NEW!! We just introduced a neat little manual pick and place machine: SMT Caddy!

[jmelson]

Right!  I am a ONE MAN business, and I sell to anywhere in the world, from the US.  Even China and Russia.  (Well, OK, not Palestine and North Korea.)    I have a FedEx account, PayPal and a credit card merchant account, and run  my own web store.  I get a LOT of international orders, it runs around 30 international right now.   My items are less expensive than a P&P machine, but if I can do it, really any business can.

You do have to come up with a harmonized tariff number for your items.  The Dept. of Commerce can help you get the number, but it is a lot faster to look it up on their web site.

Jon

Do your products need to comply with regulations as varied and complex as those of electronics and if so, do they? Do you comply with the tax laws of the countries you sell to?

Literally, not munitions.  Maybe a hint of dual-use though, as I sell servo and stepper controller boards and servo amplifiers.  The only place I really got worried is I had a potential customer in Palestine, and I had a strong feeling that the Israelis would not let servo control hardware in, what with the "metal shops" that make rockets to shoot at Israel.  So, I was really glad when that customer just went away.

Tax laws of countries I sell to?  That is the CUSTOMER's problem!  I have had plenty of customers that want me to mark the customs form as a gift or worth $10 or something, I just refuse.  For the small cost of the stuff I sell, many customers get it without paying taxes and duties.  But, in some countries, they have quite high duties, such as 120%.  I just fill out the customs forms truthfully, and let the buyer deal with the customs authorities.

I have to pay taxes to two US states (the one where I reside and one where I sold stuff to a state university) I REALLY don't want to have to pay taxes to foreign countries.  As far as I know, with no presence in any foreign country, no reps or agents, I do not have to deal with any of that.

Jon

[Mr. Scram]

Literally, not munitions.  Maybe a hint of dual-use though, as I sell servo and stepper controller boards and servo amplifiers.  The only place I really got worried is I had a potential customer in Palestine, and I had a strong feeling that the Israelis would not let servo control hardware in, what with the "metal shops" that make rockets to shoot at Israel.  So, I was really glad when that customer just went away.

Tax laws of countries I sell to?  That is the CUSTOMER's problem!  I have had plenty of customers that want me to mark the customs form as a gift or worth $10 or something, I just refuse.  For the small cost of the stuff I sell, many customers get it without paying taxes and duties.  But, in some countries, they have quite high duties, such as 120%.  I just fill out the customs forms truthfully, and let the buyer deal with the customs authorities.

I have to pay taxes to two US states (the one where I reside and one where I sold stuff to a state university) I REALLY don't want to have to pay taxes to foreign countries.  As far as I know, with no presence in any foreign country, no reps or agents, I do not have to deal with any of that.

Jon

It sounds like you're mainly worried about ITAR regulations. Running afoul of those can be a real nightmare, but generally isn't your main concern. Complying with "regular" regulations is generally the issue, which span health and safety, technical and environmental requirements, declarations of conformity and more. Each country or union will have its own variants, with its own gotchas, and as the exporter you will typically be responsible. It might be that you have a bit more leeway on account of making parts, rather than full products, but SMT Caddy won't have that advantage. Regardless, there are a lot of things to take into consideration.

The EU tax laws stipulate that a seller pays VAT in the country of the buyer and not the seller. It might be different for non EU sellers, but it shows that saying that it's the problem of the buyer and calling it a day isn't a surefire approach. To get a glimpse of what laws you'll be dealing with when exporting from the US to the EU, visit the following link. https://2016.export.gov/europeanunion/marketresearch/sellingusproductsandservicesintheeu/index.asp

Anyone could do it, but it sounds it's made easy by ignoring most of what you deal with when trading with various nations. If you do it the correct way, it often isn't quite so easy. People get paid good money for their knowledge of the rules and how to navigate them and that's not because it's trivial.

[Corporate666]

Geeeez ...................... this is not the way to run a business.

