best places for an electronics hobbyist to live in

[xaxaxa]

We all know that the chinese are highly privileged when it comes to easy access to prototyping services and parts (you can e.g. get a PCBA made and delivered in days for a low price, and easy access to parts on the shenzhen market via taobao). Shipping within the entire country is fast and cheap.

In most of the developed world it's impossible to find local PCB/PCBA services for a reasonable price, and shipping from china is either slow or very expensive. Mouser/digikey are reasonable for low end parts, but the markup is just too high for e.g. FPGAs, RF power transistors, mass market but "high end" parts like the AD9363, ADF4351, etc. There is also no real refurbished parts market for things like cellular base station power transistors, where price difference is usually two orders of magnitude between new and refurbished parts. Tooling is also problematic; I needed a small table saw designed for cutting PCBs, but it just simply doesn't exist outside of china, and it's too heavy to be shipped economically.

However I was thinking where else in the world do people enjoy similar levels of privilege? Russia? Japan? Is there any alternative to china if you want to be productive as a part/full-time electronics hobbyist/entrepreneur?

[wraper]

Russia is certainly not one of them. It's actually on the worse end. Availability of parts is not that good, they are quite expensive and most of distributors won't even work with private customers. Test equipment is expensive. No cheap used equipment, unless it's very old Soviet stuff.  No cheap PCB services either, and there are only a few of them to begin with. You'd be in much better position sitting in countryside of US rather than in capital of Russia.

[jpanhalt]

To avoid shipping from Digikey, you might move to Thief River Falls, MN.   Nice place in August, if you can avoid the mosquitoes.

As for a small table saw, Micro-mark and Proxxon sell one.  I have the Micromark version and have used it for years with a carbide blade for cutting and scoring PCB's.

[apis]

I could imagine the next Shenzhen would be in India in the future, they also have a large economy and have an interest in technology, but I doubt there will ever be anything comparable to China today. The incredible economical and technological growth in China is probably going to be the world record for a long long time. China have a population of 1.4 billion people and land area of 9.6 million km², the potential for growth there is unprecedented. Other countries will do the same transformation no doubt, but there just aren't any other countries of the same size.

[OwO]

Japan reached where China is today a long time ago. I wonder what it's like now? How about Korea? I recall seeing mentions of reasonable PCB services there.

[linux-works]

silicon valley used to be a great place for the hardware hobby.  its still ok but over time, things erode.  just this month, a long time staple 'halted (hsc) electronics' closed to the public (seems they are selling it off and resorting to ebay-only, from now on, until its all gone.  my guess.)

that place was incredible, for surplus parts, used parts that you'd still want, 'new old stock' stuff, mechanical parts, test equip, wire, a whole wall of TH resistors by value, a whole wall of screws and standoffs.  a whole section for SMD reels.

now closed ;(

there used to be haltek, quement, weird stuff warehouse.  all gone, now.  things are not at all what they used to be, 20 yrs ago.

I think there's a large place in milpitas (excess solutions) that can fill the gap, if they are still open (not even sure).

I used to be able to tell people about all these parts stores, but now they're almost all gone.  housing is really overpriced and jobs are not long-term or reliable anymore.

I guess the shine from silicon valley is now gone.  its replaced by non-hardware products like bookface and its ilk.  this does seem to be a trend.

[jfiresto]

Germany is pretty good because it still makes things. Electronic parts distributors, PCB houses and tooling are all not a problem. Proxxon, based in Luxemburg, for example, makes table top power tools which are widely available, including a couple circular saws that may be what you are after. I could even special order one through an ordinary home improvement store, about 1 km from my flat, that stocks other Proxxon tools.

Less-electronically related materials and tools are also not a problem. I am currently fixing up a couple 40-year old microscopes and needed, among other things, a little, black POM rod stock, to make a lens thread adapter, and a phenolic ball to replace a missing changeover lever. I quickly found people selling POM cutoff on ebay.de at decent prices. As to the phenolic ball, once I found its canonical number, DIN 319C, I was in like Flynn.

[Bill158]

halted (hsc) electronics' closed to the public (seems they are selling it off and resorting to ebay-only, from now on, until its all gone.  my guess.)  now closed

I am still in deep depression over the closing of HSC!   A LARGE LOSS!

I think there's a large place in milpitas (excess solutions) that can fill the gap, if they are still open (not even sure).

EXCESS SOLUTIONS is now located at Alma and 7th Street in South San Jose,CA.  They do have a large stock of components, resistors, nuts/bolts and screws, but lack a lot of the ICs that HSC has/had.  I have found a few ICs at HSC that are simply unobtainium anywhere else including evil-bay or on the web!
Bill

[ebastler]

Proxxon, based in Luxemburg, for example, makes table top power tools which are widely available, including a couple circular saws that may be what you are after.

