Re: gEDA-user: Anybody ever had a board assembled (pick and place)?

[Gabriel Paubert <paubert@xxxxxxx>]

On Wed, Jul 27, 2011 at 08:13:42PM -0400, Ethan Swint wrote:
> On 07/27/2011 05:57 PM, Stephen Ecob wrote:
>> On Thu, Jul 28, 2011 at 5:35 AM, yamazakir2<yamazakir2@xxxxxxxxx>  wrote:
>>> I sometimes get boards done at 4pcb, I didn't know they do assembly.
>>> How much to they charge? And how big of a reel do you have to send
>>> them? And you just cut tape the amount of parts you need to assemble
>>> the amount of boards you want to manufacture?
>> A length of tape with no reel can be put onto a spare reel quite
>> easily, there's usually no charge.  The tape does need a leader of
>> around 300mm (varies) that has no components.  If your tape has no
>> leader then one option is to junk the components on the leader length
>> - not very expensive if you're talking about 60 millicent resistors
>> but a problem for expensive components.
> One house I've worked with is Advanced Assembly, which is just down the  
> street from Advanced Circuits.  (They'll pick your boards up from 4PCB's  
> will-call.)  IIRC, it was ~$100 for the first moderate board (150 or so  
> SMT components), add ~$30 if you do SMT on both sides, and $0.50 per  
> thru-hole device.  Additional boards run cheaper, as usual,  and they  
> will do a quick-turn on the first two or three boards and send them to  
> you to verify before populating the rest of the order.  The quick-turn  
> boards are billed at the same rate as the rest of the order, so you  
> don't pay a premium on them.
>
> A Assembly will purchase components on your behalf, but of course you  
> pay a bit extra for that.  

Actually, for the last board I sent to manufacturing here in Spain,
the assembly house bought most components and what they charge me is
close to the cheapest price I could get, and I don't have the hassle
of ordering and shipping them the components. 

The only ones they did not procure are the microwave capacitors 
(Dielectric Labs C06BLxxx), the Piconics conical chokes and the 
germanium tunnel diode chips from M-Pulse microwave. Actually 
I have to install myself the last two since the assembly house 
does not do bonding. For the microwave capacitor, they accept 
to install it despite the fact that I only got them in bulk and 
not on tape.

The components include a low noise op-amp (LT1028A) and a
temperature sensor (AD590JF), which make the bulk of the
cost. In addition there are fairly common components like 
BAT54S Schottky diode, a trimmer (Vishay T63YB), a transistor 
(BCX52), a choke (EPCOS SIMID B82422H) and a few capacitors 
(4 603 and 2 1206) and eight resistors (all 0603). The board 
is small (1x3/4"), on 20mil thick RO4003C substate with 
Ni/Au finish, and costs â30.70 assembled (plus the cost of 
the 3 components mentioned above and the work to install the 
last 2). There is a weird mixture of through hole, SMD (both 
sides), and bonded components.

The steep part are the NRE charges (â775), but I shall
hopefully amortize them over more and larger series in 
the future (the first batch is for 50 boards). This said,
the custom made milled aluminum mechanical enclosure in 
which these board ar installed costs way more than the 
board itself, once finished. 

This assembly house is close to Sevilla, Spain. That's
almost 300km away from my work place, but I've not found
anything closer.

	Regards,
	Gabriel


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