I read it twice to see if there was any mention of the word 'Shenzhen'. It's difficult to not keep that in the loop, for a hardware startup anywhere in the world. Even SF.
I make robots in Chicago and sell them on Tindie. My top two competitors are in Finland and Japan. Yes, I hear Shenzhen is crazy awesome, but try not to let location dominate your world view of what is easy or difficult. Making a good hardware product is difficult, no matter where you make it.
When I need to make 10,000 cheap and fast, yes, I'll most likely be making a pilgrimage to Shenzen. Totally agree with your point. But not every startup (especially low-volume, high-price, high-touch b2b) needs to focus at the start on making 10,000 units cheap and fast.
I know what you mean. I make development boards(Tah) out of India.
But I understand that most of what I use comes some way or the other from Shenzhen. A lot many times there are things that I am using which probably are outdated in China.
Relevant article by bunnie :
http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=4297
The resources listed here are geared for prototyping that allows rapid iteration of designs and ideas. From electronics prototyping (Tempo Automation) to mechanical (Fictiv). Having been to Shenzhen for manufacturing, it is absolutely great once you get to large volume - you can't beat the robust ecosystem anywhere. For initial runs of designs (quantity 1-10 of something), TIME is absolutely key: dealing with Shenzhen takes extensive communication and long lead times for each production run that a startup or even a big company can't afford.
Absolutely. At Other Machine Co., (https://othermachine.co/) our volumes just aren't big enough to go to Shenzhen yet. Not to mention the fact that the upfront costs require significant upfront capital investments. That's why we make a product that lets companies (including our own) prototype PCBs and other parts themselves.
Why not? I've used milled PCBs for commercial prototypes as they're an order of magnitude cheaper than a fab given the turnaround time. You can get down to 0.5mm pitch easily.
You don't get soldermasks and vias are normally riveted (good enough). For most people, two layers is enough and if you can design the board well you shouldn't need much routing on the second layer.
Without a soldermask, how do you mount anything SMD finer than about a SOT-23? (only a slight exaggeration)
I can't imagine mounting even a simple ATTiny, let alone a quad-flat anything or a bunch of 0603s without a solder mask.
I'm sure that some use cases can get by with all DIP, through-hole, and similar-sized parts, but it's hard to design a product that can later scale up cost-effectively without being able to use surface-mount parts. There's a reason the mass production all switched over to SMD->cost.
Remember there are plenty of companies who need the odd PCB, but aren't in the PCB business.
Simple power/control boards (weird voltage, multiple outputs) that aren't available off the shelf from RS or Farnell. None of those boards need to be more than two layers. I've designed lens focus control boards that only required a single layer.
Yes of course if you're doing RF or fast serial you'd be daft to do it on a milled board, but they are convenient sometimes.
In the UK, you're looking at ~£50 for a short turnaround from a fab house like PCBTrain. From there a single small two-layer board, 50x60mm, 15 weekday turnaround is £33 plus shipping . It scales very well, but that's not the point for a prototype. Want that board this week? £90. Oshpark is great, but only if you can afford to wait the 20 or so days it takes to get to you.
If anyone can recommend a good, cheap fab house in the UK I'd be interested to know about it!
Perfboard is fine up to a point, but I find it tends to get messy, even for simple boards, and it's not terribly optimal with regard to space. You're out of luck (without bodging) if any component is surface mount or isn't 2.54mm pitch.
Milling is a nice stopgap when you need a single copy of a board that's a bit too complicated for perfboard (i.e. different pitch/smt parts) but isn't worth spending 10x the cost for a professionally made board. With milled boards you can have custom shapes, cutouts and so on. If you're trying to design a board to fit inside some housing with a funny shape and standoff points, milling the board to fit is a nice and cheap.
Assembling is being democratized, PCBs are being made available faster than ever, but that still doesn't level up with the ecosystem that is China. Especially, when you are prototyping.
Link i posted in earlier comment points out exactly this : http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=4297
It's a great initiative by YC, but hopefully there is more to come.
We decided to do all of our prototyping and short runs in the valley. You're risking your company's failure if you wait around for months dealing with logistics in China for each design iteration.
PCB manufacturing and assembly is one part of the equation.
The other important thing that we are missing out on (by not being wired into the whole Shenzhen scene) is the hardware that they have. The kind of chips they are using are not even available to us but are cheaper and better by an order of magnitude.
We are talking about 35$ computers, whereas they are using 12$ phones. All of this comes under the Gongkai method of 'innovation'.
I hope this is the start of US bringing manufacturing back to the States. There needs to be a hardware alley in silicon valley, much like the hardware alley in Shenzhen. For one thing, China is still a communist government that is authoritarian and ignores environmental pollutions (to the world). It also ignores human rights, supports dictators in Africa, and props up totalitarian government in Russia. These are good reasons to not do business with China.
Your other comments are factually true, but i don't think they're totally fair. To play devil's advocate: China acknowledge they've got a pollution problem and introduced several methods to start addressing it [1][2][3]. USA also ignores human rights[4][5][6][7], supports dictators and totalitarian governments[8], fights proxy wars and arms terrorists[9][10]. "These are good reasons to not do business with" the USA.
Also worth watching is India. The newly elected PM has taken "Make in India" quite seriously. The world's largest democracy is gearing up for a huge manufacturing boom.
Cheaper than the States, humane conditions, English as a medium of communication and excellent economic relations with most countries.
No disrespect, but India has horrible infrastructure, horrible treatment of women (rape, disregards from police on harassment cases), and other horrible things.
That's a lot of horrible. It's not all rainbows in India but downsides like the ones you mentioned are not all there is.
That said, I was vastly more impressed with the infra in SZ than Bangalore. SZ is a modern metropolis where Bangalore, well... It has pockets of shiny corporate havens I the suburbs. (FWIW, I personally prefer the grit of downtown BGL to SZ anyway)
I hope this is the start of US bringing manufacturing back to the States. There needs to be a hardware alley in silicon valley, much like the hardware alley in Shenzhen. For one thing, China is still a communist government that is authoritarian and ignores environmental pollutions (to the world). It also ignores human rights, supports dictators in Africa, and props up totalitarian government in Russia. These are good reasons to not do business with China.