Proxxon makes some decent tools, but I recommend that you stay away from that saw. I have one at it is useless for PCBs. The sawblade and its bearing/mount flex far too easily, making straight cuts largely impossible. The model-making and RC forums are full of modification tips, but I don't think it's worth the effort.

[jfiresto]

... Proxxon makes some decent tools, but I recommend that you stay away from that saw....

Would you avoid both models, the KS 230 and the FET? I was thinking about getting the FET (last week, in fact) to cut some 1mm FR4, but realized it is so thin I can simply score and snap it.

[ebastler]

Would you avoid both models, the KS 230 and the FET? I was thinking about getting the FET (last week, in fact) to cut some 1mm FR4, but realized it is so thin I can simply score and snap it.

I only have (bad) experience with the KS 230. Going by the photographs available online, the FET looks like a more solidly built tool, but I can't really comment on it. 

[rstofer]

I live in the Central Valley of California, some 90+ miles from Silicon Valley.  I have no problem getting components from DigiKey, Mouser, Newark or any of the other reputable suppliers.  I wouldn't buy from China anyway.

PCBs are expensive so the layout better be right the first time:  ExpressPCB.com.  There are other services that bundle board production and farm it out to China but I don't really want to wait.

Equipment is plentiful, Amazon ships fast, Priority Mail is a great way to have stuff shipped, everything works out fine.  No complaints!

[Red Squirrel]

A place that is cheap to live in and where you can own a decent size property to expand your hobby, as well as have a good quality of life.   With the ability to get parts shipped from Digikey within a week (often only a few days) and tons of cheap PCB prototyping services around it makes no sense to try to live in a big central city that is expensive to live in and super crowded with a lesser quality of life when you can take your hobby anywhere.  The hustle and bustle is just not worth it imo.   As nice as it would be to have easy access to things that are normally not available locally, it's not worth the extra cost of being in those places and inability to own property.

[KL27x]

Anywhere in the US is just fine. No VAT. DHL shipping for 20-30.00.

Re Proxxon saw: If you want to make straight cuts in FR-4, you can use a 15.00 angle grinder with a 50 cent cutoff disc. Just clamp the board to a table and wear a dust mask. The result is fast and clean.

The Proxxon table saw would be more attractive for this kind of thing if you could lower the blade to score partway through. This would limit the dust escape and be more versatile. In case you wanted to make multiple pcbs, you could populate before depanelizing.

The greatest tool short of a CNC mill, IMO, is a tilting router table. See Woodgears.ca for Matthias Wandel's tilting router lift. It's dead simple (if you remove the gear lift mechanism). I adapted it to use with a Proxxon rotary tool, initially. You can easily score and cut miles of FR-4 with a single 1/8" carbide endmill. And you can do complex shaping, too.

[jfiresto]

Anywhere in the US is just fine. No VAT. DHL shipping for 20-30.00....

Fine, I trust, but expensive. Firms that use DHL generally charge less than $7 to ship up to 10 kilos (22 pounds) anywhere in Germany. And some of the markups at Digikey, Mouser and colleagues make 19% VAT look puny. For example, I discovered yesterday that I needed some 8mm, M3, male/female, brass spacers. My usual source charges 0.14 euros, quantity one ($0.16 at the current rate, including 19% VAT). The cheapest I can find at Digikey are $0.60 each, which to me is like paying 346% VAT. Digikey will drop their price if I buy more: to $0.3914, quantity 1500, or a mere 191% VAT. Similarly sized, non-metric spacers are even more expensive. In the end, I ordered twenty for 3.30 euros ($3.75), including three day delivery.

What I find a little strange is that twenty odd years ago, the U.S. was generally cheaper.
[EDIT: removed trailing blank lines & changed euro -> euros.]

[OwO]

Fine, I trust, but expensive. Firms that use DHL generally charge less than $7 to ship up to 10 kilos (22 pounds) anywhere in Germany. And some of the markups at Digikey, Mouser and colleagues make 19% VAT look puny. For example, I discovered yesterday that I needed some 8mm, M3, male/female, brass spacers. My usual source charges 0.14 euro, quantity one ($0.16 at the current rate, including 19% VAT). The cheapest I can find at Digikey are $0.60 each, which to me is like paying 346% VAT. Digikey will drop their price if I buy more: to $0.3914, quantity 1500, or a mere 191% VAT. Similarly sized, non-metric spacers are even more expensive. In the end, I ordered twenty for 3.30 euros ($3.75), including three day delivery.

