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How good/bad investment in PCB-A service is?

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nardev:

--- Quote from: blueskull on June 28, 2020, 02:50:03 am ---
--- Quote from: nardev on June 28, 2020, 02:41:57 am ---Aaaa.. no. I'm primarily asking about just PCB-A for other companies and only devices that are not completely at the edge for manufacturing with the machines that i mentioned.

--- End quote ---

I understand, but why would a company go to your business?

If they can get cheaper options from China, they will. If not, there will be a huge demand in the West and Germany and Switzerland will swiftly populate the need with full automation.

OSHPark pioneered fully automated PCB pooling and panelization, JLCPCB pioneered the same on assembly. What makes you think the Germans and Swiss will not take their industrial advantage and offer similar services in Europe?

Manufacturing is a game that only the biggest fish survives. If they can get it done at zero labor cost, 1 day turnaround and fully automatically inspected, you are toast. If China is a complete dead end, there will be more than enough money poured into this market, and it will happen.

Regardless how streamlined you think your business is, you are simply no match to algorithm and automation.

--- End quote ---

Well, ok, an opinion accepted.

I worked with three different companies from central europe, they pretty much think the same as you described but there is one place which is 1000-3000 batch which costs quite some money as they are charged pretty high money per board. Also, post production custom work, i don't know how flexible are those companies that you have in mind. They have pretty much everything very well optimized but also quite constrained.

I thought of that type of scenario.

One example, a fellow of mine had an issue with PCB-A services in china. They have asked for more than 9EUR per board, which is like 22 different parts and maybe 30 parts in total.

The jlcpcb couldn't do that, he also have some parts that are not easy to provide and ship there. He has the pre-programmed controllers that he is not willing to ship to China etc.

for a batch of 3000-5000 boards, i would be pretty profitable if i could do it in a week, and i would not even mention that my price would be only a fraction as my cost i very very low (even when i add unexpected expenses and other guarantees). Plus shipping would be pretty quick and cheap, without any taxes.



 

olkipukki:

--- Quote from: nardev on June 22, 2020, 07:20:07 pm ---What are disadvantages and advantages for this business if living in undeveloped country?

--- End quote ---

Is B&H become part of EU? I doubt it...

In this case, what about VAT, import/export duties and taxes, and just simple shipping in/out country?

As example,
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/strange-claim-and-reply-by-digikey-about-min-120-eur-shipping-rate/msg2939204/#msg2939204


nardev:

--- Quote from: olkipukki on June 28, 2020, 09:05:32 am ---
--- Quote from: nardev on June 22, 2020, 07:20:07 pm ---What are disadvantages and advantages for this business if living in undeveloped country?

--- End quote ---

Is B&H become part of EU? I doubt it...

In this case, what about VAT, import/export duties and taxes, and just simple shipping in/out country?

As example,
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/strange-claim-and-reply-by-digikey-about-min-120-eur-shipping-rate/msg2939204/#msg2939204

--- End quote ---

You are right, it's not in EU but "there is plenty of ways" in my situation to "make as if it is". And besides all, as it's a candidate, we have some tax free relations with EU countries.

tom66:
From what I understand there are two big costs to pick and place and PCBA.

For a new design, a significant amount of time is taken up by the operator configuring the machine.  This is one area JLCPCB have innovated in, they have an automated service and a database of known components and many machines configured to pick components according to customer configured program.  This means that they can keep many of the ~1,500 parts in their catalogue on machines and just shoot random customer boards through these machines. For other components they have machines with interchangeable reels that allow them to access a larger catalogue but they charge more for these parts.

If you can produce many hundreds of boards for a given order the operator set up time is amortised, and maybe less essential to the overall cost. So it depends entirely on whether you expect to get mostly prototype orders of a few boards at a time or do mass manufacturing.