How hard is it to get an account with FedEx or DHL, pack the item up securely & send it to your customers overseas?

You get a signature on delivery & accept payment by Paypal or into your bank etc before shipping.

But please, put your video camera on a stand & redo your video like a professional ............. if you are serious about wanting to truly enter this market.

It most definitely is a smart way to run a business.  There is a LOT more to it than just getting the product in the hands of the customer.

There is support, spare parts, being able to respond to emails and phone calls during normal hours, the differences in culture, exchange rates, the differences in power and MANY more differences.  It is much more costly to sell and support product that you sell to customers in other countries - and with all due respect to international folks, people in many countries tend to be *incredibly* cheap... they whine about every penny.  So not only do they not want to pay a premium, they often/usually want things cheaper on the basis that they are having to wait longer or that they're having to pay higher shipping costs or that bank fees or exchange rates cost them more than someone domestically would have paid.

The USA is one of the largest and wealthiest markets in the world, especially for a premium priced product.  If they have enough customers here, then it can be a really smart business decision to focus on the USA market before they think about selling elsewhere, especially so until they are established and able to make a really well-researched and well-executed international effort.

[Corporate666]

Tax laws of countries I sell to?  That is the CUSTOMER's problem!  I have had plenty of customers that want me to mark the customs form as a gift or worth $10 or something, I just refuse.  For the small cost of the stuff I sell, many customers get it without paying taxes and duties.  But, in some countries, they have quite high duties, such as 120%.  I just fill out the customs forms truthfully, and let the buyer deal with the customs authorities.

You are correct.  The issue is the customer that ignores your message on the check-out screen of your web-store saying "please do not ask us to mark this item as a gift, we cannot do so an such requests will be ignored", then writes "please mark this as a gift"... then when your $2,800 pick and place machine arrives, they send you an irate email demanding you pay the 500 Euro import taxes they just got charged - and when you refuse and point to the note on the website, they get more angry and refuse to pay the customs fee.  A day or two later, you get a chargeback on your credit card account or on PayPal, but your $2800 machine sits in customs for months until you get a call asking if you want to pay the $300 to get it shipped back.

Or you constantly get customers complaining about the $500 shipping price... "you're robbing me!" they say, because they can have a heavier item shipped by DHL from China in 3 days for 50 Euro, and you want to charge them ten times that.  So you call DHL but that's the lowest price they offer.  You find that US Postal will ship by Priority Mail for $200, so you start offering that.. and every customer chooses that... but the tracking info is spotty, and half your customers email you demanding to know where the package is even though they have the tracking number and the last scan shows it was received by the postal service in their country.  The next day they say it must be lost and want you to send a replacement... you try to calm them down and wait a bit.  This usually works, but once in a while someone just files a dispute with their credit card... you can't provide a signature that it was delivered, so you lose and $2,800 is deducted from your bank account.   A couple of weeks later you see the tracking is updated and it was delivered!  You contact the customer who doesn't reply to your emails.  You contact the credit card company who tells you the chargeback is already closed and you need to talk to the customer.  You get angry and vow never to ship without a signature again... but now you're back to people screaming bloody murder for "ripping them off" by charging $500 for shipping - even though that is what DHL is charging you.

Putting something in a box and having a courier collect it is the easy part.  Dealing with support and international customers is the hard part.  *Especially* for expensive items.

The right way to do it is to have a distributor in Europe that is buying these things by the container load, or at least by the dozens and having them shipped ocean freight and handling support/spare parts and shipping within the EU.

[jmelson]

 You find that US Postal will ship by Priority Mail for $200, so you start offering that.. and every customer chooses that... but the tracking info is spotty, and half your customers email you demanding to know where the package is even though they have the tracking number and the last scan shows it was received by the postal service in their country.

Yes, the USPS and destination PS is NOTHING like FedEx or other international couriers.  I have plenty of problems with $300 boxes that arrive in the destination country, and the buyer has to call, email, visit the post office, etc. for WEEKS to find out that the box has been sitting in Customs for weeks, and they would eventually get a postcard out to the buyer telling him he owes taxes/duties.  I can't imagine sending a $2000 - $3000 complex machine under those circumstances.

