General > General Technical Chat
How good/bad investment in PCB-A service is?
nardev:
Ok, so i live in a pretty undeveloped country but it's only 5-8 hours drive from Vienna or Munich Germany. Express shipping available, everything pretty well connected. (Bosnia and Herzegovina) And i'm thinking about to establish PCB-A service.
Average payment officially around 460 EUR, i think that skilled technician that would help, can cost in total with taxes, around 800.
Renting or even purchasing manufacturing place is insignificant expense. Don't plan to employ more than one technician, there is available and experienced person for communication with clients other than me.
Also, there is almost no need for PCB-A service in this country, and there is only two companies that i know, that do PCB-A, both for foreign clients and they have pretty long wait list for clients.
The question is, does it make sense, to invest up to 20-25k$ for just and only PCB-A service, to purchase small and simple pick and place machine, like Neoden 4 and Neoden IN6 and just offer custom, low batch, PCB-A and testing service with the limitation and capabilities of the equipment that i mentioned. And perhaps some manual work about the products.
The service would require a client to ship all parts and perhaps even PCBs (although i can get those made in my country pretty affordable but bit slower) and my service would be only as i said, assemble, test, package, custom package even, possible even ship to desired addresses etc...
Does this business make any sense?
Can this be profitable and under what conditions?
How hard is to find clients for such a service?
What are disadvantages and advantages for this business if living in undeveloped country?
What else would you point out?
nctnico:
I'd strongly suggest to buy components and boards yourself. Then you know they where stored & handled right and / or whether you need to bake them or not. You'd be amazed how some people don't care about handling components the right way. A couple of years ago one of the assemblers I use received a bag with fine pitch SMT connectors thrown in. There wasn't one connector without bent pins. The same for your boards; if your clients tries to save money by using HASL instead of ENIG you end up with boards which are hard to P&P and solder. Likely you'll need to tune things like the paste mask too depending on your paste screening machine.
Maybe you can start smaller using a semi-manual pick & place and see how that goes. If the jobs get bigger then it is time to get a P&P machine. By then you'll also have a better idea on what P&P to get (maybe not the cheapest but the most versatile for low volume jobs). A big cost of a P&P machine is not the machine itself but setting it up for each job.
nardev:
--- Quote from: nctnico on June 23, 2020, 10:02:24 am ---I'd strongly suggest to buy components and boards yourself. Then you know they where stored & handled right and / or whether you need to bake them or not. You'd be amazed how some people don't care about handling components the right way. A couple of years ago one of the assemblers I use received a bag with fine pitch SMT connectors thrown in. There wasn't one connector without bent pins. The same for your boards; if your clients tries to save money by using HASL instead of ENIG you end up with boards which are hard to P&P and solder. Likely you'll need to tune things like the paste mask too depending on your paste screening machine.
Maybe you can start smaller using a semi-manual pick & place and see how that goes. If the jobs get bigger then it is time to get a P&P machine. By then you'll also have a better idea on what P&P to get (maybe not the cheapest but the most versatile for low volume jobs). A big cost of a P&P machine is not the machine itself but setting it up for each job.
--- End quote ---
Does it make sense to:
1. have a stock of standard, most common components? Is that very expensive to have "frozen money" in that?
2. yea, right, obviously it's smarter to have one supplier for PCBs, where i'm sure that i'm gonna get good boards, the potential complication here is if i get it from abroad. Than it's hard to avoid import tax and other fees. In case if i have a contract with a client, he can send me any material without any tax, and i'm only doing service locally and i return it back easily.
3. I have been thinking about "semi-manual pick & place" but good machine costs huge money. It's 60-70% of some simple pick and place with 30-40 feeders.
What about current situation in the market, are people in need for this service?
Can you also tell me bit more about this "A big cost of a P&P machine is not the machine itself but setting it up for each job."? Any example why?
nctnico:
Your biggest competitors are quick prototyping services from China. The advantage you have is that you are local and easier to communicate with.
Regarding the P&P machine: an employee may cost you around 50 euro a day. If that person spends 1 day to re-program your P&P machine and needs to do that 100 times per year for low volume products then the costs are 5000 euro for each year excluding cost of down time for the P&P machine. If you buy a P&P machine which only takes half a day to setup then you save 2500 euro per year and adds 400 hours of extra runtime to your factory. Slightly bigger assemblers often have 2 P&P machines: one for small jobs and one for larger jobs.
It won't hurt to have a standard stock of components. Passives are dirt cheap. Just buy the ones from a reputable brand (instead of cheap crap) and all your customers will be happy with the components you use.
nardev:
--- Quote from: nctnico on June 23, 2020, 01:40:21 pm ---Your biggest competitors are quick prototyping services from China. The advantage you have is that you are local and easier to communicate with.
Regarding the P&P machine: an employee may cost you around 50 euro a day. If that person spends 1 day to re-program your P&P machine and needs to do that 100 times per year for low volume products then the costs are 5000 euro for each year excluding cost of down time for the P&P machine. If you buy a P&P machine which only takes half a day to setup then you save 2500 euro per year and adds 400 hours of extra runtime to your factory. Slightly bigger assemblers often have 2 P&P machines: one for small jobs and one for larger jobs.
It won't hurt to have a standard stock of components. Passives are dirt cheap. Just buy the ones from a reputable brand (instead of cheap crap) and all your customers will be happy with the components you use.
--- End quote ---
Thank you so much for that explanation.
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