Hey All,
I have a few product development projects that I am working on at the moment. I am passed the strip-board stages and I am ready to start with some production prototypes. I have designed them around some nicely tooled enclosures which I will be able to show our prospective customer-base before committing to EMC testing etc.
I put together some design files and a bill of materials for assembly and sent them off to a few PCB manufacturers to quote on a hand-full of low-complexity 2-layer boards. They got back to me recently with their respective breakdowns and I was quite shocked to see how much they were asking for.
The range I received was from £650 to an astounding £2500. However, I can understand to some degree that this is because my quantities are so low and they have to make the stencils etc., the unit cost drops dramatically with orders of upwards of 100 which is acceptable.
My question is, how does everyone approach their respective prototyping and is it possible to save on expenses like this?
I am expecting to go through a few design iterations which does not look to be at all cost-effective as it stands. I could avoid assembly costs initially by either using through-hole or certain surface-mount packages which could be soldered by hand but some SMT packages simply cannot be done by hand, such as LGAs, so I am pretty stumped at the moment.
Does anyone have any experience regarding this problem or novel solutions that they would like to share, any help would be greatly appreciated?
I have a few product development projects that I am working on at the moment. I am passed the strip-board stages and I am ready to start with some production prototypes. I have designed them around some nicely tooled enclosures which I will be able to show our prospective customer-base before committing to EMC testing etc.
I put together some design files and a bill of materials for assembly and sent them off to a few PCB manufacturers to quote on a hand-full of low-complexity 2-layer boards. They got back to me recently with their respective breakdowns and I was quite shocked to see how much they were asking for.
The range I received was from £650 to an astounding £2500. However, I can understand to some degree that this is because my quantities are so low and they have to make the stencils etc., the unit cost drops dramatically with orders of upwards of 100 which is acceptable.
My question is, how does everyone approach their respective prototyping and is it possible to save on expenses like this?
I am expecting to go through a few design iterations which does not look to be at all cost-effective as it stands. I could avoid assembly costs initially by either using through-hole or certain surface-mount packages which could be soldered by hand but some SMT packages simply cannot be done by hand, such as LGAs, so I am pretty stumped at the moment.
Does anyone have any experience regarding this problem or novel solutions that they would like to share, any help would be greatly appreciated?