FedEx and other couriers REALLY ride herd on these customs issues, but you PAY for that service.

Jon

[Corporate666]

A new, affordable tool for building your own boards:

I like how it works and I would like a machine like this in my shop for short-run boards and one-offs.  But I'll give some honest feedback.

As a commercial user, I am not looking at the cost the same way as a hobbyist... but I still think $2800 is too much.  I do manufacturing (mechanical + electronic) and I can see it's well designed and made, but I can't help feeling you designed this and went to various local manufacturers and got quotes for parts and then assembled the units and arrived at your final price based on the materials + machined parts + labor + profit.  I can't help feeling you are either paying way too much for your custom machined parts or your design is too complicated and could be dramatically simplified?  For a machine like this, in commercial use, my gut feel is it shouldn't cost more than $2k for a high quality US-made unit.  I'd expect a shitty Chinese one to cost a few hundred or less and be wobbly and not work very well.

The main things that struck me about this in watching the video are..

-I don't like the board holding system.  Maybe it's just not illustrated well in the video, but I can imagine releasing a fully populated board, having it fall down or spring up from holding it while you try to slide off the holder and hitting the X/Y axis rail or my other hand and sending lots of components flying or out of position.  My PnP has 2 parallel rails with rubber belts to load the board in, then the belts stop and the rails squeeze closed to clamp the board.  Maybe an optional vise with machined rails on the jaws and a "twist a quarter turn to magnetically lock" would satisfy me.. I dunno.  I just dislike those little clamps.

-If you're going to the bother of having the computer screen and given the price, I would want to be able to at least program in coordinates for picks and placements and a BOM so that an LED at the feeder location lights up (or a directional arrow on the screen shows where you need to move for the pick), then when you get the component the location of the placement is highlighted with a green box on the video screen or something.  This would let me have someone who doesn't know a damn thing about electronics or circuits use this machine.  Right now, the user needs to know what all the parts are and where they go, so they have to either be an electronics person or they need a build sheet taped to the wall next to the machine and before each pick they need to match the component with what's written on the feeder and then before each placement they need to refer to the build sheet to see where it goes.  That's too much wasted time for a machine that's purpose is to save time.  Yes, this would require encoders on X/Y but that's not too expensive and at this price level that would be a deal breaker for me.

-Lastly, I would never ever buy a machine like this that does not automatically index the feeders!  I hate that you have to push a little button and wait for the feeder to dispense before you can pick.  And I hate that it seems the actual exposed parts are outside the camera FOV while you're pressing the button.  IMO that's a deal breaker.  The feeder should be able to be programmed to move a set amount after each pick.  My Quad uses beam break sensors on each feeder - very cheap and reliable and just detects when the nozzle came down and picked a part. I can see so much time would be wasted constantly indexing feeders the way this is designed.

...and speaking of feeders, I don't want to cut pieces of tape off reels and mount them on separate feeders for this machine.  I'd rather it either work with just pieces of tape stuck to the bed or with tape right off the reel.  The last thing I want to do when I want to run off 10 of some PCB is start by loading up a bunch of feeders for my manual PnP.

Oh - and I specifically would not want it to be able to get online. I would never, ever want to be doing anything other than placing boards with this machine but in a commercial environment, tech-savvy millennials will quickly figure out that the computer on the manual PnP has internet access, and I don't want someone I hired to assemble boards to be screwing around on Facebook while they're supposed to be working 

[Mr. Scram]

Regarding the latter: I've found it better to pay people for their work, rather than their presence.

