Non-chinese PCB/PCBA manufacturing

[rfleming]

Hi All,

My boss and I are getting sick of the import taxes that the Chinese impose on Non-Chinese distributed parts when manufacturing. The political situation isn't the best either with Australia right now (where I am). Supplying a BOM with DigiKey part numbers is not as good as it used to be. While we have replaced many of items these days with LCSC parts when going into manufacturing, its still not the same.

As such we have started looking else where. We are happy to have the boards made/populated anywhere, we don't particularly mind, and only ever go through runs of ~100 at a time because we do heaps of different products, though always almost a one off for different customers.

When looking into the huge lists of manufacturers, don't many of them like the ones in South America simply act as a facilitator and simply get the boards made in China anyway?

A few things to note based on suggestions:
- We don't do any BGA stuff at this point in time, though could be a nice to have
- We are looking for a manufacturer that takes roughly 6 weeks to do PCB+Assembly (assuming no stock issues), not quote 6 and take 8+ like PCB Way has started doing. And 2 weeks for blanks including shipping time.
- We usually prototype our stuff first, so possible suggestions could be one place for PCBs only (usually in quantities of 5-10) and another for both when actual manufacturing
- happy to pay the 30-40 US for DHL express shipping
- Typically only do 1 side populating and 2-4 layer boards.
- Boards can range from 0.8mm - 3.2mm thickness though typically only 1.6mm
- Standard FR4 and sometimes flex.

Any suggestions to help filter through the behemoth lists like ones on pcbdirectory.com would be awesome!

Ryan.

[Mangozac]

My company does assembly here in Australia - I've just sent you a PM

Having just installed a full SMT line last year (on a budget too) I don't dissuade anybody else from doing this, but it's definitely not a trivial process. 1 year on an although we're pretty confident with it all now, there are still things we're learning and tweaking.

[Rat_Patrol]

I would say either setup your own production line (what we did) or try quickturnpcb in South Korea. We use them for our bare PCB fab, but they also do turnkey assembly.