What I find a little strange is that twenty odd years ago, the U.S. was generally cheaper.

And that's nothing compared to paying $57 for a XC7Z010 at digikey whereas it goes for about $14 on the market right now.

[ebastler]

Fine, I trust, but expensive. Firms that use DHL generally charge less than $7 to ship up to 10 kilos (22 pounds) anywhere in Germany. And some of the markups at Digikey, Mouser and colleagues make 19% VAT look puny.

For the Europeans here, just a quick plug for tme.eu, based in Poland. While their inventory is no match for Mouser and Digikey, they do have a pretty good selection of modern components. Their prices are much more reasonable, including reasonable shipping cost via DHL to most European countries. They require minimum order quantities (per component) on the cheaper components, but we are talking hobbyist-friendly numbers here -- 1 to 10 units.

No affiliation etc. 

[cdev]

Do any search engines exist to do parts or BOM pricing comparisons?

[Mr. Scram]

There are other factors too. The US has a large supply of relatively cheap high quality test equipment.

[cdev]

Do Digi-key (or similar firms) have a walk-in counter, if somebody actually does live nearby? Many of the stores in the Bay Area do/did, which is really nice.

To avoid shipping from Digikey, you might move to Thief River Falls, MN.   Nice place in August, if you can avoid the mosquitoes.

[elecman14]

Do any search engines exist to do parts or BOM pricing comparisons?

Think you want this: https://octopart.com/bom-tool/

As far as the table saw. You should look into using wet tile saw to cut pcbs. They work well, not sure if you would need to bake the pcb after cutting due to the water from the blade but it does keep the dust down. Fiberglass is not a fun thing to inhale. 

[Richard Crowley]

There are other services that bundle board production and farm it out to China but I don't really want to wait.

I know that OSH Park is a PCB consolidator, but they use US-based board fabricators.
Which are the consolidators that use Asian fabricators?

[coppercone2]

Yo how much money are you trying to save. You can pay for these services in america. Who would move to god damn communist china to save a couple of bucks on fucking pcb and counterfit shenzen parts?

This is nonsense.you will accumulate more shit then you can understand. If you want to run a sweat shop i understand... but a hobby?? How is shipping ever significant in terms of cost of a home design when compared to labor and parts cost?? You can bill yourself 20$ an hour easy even as a novice if you do electronics and thats lowballing the shit out of it.


All the refurbishing, manual studying, specitication understanding, testing of test equipment alone rate limits you severely.

[ebastler]

However I was thinking where else in the world do people enjoy similar levels of privilege? Russia? Japan? Is there any alternative to china if you want to be productive as a part/full-time electronics hobbyist/entrepreneur?

As coppercone just said, in rather clear terms: For hobbyists that is a moot question. Who would consider moving (be it to China or wherever) based on the price of components for the electronics hobby?! 

For "electronics entrepreneurs", there is obviously no universal answer. Just look at where electronics come from these days: Mass-produced consumer goods largely come from China. But high-end consumer goods, and even more so specialized instruments for industrial and scientific use, often come from various other countries. For these products, access to domain expertise and strong design teams, and being close to your customers (geographically and culturally), is more important than parts cost.

[xaxaxa]

Yo how much money are you trying to save. You can pay for these services in america. Who would move to god damn communist china to save a couple of bucks on fucking pcb and counterfit shenzen parts?

This is nonsense.you will accumulate more shit then you can understand. If you want to run a sweat shop i understand... but a hobby?? How is shipping ever significant in terms of cost of a home design when compared to labor and parts cost?? You can bill yourself 20$ an hour easy even as a novice if you do electronics and thats lowballing the shit out of it.


All the refurbishing, manual studying, specitication understanding, testing of test equipment alone rate limits you severely.

It isn't just a hobby; I do run a (small) business selling test equipment. In the past year or so total R&D expenditures make up about 10% of total costs, so if I bloat that 5x (which is an underestimate if you want to get the same speed of service in the USA), that is an increase in total cost of 50%, meaning my product retail price will have to go up proportionally. If it does it'll be much less competitive compared to alternatives. This is also completely ignoring the manufacturing and logistics side, which is actually a much bigger problem.

Cost isn't even the biggest issue; the prototype PCBA service (from JLCPCB) was an absolute game changer and there is no way I want to go back to manual PNP of 0402 passives for an afternoon per prototype. With this I can tackle much more complicated projects (like a zynq board with ddr3 ram and sdr transceiver) that can have hundreds of passives per board. I haven't been able to find another services like this anywhere. Unfortunately the JLCPCB assembly service isn't offered outside china.