[Mr. Scram]

Usually most countries assign tax and regulation compliance duty to importers (which is your final buyer if it's a direct international order), so you can sell to any country as long as you are complying to US EAR rules. Will your customer evade use tax? Will you customer risk running a non CE certified gear? That's their responsibility, not yours.
You will be guilty if you help them to dodge tax by declaring fake CN22 value, but other than that, I see no risk at all selling internationally. As a side note, almost all Chinese sellers declare $0 gift on CN22, and so far I've never heard of anyone got caught. Foreign laws don't work in China, and the buyer has plausible deniability. Win win situation for both seller and buyer, and fuck the government.

Again, fairly recent changes to EU tax law put the burden on the seller in regards to VAT, at least for EU to EU sales. The seller needs to establish where the buyer resides, and tax accordingly. If he exceeds a certain revenue for a country, he will be required to register locally as a business and do the paperwork locally. This can happen for each country independently.

It's a mess, but I guess they're trying to prevent companies from selling from low tax countries. It's a huge burden for smaller businesses, though.

[mikeselectricstuff]

...and speaking of feeders, I don't want to cut pieces of tape off reels and mount them on separate feeders for this machine.  I'd rather it either work with just pieces of tape stuck to the bed or with tape right off the reel.  The last thing I want to do when I want to run off 10 of some PCB is start by loading up a bunch of feeders for my manual PnP.

I think the answer to this is simply have a load of width-adjustable tape lanes that can either take cut strips, or be fed from a reel. 
I'm not convinced that manually advancing and dealing with cover tape would  slow  things down enough to justify the cost of anything more complex. With the vision and moving head you don't really need a fixed pick position, so you can feed & peel every few picks.
Or even use one hand for advancing & peeling while the other does the pick/place. Vacuum should be foot-pedal controlled, obviously.

[SMT Caddy]

Good evening/morning folks!

As promised, here's a raw, no fluff clip, building a single board on a panel (the LED controller for SMT Caddy!)

https://youtu.be/WHBm-_ZKOV0

(please forgive the hurried and raw quality!)

I'll take the liberty to reply to various posts without quoting ...

Re. international sales, I believe Mr. Scram has addressed the situation rather accurately. There is tremendous pressure from EU and various member countries, shifting the tax collection burden onto the seller and the selling country. The word is large retailers, e.g., Amazon and ebay, will be collecting VAT on all European sales in not too distant a future. Canada, Australia, etc., will follow suit. I won't repeat the implications Mr. Scram has patiently discussed. Again, there are also certification and regulatory concerns, especially, with anything with electrons flowing through it!

Corporate666, thank you for the suggestions, and, I do agree with a number of your sentiments, there will be a Rev. B, if not a Gen II! But, that's months away. To appreciate the work that goes into a product, and having to recoup some of the cost, there are north of 30 injection molding tools just producing the plastic components for SMT Caddy! We design and build the tools at our facility; we even shoot them here (you can hear the molding machines and robots in the background.)

The tape can be reeled onto the mini-reels, or, loaded in strip format (8, 12 or 16). The cover is peeled and spooled automatically. Pressing the button for a second is not an issue, nor a significant cycle time adder. You have to take my word for it We have never bought a full reel of anything for any electronics we build since no component quantity ever goes beyond a few hundred (we seldom need more than a few dozen of any board). We took our own experience of a few decades as a good setpoint for the average prototyping/short-run requirement. Our reason for providing the mini-reels was to reel up some common components and have present at all times, a 10µF electrolytic, for example. More often than not, the need dictates a strip of cut tape, at least in my experience. Anything beyond this should really go on an automatic P&P.

We haven't had any problems with the magnetic board retainers. Not something that has ever come up among the folks here. Adding a conventional clamping fixture is of course, quite simple. The nice thing with the little magnet retainers (which have a soft, conductive rubber foot, producing ESD path as well as a decent sticktion feature) is when it comes to odd-shaped boards, even circular cutouts, or, multiple little boards being manufactured at the same time.

Manual P&P greatly relies on steady hands; nature of the beast! (Gen II may address this!)

We started with a foot-pedal and elected to switch to a hand button. The other hand has nothing to do anyway The foot-pedal cord can become an issue and your foot keeps losing the pedal, unless you use a massive, captive housing flavor ... matter of preference I think ...

