5 ms·

It's not possible to make a competitively priced product that way. What are you going to do, sell artisanal circuit boards on Etsy? Here's a small US-based PCB

by Animats 10mo ago

It's not possible to make a competitively priced product that way. What are you going to do, sell artisanal circuit boards on Etsy? Here's a small US-based PCB board and assembly facility in the US, in Hesperia, California.[1] Looks like it might have 20 to 30 employees from the building picture. This is probably about as small as a viable business of this type gets. It doesn't have to be done in a huge plant like JLCPCB in Shenzhen. Here's a company in India, Invariance, which makes low-cost semi-automatic machines to do exactly the same operations 39c3 is doing.[2] They have three machines - a solder paste spreader, a pick and place machine, and a mini tunnel reflow oven. They make all three machines. These machines intended for small companies who want to assemble their own boards in house. The solder paste spreader is just automated enough to do a consistent job, with pressure and timing controlled. The pick and place machine uses their own feeder design which runs off strips of component tape. The tunnel oven is small, only about a meter long. That's close to a viable minimum production solution. [1] https://mermarinc.com/ https://mermarinc.com/ [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_VCJyeqa-A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_VCJyeqa-A

crote 10mo ago
That depends on your definition of "competitive", doesn't it? Being 3x as expensive as China but 0.1x as expensive as current small-scale EU manufacturing can be extremely competitive. Plenty of people looking for <1000 unit runs would be willing to pay extra for a "made in EU" label.
- Joel_Mckay 10mo ago
  If the only service a CM brings to the table is cost reduction, than its a doomed business model. Rule #23: Don't compete to be at the bottom, as you just might actually win. Have a great day =3
  - nebula8804 10mo ago
    Technically the differentiation isn't cost reduction its in shored manufacturer. That can become an important requirement as firms become more wary of IP theft and other issues. Besides other than that what can you really differentiate in this field that isn't cost? Its a service that is standardized regardless of country. Maybe you can provide different "styles" of boards (ie. different specs) or improve the entire submit to production pipeline but thats about it.
    - crote 10mo ago
      The pipeline is a massive one - especially for PCBA. Being able to get an instant quote and order in 5 minutes is worth a lot. Nobody wants a 2-week-long back-and-forth with sales and engineering for a basic prototype run.
      - nebula8804 10mo ago
        I don't know how much real innovation can happen there that the Chinese haven't done. In fact the Chinese haven't really innovated, that have optimized existing processes. Think about it: If you break it down: a "2-week-long back-and-forth with sales and engineering for a basic prototype run" is the same stuff happening in the background as the "get an instant quote and order in 5 minutes"...just much faster. Thats not the innovation I was talking about: Let me give an example. When the Xbox was being developed, there was a push within Microsoft to create a standard CD‑based game console that was a more refined version of the existing competitors. The Xbox team pushed back and said: No, you don't enter a market and just copy the incumbents. You need to do something different and differentiated. So they innovated by adding a hard drive and standard networking to every console. The addition of these components as standard in each console opened up a new paradigm of gaming with Xbox Live and was a different vision compared to what the others were offering at the time. They eventually ended up moving the market in a fundamental way. Now, going back to manufacturing, how do we translate that to PCB manufacturing? Again, I don’t know how you could possibly truly innovate the pipeline process more than it has already been done. Even just adding an AI‑handled pipeline process, it's just further optimizing what has already been done. There may or may not be an opportunity to truly move the market but if there is, then thats something the West can do to really compete.
        Joel_Mckay 10mo ago
        China is a tough place to do business even for domestic small firms. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQrEDq8KPiU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQrEDq8KPiU >I don’t know how you could possibly truly innovate the pipeline process more than it has already been done There are things China does well, things the US does well, and a lot of people building stuff for fun. Yet doing business in North America can be just as challenging for different "reasons". =3
