How much of an extra cost premium is paid for assembly in the USA or UK?

Question

Okay, here's the situation: Currently, I am making a small batch of 100 boards of my project. This is a small order, so start up costs are about 10% of the final cost, and the factory charges $50/hour (they say I can get it done in one or two hours.) These will be made in China. Places in the UK or USA won't even talk to me for an order of 100, or if they do, they provide me with outrageous prices (5-10x as much as China.)

Now I know China is cheaper, but to many people, seeing "Made in China" cheapens a product. If I were to make, say 1000 or 2000 boards, would the cost to make them in the USA or UK, or even any European country be competitive with China, even if it was slightly more expensive? I know the Arduino is "Made in Italy", and the low price point of it makes me consider the possibility that I too could get mine made in a country with higher wages. What are other people's experience with this issue?

Answer 1

1. Most of these local companies in fact will outsource your order to China.

2. You don't need to print 'Made in China' if you just ordered PCB from China. 'Made in' means place of last significant tech operation, so if Arduino's PCB is from China, but soldering is local - 'Made in Italy' is legitimate.

3. Premium cost is significant for real local production, maybe not 10x, but more than 2x.

4. If you can get it done on 2-sided PCB - just make it yourself using popular hobbiest tech. You can hire 1 guy, train him and he'll do you 2000 boards easily :-) This is popular here in Russia - guys who mastered self-made PCB sell products on self-made PCBs and save time & money of PCB production. 100 boards is very easy to do at home.

Answer 2

If you do a 2 sided PCB and plan on doing one sided mounting all SMT except for minimal throughole.

Then, when you order your PCBs, you can order a solder paste template. You can put together a wooden holder with a bottom into which the board fits exactly. Pop in a PCB, place the solder template in there, then put some solder paste in there and use a squeegee (you can get them at a paint store) cut to fit it, and then just spread the paste over the board. Then remove the template and the PCB should have the correct paste on it (remember to clean the template). Then just place the components carefully.

For an oven, you can use the Black and Decker Infrawave series. It's important to get a good temperature profile (to not heat up too quickly or cool too quickly). There are many articles online on this oven. You can also use the Cuisinart convection toaster too.

So, you can do 4 board easily at a time this way, easily in 10 minutes if they are small boards. Thats 24 per hour. You hire someone at $24/hour. Thats $1 per board!!!!!!! It'll take one person a little over a week to do 1000 boards. Recommended you use diagnostics in your flash to test the board and light an LED. You can always load diagnostics, run the test, then load your desired code and lock the MCU....it you are trying to save space. Testing the boards is the slow part perhaps.

For enclosure, you'll want to use an off the shelf plastic box. I don't know of a cheap fast way to do your own enclosures. Vacuum forming can work, but it's still slower than 24 per hour. Remember 24 per hour is $1 each, 12 per hour is $2 each, etc, etc...

Good Luck. Post if you find other info.

Answer 3

It is very dependent on the design. For something that is all SMD with minimal manual work, the advantages of going overseas can be minimal - the trick is to find a local asssembler geared to your volumes, who doesn't charge a large 'get out of bed' fee for setting up etc. Larger places will be less interested in small jobs, but really small places tend to have a precarious existance and can have disappeared next time you need something done. Even with a 'right size/attitude' place you will generally have to fit inbetween the jobs from their larger customers, so getting stuff turned round quickly is near-impossible unless you're lucky, as even if you offer to pay twice as much it's still small for them and they're always going to prioritise their bigger customers. As mentioned above, successful lower-end assemblers who are ticking along nicely often don't need to advertise, and can be hard to find - recommendations are very useful - maybe ask a few companies making stuff on a similar scale to yours who they use for assembly - people are often happy to reccommend, as once you find a good place, you want them to stay in business.
You also have to consider that board assembly cost isn't the only cost involved - things like test, optimising for good yield etc. are very dependent on good communication and understanding between client and subcontractor, which can be nonexistent with Chinese suppliers. For something made in 100s I wouldn't even think of using China - the time to get things set up and the uncertainty that you're going to get what you want just aren't worth it.