Internet access is not something you can avoid these days! Everyone has a smartphone in their pocket. You can disable the wifi on the controller though.

I hope I've addressed most of the main comments.

[asmi]

The foot-pedal cord can become an issue and your foot keeps losing the pedal, unless you use a massive, captive housing flavor ... matter of preference I think ...

Or just tape the base down to the floor. You guys forgot the first principle of engineering - duct tape is the single most useful tool of any real engineer!

[Kjelt]

I really like it.   
Price is steep but not out of touch if you compare it to other commercial offerings.

A lot of improvements were already mentioned.
One I did not read yet and what would make it even greater for the occasional hobbyist IMO is if you put it in a nice firm aluminium (suit)case.
That way it can be closed and placed anywhere in a cupboard or shelf if you don't need it and get it out the moment you do.
Perhaps you can put the electronics and base in the lower side of the case and have a detachable upperlid.
Not everybody has a spare table or enough room in his shack and this small thing would be a perfect match for that.

[Nauris]

You are correct.  The issue is the customer that ignores your message on the check-out screen of your web-store saying "please do not ask us to mark this item as a gift, we cannot do so an such requests will be ignored", then writes "please mark this as a gift"... then when your $2,800 pick and place machine arrives, they send you an irate email demanding you pay the 500 Euro import taxes they just got charged - and when you refuse and point to the note on the website, they get more angry and refuse to pay the customs fee.  A day or two later, you get a chargeback on your credit card account or on PayPal, but your $2800 machine sits in customs for months until you get a call asking if you want to pay the $300 to get it shipped back.

That is exactly why international customers pay by wire at their expense, only. Credit card and paypal absolutely not accepted on anything over $2000.

... You find that US Postal will ship by Priority Mail for $200, so you start offering that.. and every customer chooses that... but the tracking info is spotty, and half your customers email you demanding to know where the package is even though they have the tracking number and the last scan shows it was received by the postal service in their country.  The next day they say it must be lost and want you to send a replacement...

Customer can buy insurance for his parcel if he so wishes. If he pinched a penny there, so sad.

You get angry and vow never to ship without a signature again... but now you're back to people screaming bloody murder for "ripping them off" by charging $500 for shipping - even though that is what DHL is charging you.

Well, there is plenty of free space in your email folder, ain't there?

You see, international trade ain't hard at all. It is just about having the proper attitude.

[DerekG]

You see, international trade ain't hard at all. It is just about having the proper attitude.

Quite right.

My company is only small with just a couple of employees & we ship product overseas all the time without hassles. We offer support from our Australian Office. We have an address in the USA for customers to ship any faulty product to which then sends it back to Australia for examination. The big thing to remember is that your product must be RELIABLE. The costs involved in warranty claims therefore becomes insignificant compared to the profits made by selling to overseas customers.

[Mr. Scram]

Quite right.

My company is only small with just a couple of employees & we ship product overseas all the time without hassles. We offer support from our Australian Office. We have an address in the USA for customers to ship any faulty product to which then sends it back to Australia for examination. The big thing to remember is that your product must be RELIABLE. The costs involved in warranty claims therefore becomes insignificant compared to the profits made by selling to overseas customers.

Does your product require certifying, conformity testing or anything similar and, if yes, is it done?

[DerekG]

Does your product require certifying, conformity testing or anything similar and, if yes, is it done?

Yes.

We are required to meet the Australian & IIRC/ISO Standards. This includes CE compliance testing. We also build lead free product for everything being shipped to the EU. Each product exported carries a copy of these signed certifications. We do state in our Terms & Conditions of Sale however that is it the responsibility of the overseas purchaser to ensure these certifications meet their import requirements. We are outside of the EU & so we do not need to register for VAT. This gets automatically charged (if applicable) on importation by the freight carrier.