The secondary cost is maintenance on the machines, loading new reels as reels are exhausted, inventory, and purchasing.  At the company I work at we do most assembly ourselves, and we have estimated that *all in* the cost per component placed on the board is around 4 pence.  Now that actually is quite a lot of money when you consider the average part cost might be a tenth of that (e.g. 0402 resistor) but you have to remember a pick and place machine is not a one-time buy, it is a precision piece of instrumentation that requires annual servicing (a day's work for the engineer so I imagine £500 minimum), plus it needs to be cleaned and parts may break down from time to time.  There is also the energy consumption of the reflow oven.  The oven takes 40kW three phase power, and takes about 10 minutes to warm up and uses about 70% of its rated power once at temperature.  If you are only doing a few boards/hour at an industrial rate of £0.18 per kWh then the oven is costing you £5/hour in energy costs alone - which could be half of what you are paying your employee!   Our boss has taken to suggesting that in summer months we bunch up jobs into the early lunchtime/afternoon period and run them through while sun shines on our 50kW rooftop solar array. It reduces costs a fair bit.  The PnP machine we have also requires dry compressed air, so we have two air dryers and pumps on site, which cost another £20,000 to install and have a bi-annual service schedule.

Purchasing at our company is a full time job for one person, plus we have goods in and a production manager, so that is three full time salaries there, probably £80,000 minimum in salaries, plus taxes and HR costs.  This is for a company with business ca £1m per year. 

Not to put you off, it's great to see people in this field. Just think about the costs and margins.

nardev:

--- Quote from: tom66 on June 28, 2020, 12:38:18 pm ---From what I understand there are two big costs to pick and place and PCBA.

For a new design, a significant amount of time is taken up by the operator configuring the machine.  This is one area JLCPCB have innovated in, they have an automated service and a database of known components and many machines configured to pick components according to customer configured program.  This means that they can keep many of the ~1,500 parts in their catalogue on machines and just shoot random customer boards through these machines. For other components they have machines with interchangeable reels that allow them to access a larger catalogue but they charge more for these parts.

If you can produce many hundreds of boards for a given order the operator set up time is amortised, and maybe less essential to the overall cost. So it depends entirely on whether you expect to get mostly prototype orders of a few boards at a time or do mass manufacturing.

The secondary cost is maintenance on the machines, loading new reels as reels are exhausted, inventory, and purchasing.  At the company I work at we do most assembly ourselves, and we have estimated that *all in* the cost per component placed on the board is around 4 pence.  Now that actually is quite a lot of money when you consider the average part cost might be a tenth of that (e.g. 0402 resistor) but you have to remember a pick and place machine is not a one-time buy, it is a precision piece of instrumentation that requires annual servicing (a day's work for the engineer so I imagine £500 minimum), plus it needs to be cleaned and parts may break down from time to time.  There is also the energy consumption of the reflow oven.  The oven takes 40kW three phase power, and takes about 10 minutes to warm up and uses about 70% of its rated power once at temperature.  If you are only doing a few boards/hour at an industrial rate of £0.18 per kWh then the oven is costing you £5/hour in energy costs alone - which could be half of what you are paying your employee!   Our boss has taken to suggesting that in summer months we bunch up jobs into the early lunchtime/afternoon period and run them through while sun shines on our 50kW rooftop solar array. It reduces costs a fair bit.  The PnP machine we have also requires dry compressed air, so we have two air dryers and pumps on site, which cost another £20,000 to install and have a bi-annual service schedule.

Purchasing at our company is a full time job for one person, plus we have goods in and a production manager, so that is three full time salaries there, probably £80,000 minimum in salaries, plus taxes and HR costs.  This is for a company with business ca £1m per year. 

Not to put you off, it's great to see people in this field. Just think about the costs and margins.

--- End quote ---

Thank you for some thoughts.

Just to point out. The 1kWh in my country, costs 0.04 to 0.08 EUR depending on day period. During the day it's cheaper from 1300-1600 and also night from 2200-0700. :) Much cheaper different than in most places.

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