Manufacturing PCBs with stuff on them

[Fungus]

I've got a gadget in mind that would have an Atmel Mega328, some push buttons, some edge connectors, all the usual capacitors, crystals, resistors, etc. Maybe a potentiometer, an op-amp, a buzzer...

How would I get something like that manufactured? Where would I even start?

I know there's probably a thousand ways to do it, but what would general advice be? What are the pitfalls? What's best to avoid to to keep the price down?

Do I just go to ITEAD (or whoever), tell them what I want and let them do the rest?

This occurred to me when I was watching today's blog and I saw the precision voltage reference. That seems to be made professionally but the quantities are probably small. See pic below. My gadget would have half the number of components as that one, maybe even less.

[daqq]

Depends on where you are, but most regions in most countries have at least one profesional manufacturer that takes care of the pick and place part.

The place where I have my stuff made ( http://www.amset.sk/ ), will take even single board orders. There is a one time setup fee obviously (depending on project complexity it can be anywhere from 100 EUR to hundreds of EUR (really complex, big boards)), after that you pay per 1000 shots (a few EUR).

I'd say the first step is to locate someone in your area.
Step 2 is contacting them and asking what they need and how much will it cost.

The place where I get my stuff made can work with pretty much any type of operation - from "you send the gerbers and BOMs, we ship you a fully assembled PCB, truholes included and even take care of the buying of exotic parts" to "bring us the boards, parts and everything, we'll just put them through our machine".

It's not that hard or expensive these days - you can get single piece quantities with no obscene initial costs.

[jitter]

Try to find some assembly houses near where your live and ask if they're interested in doing small quantities, and if they do, get a quote based on gerbers and BOM, so basically what daqq wrote.

Small quantities will probably only be handled by assemblers focusing on prototyping. The company I work for used to offer that service until we were bought by a much bigger company. Nowadays small orders/prototypes will not be taken anymore (unless it's for existing customers who are developing new products and we will be allowed to assemble the final production version), so it's probably best to look for small businesses.

[daqq]

Small quantities will probably only be handled by assemblers focusing on prototyping.

Depends... the company I mentioned did quantities from single pieces to several thousand for us. A relatively small batch compared to say, foxcon, but they are ideal for low and mid sized volumes.

But it is true that really big companies will either not take your order at all, or offer you an exorbitant price for it.

[Fungus]

Try to find some assembly houses near where your live and ask if they're interested in doing small quantities, and if they do, get a quote based on gerbers and BOM, so basically what daqq wrote.

Near here? 

Actually, I just found this on a web search: https://www.celestica.com/Services/Services.aspx

Update: I just spent five minutes reading their web site, including the 20-page "What We Do" section.

I understand they "Perform with Integrity" and "Live their Values" but I have no idea what they actually do. I'm sure you could reduce the whole site to a single paragraph without any loss of information.

( I'm assuming it's something to do with PCB assembly but only because that's what I was searching for in google).

[daqq]

Filling out your location might help us help you.

[Fungus]

Maybe you can try your luck in nearby universities. Some labs or students offer labor service for a really low price. In our lab, we offer all kinds of packaging service from die bonding level all the way up to entire power module packaging, of course, PCB level interconnection is included.

The best thing for universities is students really consider the "little money" to you "big money" to them, and labs are public funded, so no depreciation and amortization cost.

I'll do that. I know a guy from the University who I see on Fridays.

[jwm_]

Your first impulse, to contact itead was probably a good first step. Ask them, even if they can't do final assembly but just make the board, they can probably refer you to somewhere reasonable to assemble the boards they make.  Seeedstudio does full assembly as well, you can get a quote from them as well. If nothing else, it will give you ballpark numbers when looking at something local.

I have not used them, but just found https://www.circuithub.com/ which looks interesting and might be just what you want. Playing around with a random design (you can load one of their reference open source designs), it seems super slick.

[Fungus]

Your first impulse, to contact itead was probably a good first step.

I think they can do everything.

I've used in the past them to make PCBs and that worked out well.