then, you'll probably still spend more than going with a Chinese manufacturer. If you go through Sierra, I seem to recall that they contract with a Taiwanese PCB fab for the bare boards, but I could be wrong. They should have a domestic partner, not sure who, for e.g. ITAR boards. So why go domestic? For us, there were IP concerns (that we'd already seen with non-electronic products), there were concerns about shipments getting held up in customs, and there were concerns about manufacturing support. If you want boards to be flashed and tested at the factory, so you can dropship your assembled product to whatever its final destination, its very valuable to send somebody to the board house to work with their integration engineers to do it. I ended up spending most of a week commuting to a board house in Fremont in 2021, so I could train up their people on operating the programming and testing jig we'd built, and operating the calibration system we'd built. Driving from my home (at the time) in Oakland to Fremont was much much easier than flying to Shenzen (or wherever), I didn't have to contend with the great firewall, and if something went wrong, I could be over in 45 minutes. All during the California (and also China) Covid lockdowns. That is what you're getting with a domestic board house, so if none of that is a concern, there's really no reason to pay the borderline extortionate premium to do it.
morio 3y ago
Ok, I'll bite. Uploaded my gerbers using https://instantdfm.bayareacircuits.com/ https://instantdfm.bayareacircuits.com/ Site does not respond for 10 minutes+ which is is not a good start. It's instant on the Chinese sites. Quote for 100 boards (ENIG) on Bay Area Circuits, 10 days lead time, excluding shipping: $1000 ($1244 for 5 days lead time) Todays quote for exact same 100 boards (ENIG) on pcbway.com, _including_ DHL shipping cost, 2 days lead time: $148 (shipping to Bay Area is usually 2 days with DHL, so really 4 days lead time). I've never had any quality issues and my boards have fine pitch 0.4mm BGA parts. Yeah no, not even close. Certainly not marginally higher. It's slightly cheaper than oshpark.com, they want $15 a board.
- auders 3y ago
  And that is domestic versus imported. In Shenzhen they do production of smaller quantities in 12 hours overnight for $30 extra with local express delivery.
  - jpgvm 3y ago
    I hung out with a friend of mine in Shenzen who does this stuff all the time (and is Chinese not that is super important other than the fact being fluent helps a ton). Together we prototyped a product over a 2 month period, him handling the HW and EE bits and me writing the board firmware and HIL simulator/test-harness. We would get some boards, he would find and correct any issues with the board, get a new file to the board house before 5pm and we would get new boards in the morning at 9am delivered by a motorbike courier for about $20 or something. As a software guy that seemed pretty insane to me. All up we probably did about 6 or 7 HW revisions like that and a few of those probably could have been avoidable if more care was taken but why would we when it's so cheap to iterate so quickly? Unfortunately for various reasons we didn't choose to continue the project but I learnt a hell of a lot and really enjoyed hanging in Shenzhen and getting to understand the hacker culture there a bit more. We burnt overall a pretty small amount of money to learn some important lessons that I think would have been much more expensive anywhere else in the world.
    - grecy 3y ago
fidotron 3y ago
What kills me, at least in Canada, is the price of shipping from China is lower than across town, even if willing to accept comparable delays. It completely destroys the potential for any local setup to develop.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- throw0101d 3y ago
  Re: shipping costs, see Universal Postal Union: > The Universal Postal Union set up a fee so richer countries would pay more to have their international mail delivered than countries with developing economies. > "The central idea is that any citizen or business should be able to send mail packages through the Global Postal Network to any destination," said Schoorl. > At the time, China was considered a country with a developing economy, meaning the country would be charged less for international mail than other countries. And that went unchanged for decades. > As e-commerce took off in the 2010s, China found itself with a major competitive advantage. It could ship to North America at a cheap rate. Canada Post and the U.S. Postal Service were delivering packages and not being compensated very well, says Schoorl. * https://www.cbc.ca/radio/costofliving/shipping-canada-china-1.6950967 https://www.cbc.ca/radio/costofliving/shipping-canada-china-... > China is still considered a “transitional” country by the UPU, which means it enjoys a lower rate for sending mail to a developed nation like the US. As a result, mail services from China to the US cost less than Americans are charged by their own postal service for a comparable domestic delivery. This gives Chinese sellers a competitive edge over American sellers, especially in e-commerce platforms like eBay or Amazon, where shipping cost is a major factor for buyers. * https://medium.com/@contact_53404/why-is-it-so-cheap-to-ship-from-china-to-the-usa-b84ef79ff2ab https://medium.com/@contact_53404/why-is-it-so-cheap-to-ship... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Postal_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Postal_Union
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - vel0city 3y ago

TaylorAlexander 3y ago

Last time I got a quote at Sierra it was hundreds of dollars for a basic PCB order, but that was 15 years ago. Have they gotten more competitive? And I’m not saying “every metro should have competitive world class manufacturing of every type”, which is such a strong claim as to feel strawman-ish (but I get the sense you didn’t mean to do so). I do however deeply wish we had Shenzhen-like manufacturing hubs on the east and west coasts.

