Contract manufacturers vs board stuffers

:-)

It's amazing how many American companies start at kitchen tables, in basements (but only in the east, in the west houses typically don't have any), garages, sheds, or in the back of an old van.

I know one guy who runs his ME business out of his garage. It is so full of big machines and tools that, depending on which job he works on, he has to watch the weather forecast, then move a bunch of machines outside and rearrange stuff.

Gosh, no kidding, me too. Not only is is dishonest and helping slimeballs who should fail, it's also usually a lot more than $250 worth of work - slimeballs are not known for the high value they place on people willing to help them cheat. I excrement-can those without going beyond a glance to see that this is (often quite clearly) what it is. But it's easily 50% of what comes up on that particular site.

The problem being that unless it really is grandpa's from when grandpa was young, it's been designed to be uneconomic to repair for the past several decades. Throwaway design has been quite effective. When it's cheaper to buy a new one than to even determine what the problem is with the old one, much less waste more time finding that repair parts are (usually) unobtanium, consumer electronic repairs make little sense. Thus my dissing of them, or at least leaving them to people that want them.

Oh, I agree, but there seem to be optimists (or at least cheapskates) out there. I sincerely hope they get exactly what they pay for.

Back in the 1950's you could evidently get to Boston in a couple of hours by train from here, but not these days. I'm where MA, VT and NY intersect, with a foothold in both MA and VT.

??

I'm not going to solder several hundred 0402s for those prices! ;-)

We deal with "i-Tech e-Services" in Norcross, GA but the work is done by their parent company, NCA (National Circuit Assemblies?), in Texas somewhere.

Yes, that's why I put the "ea." designations on the stuffing cost line. Add a zero to these lines for the ten boards, of each, we had built. I don't know if these costs go down for higher quantities. Of course, the stencils and programming doesn't vary by quantity.

Beats

es at

ow

e.

I think that happens everywhere, when starting a business it makes sense to not spend money on a fancy place if you can get it for free by parking outside

must be lucky to not get in trouble with the neighbors and regulations about running a business in a residential area

-Lasse

I charge by the hour, which simplifies things in that I don't need to estimate how long things will take, and generally tends towards keeping the total cost to the contractee lower as I don't have to fudge-factor for the unexpected in estimating. It also removes the temptation to go so fast as to be sloppy in order to crank things out faster at a fixed price. My integrity and work ethic don't allow for dawdling to run the price up, and gains in speed with repetition are reaped by the customer, who hopefully goes away happy and comes back with more work.

This year's rate is $65/hour at my bench - still cheaper than my car mechanic. Since that's real money to me, I track it rather precisely when working (time-clock database setup) so there are no $15 coffee breaks (or if there are, they are on my time.) I guess some folks get away with considerably higher rates, and I would certainly raise it if I felt the market would bear it, but it's adequate to keep things interesting for now.

On a sunny day (Tue, 25 Sep 2012 06:51:52 -0400) it happened "Michael A. Terrell" wrote in :

That is a price I cannot beat :-)

On a sunny day (Tue, 25 Sep 2012 10:05:49 -0700) it happened Joerg wrote in :

This may interest you:

You need to work on your computah skills :-) Dollar is about 1.3 Euro I think now.

On a sunny day (Tue, 25 Sep 2012 20:00:31 GMT) it happened Jan Panteltje wrote in :

Oopps, Euro is about 1.3 dollar, so 100$ an hour should you get xp working ;-)

Overall Germany is pretty cheap to live in these days. When I go to a restaurant in Germany I pay half of what I pay in NL, Belgium or France. Even in typical tourist attractions like the TV tower in Berlin the prices are extremely reasonable. Its almost scary! For the price of one bottle of cola in the Eiffel tower you can get 2 pieces of pie, two glasses of cola, excellent seats and an excellent view in Berlin's TV tower. OTOH driving around in Paris is way more interesting :-)

me,

Southern, for millimeter :-)

Thanks, it's bookmarked. In case others are interested:

They usually do, big time.

Yes, although sometimes they get thrown in for free if the order is large enough.

He's probably not making too much noise I guess.

I bought one for my large solder pot.

To me the only thing that would matter would be what's it worth to the respective consumer. If they say "Can you repair this for under $20", well, then one has to politely decline. But there are situations where a gazillion valuable photos are on some device, nobody ever heard the word backup, and then the thing croaked.

Near Albany? That's way out in the boonies from a technology point of view. But at least there's Interstate 87 that gets you straight into NYC. Just like I sometimes have to bite the bullet and go to Silicon Valley. A traffic-nightmare.

Hmm, strange, I've heard different stories. One must be careful with the press. For example, numerous papers lament a so-called engineer shortage in Germany but then in reality that's mostly a lie. Has to be when they now want to reduce (!) the income threshold for a foreign labor visa.

Sure, but a Euro does not go as far as $1.30 goes here. Not even close. I was in Germany about a month ago.

Wow, 3 square metres. That makes a Clark board look like a cellphone. ;)

I'm in awe. (Although I suspect the decimal points may be misplaced.)

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

to

me,

points

I'm a carpetbagger, not Southern. ;-) Japanese company. They like that French stuff, too.

Just hidden somewhere else.

me,

The original Clark boards were about that big (15 LEMs/TCMs, IIRC).

...or something. ;-) Don't know how I read the zero off the ruler, though. I was doing about three things at a time, on two systems, at my desk, this afternoon. Yes, 265x105mm and 265x165mm.

Why in the world would anyone want to do that? BTW, 87 is quite a way out of the way from there. The Taconic State Parkway is much closer and no toll. I90 goes to Boston which has a much higher tech content.

Why in the world would anyone want to do that? ;-)

Atlanta traffic is pretty bad but the worst is mostly limited to rush hour and on the other side.

Bennington, VT 20 minutes drive. Pittsfield, MA 30 minutes. Albany, NY an hour or so.