  - pbhjpbhj 10mo ago
    The schtick for Capitalism is that it is supposed to push all companies to the top of optimal resource production, the place you call the bottom. Was it always the case that Western Capitalism was about optimising profits for an over-class, the optimising of resources was always just propaganda, or did it once have ethics?
    - Joel_Mckay 10mo ago
      Brands shifted away from garnering customer goodwill, and prioritized shareholder value by siphoning intangible assets accrued over decades of prior works. There was little utility in judging if it was ethical, but merely to profit by the shortsighted stewards. =3
    - graemep 10mo ago
      > Was it always the case that Western Capitalism was about optimising profits for an over-class, the optimising of resources was always just propaganda, or did it once have ethics? Adam Smith wrote a whole book about ethics. I actually think the ethical corruption has been very recent and driven by multiple factors, but the most important is the myth that people are rich because they deserve to be, and if they are poor it is because they are stupid or lazy. The rich therefore tend to feel far less noblesse oblige.
- lefra 10mo ago
  For that, there's a company named eurocircuits. Slightly more expensive than JLCPCB, but not 30x.
  - megous 10mo ago
    5pcs 2 layer default settings 80x100mm boards ($4 vs EUR 124) is pretty much 30x.
    - lefra 10mo ago
      I double checked because these were not the prices I had in mind. After looking through the options, I think that's because the designs I did quotations for had 0.2mm holes. This is standard for Eurocircuits, but high precision for JLCPCB. Note that to get the price you quoted, you'll get lead in your PCB, and vias that are not plated, but plugged with conductive epoxy. Changing that gets you to $14 for 5 boards, which is still way cheaper than Eurocircuits. I'll keep that in mind for the next PCB I design: keep holes bigger than 0.3mm if possible.
- mapt 10mo ago
  COVID and the supply chain crisis made apparent just how over-reliant we are on Shenzhen and Taiwan for the most basic components. There are several hundred ICs on dozens of circuitboards in every car now that are dumber, slower, and less efficient than a 1990s calculator, that we have lost the ability to produce domestically. These are now bottlenecks to manufacturing in any disruption to world trade. It doesn't need to be cutting edge, if you have a few board assembly shops and some fabs pumping out small chips in 20-30 year old process nodes it helps the resilience of the economy and geopolitical situation a great deal.
snovv_crash 10mo ago
39c3 is the conference it is being presented at, not the presenter. 39th Chaos Communication Congress, the annual conference of the Chaos Computer Club. This is a hacker messing around who is presenting to inspire others and get feedback. Many things presented at Xc3 are wildly impractical, potentially illegal, or not even technical at all and more on the side of activism and policy. Most are interesting and fun, which is the main goal.
abielefeld 10mo ago
Hey, I'm one of the two speakers :) The commenter above you phrased it well: "Price-reasonable", to us, it's first about breaking even. I will look into the companies you linked, looks interesting! Though to give you food for though, I will tell you about a french drone manufacturing company, they manufacture in house, they turn over probably around 10 million € a year. I know first hand they stencil print around 10k boards a year using a "machine" that is 2x4's from the hardware store, and a credit card :)
- joe_mamba 10mo ago
  >I will tell you about a french drone manufacturing company [...] Can you also tell us the name?
  - abielefeld 10mo ago
    Sadly I cannot disclose it
    - Xunxi 10mo ago
      Parrot
smeeagain2 10mo ago
[dead]
wasmperson 10mo ago
> It's not possible to make a competitively priced product that way. What are you going to do, sell artisanal circuit boards on Etsy? 10 years ago in the US I met someone who owned a company of about 5 people that he largely built off of the acquisition of a single broken pick-and-place machine which he repaired himself. They applied the solder paste manually and finished the boards in what looked like a toaster-oven. Each production run consisted of around 100 units which were sold at $50 apiece. The company is still in business today, as far as I'm aware.