dharma1 3y ago
If the initial outlay for setting up Shenzen like manufacturing/electronics hub in the US was partially incentivised with govt subsidies to get it going, could it become competitive (cost/quality/scale wise) with Chinese hubs on a reasonable time horizon? There is of course a large labour cost delta and probably a skills shortage in the US that might be an obstacle for making something like this be economically sustainable/competitive - but if it could be automated sufficiently so that labour cost is less of an issue, is this even feasible in theory? I know there are some fabs being built, but beyond that is some kind of broader electronics manufacturing hub in the US conceivable? From the article it sounds like the manufacturing is staying in Asia but moving to politically allied countries where new infra is being built for this. Is it still mainly a labour cost issue?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
petsfed 3y ago
Its been a couple of years since I last went to Sierra with an order, but they're pretty competitive with other domestic board houses. About 7 years ago, they were were the cheapest for quick-turn turn-key builds of low-complexity boards in ultra low-volumes (>50), so I had them do a lot of stuff for me.
- TaylorAlexander 3y ago
  > they're pretty competitive with other domestic board houses My complaint is that domestic board houses are super expensive, so I meant competitive with Chinese production. The person replying to me above said they are "marginally more expensive" but another commenter here went through the full quoting process and got a price that is about 8x higher than a reputable fab in China, which is not "marginally more expensive".
  - petsfed 3y ago
    If your only constraint is cost, there's basically no argument for using a domestic PCB manufacturer or assembly house. You can't beat them. The closest you might get is "offshoring" to Mexico, and even then, you'll probably still spend more than going with a Chinese manufacturer. If you go through Sierra, I seem to recall that they contract with a Taiwanese PCB fab for the bare boards, but I could be wrong. They should have a domestic partner, not sure who, for e.g. ITAR boards. So why go domestic? For us, there were IP concerns (that we'd already seen with non-electronic products), there were concerns about shipments getting held up in customs, and there were concerns about manufacturing support. If you want boards to be flashed and tested at the factory, so you can dropship your assembled product to whatever its final destination, its very valuable to send somebody to the board house to work with their integration engineers to do it. I ended up spending most of a week commuting to a board house in Fremont in 2021, so I could train up their people on operating the programming and testing jig we'd built, and operating the calibration system we'd built. Driving from my home (at the time) in Oakland to Fremont was much much easier than flying to Shenzen (or wherever), I didn't have to contend with the great firewall, and if something went wrong, I could be over in 45 minutes. All during the California (and also China) Covid lockdowns. That is what you're getting with a domestic board house, so if none of that is a concern, there's really no reason to pay the borderline extortionate premium to do it.

morio 3y ago

Ok, I'll bite. Uploaded my gerbers using https://instantdfm.bayareacircuits.com/ https://instantdfm.bayareacircuits.com/ Site does not respond for 10 minutes+ which is is not a good start. It's instant on the Chinese sites. Quote for 100 boards (ENIG) on Bay Area Circuits, 10 days lead time, excluding shipping: $1000 ($1244 for 5 days lead time) Todays quote for exact same 100 boards (ENIG) on pcbway.com, _including_ DHL shipping cost, 2 days lead time: $148 (shipping to Bay Area is usually 2 days with DHL, so really 4 days lead time). I've never had any quality issues and my boards have fine pitch 0.4mm BGA parts. Yeah no, not even close. Certainly not marginally higher. It's slightly cheaper than oshpark.com, they want $15 a board.

auders 3y ago
And that is domestic versus imported. In Shenzhen they do production of smaller quantities in 12 hours overnight for $30 extra with local express delivery.
- jpgvm 3y ago
  I hung out with a friend of mine in Shenzen who does this stuff all the time (and is Chinese not that is super important other than the fact being fluent helps a ton). Together we prototyped a product over a 2 month period, him handling the HW and EE bits and me writing the board firmware and HIL simulator/test-harness. We would get some boards, he would find and correct any issues with the board, get a new file to the board house before 5pm and we would get new boards in the morning at 9am delivered by a motorbike courier for about $20 or something. As a software guy that seemed pretty insane to me. All up we probably did about 6 or 7 HW revisions like that and a few of those probably could have been avoidable if more care was taken but why would we when it's so cheap to iterate so quickly? Unfortunately for various reasons we didn't choose to continue the project but I learnt a hell of a lot and really enjoyed hanging in Shenzhen and getting to understand the hacker culture there a bit more. We burnt overall a pretty small amount of money to learn some important lessons that I think would have been much more expensive anywhere else in the world.
  - grecy 3y ago

fidotron 3y ago

What kills me, at least in Canada, is the price of shipping from China is lower than across town, even if willing to accept comparable delays. It completely destroys the potential for any local setup to develop.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
throw0101d 3y ago
Re: shipping costs, see Universal Postal Union: > The Universal Postal Union set up a fee so richer countries would pay more to have their international mail delivered than countries with developing economies. > "The central idea is that any citizen or business should be able to send mail packages through the Global Postal Network to any destination," said Schoorl. > At the time, China was considered a country with a developing economy, meaning the country would be charged less for international mail than other countries. And that went unchanged for decades. > As e-commerce took off in the 2010s, China found itself with a major competitive advantage. It could ship to North America at a cheap rate. Canada Post and the U.S. Postal Service were delivering packages and not being compensated very well, says Schoorl. * https://www.cbc.ca/radio/costofliving/shipping-canada-china-1.6950967 https://www.cbc.ca/radio/costofliving/shipping-canada-china-... > China is still considered a “transitional” country by the UPU, which means it enjoys a lower rate for sending mail to a developed nation like the US. As a result, mail services from China to the US cost less than Americans are charged by their own postal service for a comparable domestic delivery. This gives Chinese sellers a competitive edge over American sellers, especially in e-commerce platforms like eBay or Amazon, where shipping cost is a major factor for buyers. * https://medium.com/@contact_53404/why-is-it-so-cheap-to-ship-from-china-to-the-usa-b84ef79ff2ab https://medium.com/@contact_53404/why-is-it-so-cheap-to-ship... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Postal_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Postal_Union
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- vel0city 3y ago