For many countries we accept credit cards & Paypal for small value shipments & money into our bank account for larger shipments. For countries in South America, Africa, Russia etc we only accept payment into our bank account before shipping.

We do get some prospective purchasers from known non-paying countries that complain about depositing direct into our account. We have a special file in our email system for these. It is called the "junk" file.

[rx8pilot]

Joining the conversation.....

Short and misplld from my mobile......

[amirm]

Manual P&P greatly relies on steady hands; nature of the beast! (Gen II may address this!)

First, my compliments on a simple solution to this problem.  I love my CNC machine but programming the beast is always a pain. 

My question regarding above is hand strain.  How long can you work this way without the wrist giving out?

[Psi]

The ideal price point for this sort of thing is in the $300 range.

[Kjelt]

The ideal price point for this sort of thing is in the $300 range.

Nonsense, the BOM would be around $100, for that you can not even commercially build something with a camera , vacuum and 1 electrical feeder.
IMO if you build this yourself from scratch and pay yourself $10 an hour it would cost you more than $800.- being a conservative estimate.
I am not sure what your wage is but I bet it is more than $10 

[Mr. Scram]

The ideal price point for this sort of thing is in the $300 range.

Ideally it would be free, but there's an obvious problem with that.

[mikeselectricstuff]

I think a better solution would be to make it modular and user upgradeable.
Base system is just sliders & pickup - no electronics.
You can then add magnifer, feeders, encoders for tracking overlays.
That way you have a low entry cost, and as users find what they need as they start using it, they can upgrade to suit their needs.

[sokoloff]

Due to the tax and certification overheads, we decided to stick with the US market for now, but, we plan to partner up with an EU distributor, soon. Sorry for the inconvenience! you can take it up with the regulatory authorities making it rather impossible to work internationally unless you're Google!

Geeeez ...................... this is not the way to run a business.

On the contrary, I think this is exactly how to run a business.

Start in one, well-defined, sufficiently sized market and figure out if you can get product-market fit in that market enough to turn a profit.
Don't get distracted by all of the things that you could do, but focus on the things you must do to reach cashflow breakeven.

If it proves out in the US (which is a sufficiently sized market), then you can decide to tackle another product/SKU, another geography, another customer segment, or whatever other next step is, but you'll kill yourself trying to address all SKUs, all segments, and all geos at once. If you succeed in your first part of the addressable market, you can expand later. If you spread yourself too thin from day one, you run a higher risk of failure, IMO.

How hard is it to get an account with FedEx or DHL, pack the item up securely & send it to your customers overseas?

Not hard, but this is less than 5% of what it takes to really sell a product into all states in Europe. How do you handle support? How do you handle service? Do you translate the manuals? Are there any specific health and safety concerns for those given states? What about the EU laws on merchantability and fitness? Can you be sued in a random state in Europe now? Will you need to offer customer support by phone during the European workday?

But please, put your video camera on a stand & redo your video like a professional ............. if you are serious about wanting to truly enter this market.

100% agree there.

[lundmar]

A cheap affordable pick and place machine, great...

I was watching the video and thinking "nice, now he is teaching the machine how to do the first pick and place..." then after some repeat placings I realized it was manual??

I'm sorry, but it seems a bit silly to do all that engineering into what is seemingly well constructed mechanics and then skip the the last step of putting in step motors and control to make it automatic.

My suggestion, add the step motors and control, ditch the custom screen in favor of a mobile application that can be used with any Android device and you have a winner product.

[Mr. Scram]

A cheap affordable pick and place machine, great...

I was watching the video and thinking "nice, now he is teaching the machine how to do the first pick and place..." then after some repeat placings I realized it was manual??

I'm sorry, but it seems a bit silly to do all that engineering into what is seemingly well constructed mechanics and then skip the the last step of putting in step motors and control to make it automatic.

My suggestion, add the step motors and control, ditch the custom screen in favor of a mobile application that can be used with any Android device and you have a winner product.

Automating something like this isn't a trivial task. It could easily double or triple the development time and costs.