by Animats 10mo ago

crote 10mo ago

That depends on your definition of "competitive", doesn't it? Being 3x as expensive as China but 0.1x as expensive as current small-scale EU manufacturing can be extremely competitive. Plenty of people looking for <1000 unit runs would be willing to pay extra for a "made in EU" label.

Joel_Mckay 10mo ago
If the only service a CM brings to the table is cost reduction, than its a doomed business model. Rule #23: Don't compete to be at the bottom, as you just might actually win. Have a great day =3
- nebula8804 10mo ago
  Technically the differentiation isn't cost reduction its in shored manufacturer. That can become an important requirement as firms become more wary of IP theft and other issues. Besides other than that what can you really differentiate in this field that isn't cost? Its a service that is standardized regardless of country. Maybe you can provide different "styles" of boards (ie. different specs) or improve the entire submit to production pipeline but thats about it.
  - crote 10mo ago
    The pipeline is a massive one - especially for PCBA. Being able to get an instant quote and order in 5 minutes is worth a lot. Nobody wants a 2-week-long back-and-forth with sales and engineering for a basic prototype run.
    - nebula8804 10mo ago
      I don't know how much real innovation can happen there that the Chinese haven't done. In fact the Chinese haven't really innovated, that have optimized existing processes. Think about it: If you break it down: a "2-week-long back-and-forth with sales and engineering for a basic prototype run" is the same stuff happening in the background as the "get an instant quote and order in 5 minutes"...just much faster. Thats not the innovation I was talking about: Let me give an example. When the Xbox was being developed, there was a push within Microsoft to create a standard CD‑based game console that was a more refined version of the existing competitors. The Xbox team pushed back and said: No, you don't enter a market and just copy the incumbents. You need to do something different and differentiated. So they innovated by adding a hard drive and standard networking to every console. The addition of these components as standard in each console opened up a new paradigm of gaming with Xbox Live and was a different vision compared to what the others were offering at the time. They eventually ended up moving the market in a fundamental way. Now, going back to manufacturing, how do we translate that to PCB manufacturing? Again, I don’t know how you could possibly truly innovate the pipeline process more than it has already been done. Even just adding an AI‑handled pipeline process, it's just further optimizing what has already been done. There may or may not be an opportunity to truly move the market but if there is, then thats something the West can do to really compete.
      - Joel_Mckay 10mo ago
        China is a tough place to do business even for domestic small firms. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQrEDq8KPiU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQrEDq8KPiU >I don’t know how you could possibly truly innovate the pipeline process more than it has already been done There are things China does well, things the US does well, and a lot of people building stuff for fun. Yet doing business in North America can be just as challenging for different "reasons". =3
- pbhjpbhj 10mo ago
  The schtick for Capitalism is that it is supposed to push all companies to the top of optimal resource production, the place you call the bottom. Was it always the case that Western Capitalism was about optimising profits for an over-class, the optimising of resources was always just propaganda, or did it once have ethics?
  - Joel_Mckay 10mo ago
    Brands shifted away from garnering customer goodwill, and prioritized shareholder value by siphoning intangible assets accrued over decades of prior works. There was little utility in judging if it was ethical, but merely to profit by the shortsighted stewards. =3
  - graemep 10mo ago
    > Was it always the case that Western Capitalism was about optimising profits for an over-class, the optimising of resources was always just propaganda, or did it once have ethics? Adam Smith wrote a whole book about ethics. I actually think the ethical corruption has been very recent and driven by multiple factors, but the most important is the myth that people are rich because they deserve to be, and if they are poor it is because they are stupid or lazy. The rich therefore tend to feel far less noblesse oblige.
lefra 10mo ago
For that, there's a company named eurocircuits. Slightly more expensive than JLCPCB, but not 30x.
- megous 10mo ago
  5pcs 2 layer default settings 80x100mm boards ($4 vs EUR 124) is pretty much 30x.
  - lefra 10mo ago
    I double checked because these were not the prices I had in mind. After looking through the options, I think that's because the designs I did quotations for had 0.2mm holes. This is standard for Eurocircuits, but high precision for JLCPCB. Note that to get the price you quoted, you'll get lead in your PCB, and vias that are not plated, but plugged with conductive epoxy. Changing that gets you to $14 for 5 boards, which is still way cheaper than Eurocircuits. I'll keep that in mind for the next PCB I design: keep holes bigger than 0.3mm if possible.
mapt 10mo ago
COVID and the supply chain crisis made apparent just how over-reliant we are on Shenzhen and Taiwan for the most basic components. There are several hundred ICs on dozens of circuitboards in every car now that are dumber, slower, and less efficient than a 1990s calculator, that we have lost the ability to produce domestically. These are now bottlenecks to manufacturing in any disruption to world trade. It doesn't need to be cutting edge, if you have a few board assembly shops and some fabs pumping out small chips in 20-30 year old process nodes it helps the resilience of the economy and geopolitical situation a great deal.

snovv_crash 10mo ago

39c3 is the conference it is being presented at, not the presenter. 39th Chaos Communication Congress, the annual conference of the Chaos Computer Club. This is a hacker messing around who is presenting to inspire others and get feedback. Many things presented at Xc3 are wildly impractical, potentially illegal, or not even technical at all and more on the side of activism and policy. Most are interesting and fun, which is the main goal.

abielefeld 10mo ago

Hey, I'm one of the two speakers :) The commenter above you phrased it well: "Price-reasonable", to us, it's first about breaking even. I will look into the companies you linked, looks interesting! Though to give you food for though, I will tell you about a french drone manufacturing company, they manufacture in house, they turn over probably around 10 million € a year. I know first hand they stencil print around 10k boards a year using a "machine" that is 2x4's from the hardware store, and a credit card :)

joe_mamba 10mo ago
>I will tell you about a french drone manufacturing company [...] Can you also tell us the name?
- abielefeld 10mo ago
  Sadly I cannot disclose it
  - Xunxi 10mo ago
    Parrot

smeeagain2 10mo ago

[dead]

wasmperson 10mo ago

> It's not possible to make a competitively priced product that way. What are you going to do, sell artisanal circuit boards on Etsy? 10 years ago in the US I met someone who owned a company of about 5 people that he largely built off of the acquisition of a single broken pick-and-place machine which he repaired himself. They applied the solder paste manually and finished the boards in what looked like a toaster-oven. Each production run consisted of around 100 units which were sold at $50 apiece. The company is still in business today, as far as I'm aware.