Working with a Manufacturer to Repackage Their Silicon

[Nauris]

Thank you for that insight, Phil!

I ended up speaking with some of the executive management team at the manufacturer's USA branch this afternoon and I got some useful information.  They are willing to look into my request to have the obsoleted 28-PDIP package brought back to life, but the MOQ for such a design is 500,000 pieces.    Not much of a surprise, really.

It turns out that they'd be willing to make smaller runs, but the limiting factor is actually the lead frame manufacturer that they use.   The lead frame manufacturer won't even begin looking at projects like this until we're talking about that quantity of units.  Obviously I'd be able to find a lead frame manufacturer in China that would be willing to make smaller quantities, but it would be nearly impossible to convince this manufacturer to use a lead frame provider that is completely unknown in their eyes.

500,000 pieces might be possible for me to convince my client on, but I'd have to push hard.     Useful information regardless so I figured I'd share it!

That is certainly interesting information.
Some times I have thought it would be nice to have some chips in PDIP. I'm not at all fan of wave soldering smd devices and if certain chips were available in PDIP everything on some power boards could go in in a one step.
That would be a big plus. It has crossed my mind more than once to ask what it takes to have a chip in DIP-package.

[shanekent]

It has crossed my mind more than once to ask what it takes to have a chip in DIP-package.

Same here!  I'm glad I looked into this!   I think it'd be kind of neat to go forward with bringing an old design like this back from the dead.  Even if just to say it's possible....

So the fab knew that you are a customer for this chip, yet they discontinued it. What makes you think if you contact them they will take it back into their portfolio?

So as it turns out, I purchased the last 450,000 units that this manufacturer ever made of this part back in 2008 and we've slowly run out of stock since then.    The manufacturer made it very clear to us that they were obsoleting the part and we made some estimates that the final batch would last us for at least 10 years.    It turns out that that math was pretty spot on!   It's now 12 years down the road and we're just looking into options to replace the missing IC.     I hope that clears things up as the tone of this response made me a little confused...

-S