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> etching the PCBs, drilling the PCBs, the cost to buy the pick-and-place machine and reflow machine Your correct on the cost of the headers/ports being much h
by mbell 14y ago
> etching the PCBs, drilling the PCBs, the cost to buy the pick-and-place machine and reflow machine
Your correct on the cost of the headers/ports being much higher than most would think (certainly higher than the AVR).
However, the arduino products are not even close to being in the ball park of volume needed to purchase their own PCB manufacturing equipment, nor P&P, nor reflow, nor QA systems. Its all outsourced, probably through multiple layers (they list SparkFun as a manufacturer and I can almost guarantee they aren't doing any of the actual manufacturing either).
- mercuryrising 14y agoI think you should look at this blog post: http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=2407 http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=2407 It's a tour of the Arduino PCB manufacturing facility, with QA systems, and PCB manufacturing equipment. He alludes to sending the stack of PCBs to the SMT facility, although he doesn't have a tour of that one on his site.
- mbell 14y agoMaybe I'm missing something but that blog is a tour of System Electronica, a 3rd party contract PCB manufacturer, not an Arduino owned factory.
- jrockway 14y agoSomebody bought the equipment and they're probably not letting people use it for free, that's all I'm saying. Sparkfun owns a pick and place machine: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tn0EKtLOVx4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tn0EKtLOVx4 Presumably they're doing the reflow there too. No idea about the PCB manufacturing. Adafruit is even smaller, I think, and they do their own QA: http://learn.adafruit.com/how-to-make-a-pogo-pin-test-jig http://learn.adafruit.com/how-to-make-a-pogo-pin-test-jig
- mbell 14y agoThat would explain the cost (that is a really slow pick and place). For comparison I designed a board a few years ago that was a 6" by 8", 4 layer PCB, parts on both sides, 163 parts, several orders of magnitude more complex than an Arduino. For 1,000 unit runs the the per unit costs were $2.97 for the PCB and assembly with flying probe test was $3.51, including post processing for several parts that were not reflowable, done in Asia by a contract manufacturer.
- jrockway 14y agoYes, Sparkfun's products are definitely overpriced. They sell a constant-current LED driver for $50 that has a ~$8 parts cost at single-unit quantities. Even when I hand-solder the circuit on to a $10 Dangerous Prototypes surface-mount prototyping board at my normal hourly rate, I still come out ahead. I still contend that the Arduino is approximately decently priced when you consider that Arduinos are popular enough to not be put together by hand but niche enough to not be made by the millions at Foxconn.