2. Vendor Quotes. As receiving the request, the vendor will estimated thetotal product cost. For a PCBA production, the main cost includes:
2.1.)PCB Fee, basedon the PCB spec and production difficulty. Normally, the PCBA vendor will not produce the PCB by themselves, thePCB will be produced by the PCB factory. there are some “express PCB” factoryin Shenzhen, such as the HQ PCB and JLC PCB, that can provide the PCB with low starting fee(Less than 10$)and shortlead time, but the quantity relative lower, just fit for those prototypingproductions and lower spec requirements. If the customer needs the PCB quality higher,or the PCB spec is high, for example, 6 layer PCB, the minimum trace interface4 mils, some industry-level PCB factory maybe needed. The starting fee would behigher, and the lead time normally 7~10 days.
2.2.) BOM List Fee. It is indeed there are some PCBA vendors can auto analysis the BOM list, if thecustomer provide standard BOM list with Mouser/Digikey code or vendor internalcodes for all the components, but the disadvantage is obvious: it needs the customer provides all the partsnumbers, but it is time-cost for customer to do this when a simple componentsneeded such as a 1uf 0603 resistor, and also the price will be high, as thesystem will fetch price from Mouser/Digikey directly. Actually in Shenzhen, for some components, muchlower price than Digikey/Mouser is available. A more ensured, but low efficiency way is reviewing the BOM list by human. For some IC, the Shenzhenprice would be much lower than that of Mouser/Digikey, that a more completiveprice can be given to the designer.
2.3.) Soldering&Assembly Fee. Soldering and some other works such as programming andtesting. In Shenzhen, there are plenty of the soldering factory dedicated on this,but the starting fee is high for prototyping or small batch, as actually thereare lot of works to start the production. The special prototyping &smallbatch production vendors organize all the small productions together and makethis kind of production “Smart”, with lower cost and shorter lead time.
2.4.) Shipping Fee. In Shenzhen, the DHL/Fedex/UPS are allavailable with completive price. Besides, as Shenzhen not far from HongKong,some company use the shipping service in HongKong, with even more lowershipping cost.