Ramping up through hole board production

[EEVblog]

$45 a board sounds too much to be paying when you can do 3 boards an hour yourself.

I agree.
Have you quizzed them on why they think it takes over an hour per board (even at very high $45/hour?)
They do tend to overestimate things at first, and often come down in price once they have actually timed it themselves and know the numbers.

Dave.

[Simon]

$45 a board sounds too much to be paying when you can do 3 boards an hour yourself.

I agree.
Have you quizzed them on why they think it takes over an hour per board (even at very high $45/hour?)
They do tend to overestimate things at first, and often come down in price once they have actually timed it themselves and know the numbers.

Dave.

Quite, they know there is a sucker born every minute, guess why i decided to go self employed. Why work by the hour when I can charge as much as per hour per board and still be reasonable.

[Szewczykm]

Thanks, there have been some great suggestions on this thread.

I did ask them what was driving the cost so high.  I'm not regarded as an abrasive person and I thought the way I asked was nice, but after I asked what was driving the cost of $45 per board, they never followed up.  I guess anything less wasn't worth their time, I don't know.

" But man, 400$ for that.... if you're handy with some screws and some pieces of wood, there's no reason you shouldn't be able to build that yourself."

Yea, maybe.  I don't have any containers laying around that would work efficiently and I don't know what I'd use as a heating element.  I appreciate the go getter do it yourself thing, I have a hard time paying anyone to do something I could do myself, but in this case I think I'd be spending a lot of time that I don't have to make something that would probably inferior to the commercial product, which I think I can afford.

I have done some things like laying the resistors out near each other.  Actually I've replaced 3 rows of resistors with a bussed resistor network to simplify things.

I feel I'm really at the point where I want to make placing, trimming, and soldering more efficient.  All of the parts are bent and ready to go, placed in bins along the table in assembly line fashion.  I'm not sure how to make that more efficient without somehow going robotic.  So the next places for improvement are lead trimming and soldering.


"Otherwise, I nice method of speeding up the process would be to skip the bending of the leads, which also makes it harder (in the sense of taking longer time) to cut the leads after the components are soldered."

I did try this, but I found navigating the forest of leads trying to solder around them before trimming them took me longer than trimming then soldering.

While you may not be able to offer up a specific builder, maybe some keys for seeking them out would be helpful.  If you have someone you work with for short runs, 50 - 100 boards, how did you find them?  I think the problem I'm running into is that big outfits are, well, big.  They're easy to find but they're not altogether interested in my small project.  Small guys who are interested in helping are.. small.. harder to find.

[Szewczykm]

And those Piergiacomi tools are very cool.  I'm looking into getting a few of those now.  I love the cut/bend all in one idea.

Thanks!

[EEVblog]

While you may not be able to offer up a specific builder, maybe some keys for seeking them out would be helpful.  If you have someone you work with for short runs, 50 - 100 boards, how did you find them?  I think the problem I'm running into is that big outfits are, well, big.  They're easy to find but they're not altogether interested in my small project.  Small guys who are interested in helping are.. small.. harder to find.

I used to have my uWatches and uCurrent hand assembled in batches of 50-100 by a local guy who works in his garage.
He just charged based on time, and was happy to do one or a hundred boards, SMD or through-hole.
I'd simply keep looking and asking around.
Your time should not be spent assembling boards IMO, that's just a too generic a task to waste time doing yourself.
Things like testing and tweaking etc may be different.

Dave.

[jeroen74]

Yea, maybe.  I don't have any containers laying around that would work efficiently and I don't know what I'd use as a heating element.

Maybe a deep fryer would work? Possibly modded to get higher temps?

[ampdoctor]

I've found that often times when you get silly numbers it's a subtle way of them saying they don't want the job.  If you bite and accept the offer it's a cash cow for them. 

Hell, I'd charge you 45/hr as many boards as I can stuff, unless there's something really quirky going on.  btw, I'm 120 miles north west of Chicago so if you want to drop me a pvt message feel free.

[Smokey]

There are a few things that would give us a better idea of how much it should cost to stuff your boards:
Maybe I just missed it, but did you say what actual quantities you are looking to build?  Also how many components per board total and how many unique component values/types?  Any requirements like ROHS?  Do you need the boards washed or can you live with solder residue?  Do you have adequate assembly documentation (BOMS, Drawings, Specific instructions, fully assembled example)?  Is the silkscreen clear and organized as far as where all the parts go?

It does kind of sound like you might have got a "no bid" by way of silly quote.  Running small quantities of through hole boards can be a pain since someone (or many) has to be trained to do your specific boards based on your documentation.  It's not as easy as programming the pick and place.  Kind of like human setup time that makes small runs expensive, especially if the documentation isn't all there the way the assembly house is used to.

[daedalus]

Hi, I still think you would be better off looking at an smt redesign. If you post a pic of the pcb maybe we can suggest suitable smt connectors. You can get smt screw terminals rated up to 24A.