How do you design these days?

We'd need new feeders for the P-n-P machine. Not a huge deal but they're having too many problems now. When we start using any real FPGAs 0402s will come with them. I've already been warning them. ;-)

We're a small company and up until recently, very seasonal (almost all income was in a three-month window). I'm told the worry was a that large, more "important", customer might bump our production at a CM. A month late and we wouldn't be set back a month but a year. The company couldn't survive that so we build our own; insurance.

The problem is that it's *low* volume and very seasonal. If we did a couple hundred systems a year it was a lot. We've recently added higher volume products (still only 2-5K per year) in a year-round market. This helps the production situation but the original market/products still have the same issues.

Thanks for the replies, looks like mostly surf boards and dead bug for the breadboard testing.

I see that for many designs you go straight to the board, any recommended software for hobbiest budget. LT Spice and Eagle perhaps? Years ago I bought the home version of Electronics Workbench 5 with the board router, is that worth learning?

RogerN

I can't believe that you have _no_ TV service at all. A bowtie antenna mounted to a chimney should get you some stations and is fairly safe in extreme winds.

In November I was in Florida (around Military Trail north of PBI) and lots of people had antennas there. Maybe you should take a look :-)

Hell, one of our cats chowed down on my big toe one night. I must have moved it under the sheets. I chased him down the hall, twice. He thought it great fun.

No wonder cats hate you.

Fox has a lot we watch. We have Dish. One of the "local" stations objected to our getting the network over the satellite, so we don't get ABC (I think it is). We used to get the Atlanta stations for the other network but for some reason they thought the snow reports of the NYC stations were more useful than more local weather.

One of my clients is like that, seasonal sales. They never had an in-house board production. Never will, even if the company grows to five times it's size.

There's reliable places that cater to that kind of situation. For example this one, a family-run business like in the good old days:

Even when I asked them for a small 10-board prototype run for a new client they did not flinch, they just ran it and the week after we had the boards.

Yep, that's what is being used here in the office although not for hobby. I believe you can legally use the Eagle free version if you do not design for profit. That would reduce your required budget for CAD to zero :-)

IMHO no. LTSpice is the standard these days for simulations, OrCad is the one for schemtic entry and PADS and a few others for layout. But for hobby Eagle should do just fine. It is nearly perfect but has one issue that prevents it from being used on huge designs: No hierarchy. They realy blew that part, IMHO.

Definition of Honest Politician: Once he's bought, he stays bought.

Jim

I average two to three a semester, mostly bassackwards tantalums in student breadboards, but when they turn the rectifier bridge around it really gets interesting.

Jim

The owner likes to have control over the entire process. It is his money.

I'll have to keep them in mind (may come looking for the name again later). We are production limited now and they have a pile of new products they'd like to build. Summers are a triple problem since, in addition to new builds, everything comes back from the field for refurb. Add these newer non-seasonal products (we're production limited on now) and something is going to give.

The last sentence is the reason why I don't understand :-)

Seriously, if you add up all the overhead and everything, that's when we realized in one company that we had almost no other choice but to contract out.

Good point. This would also be a nice way to justify testing one of those contract assembly houses. Give them a few hundred boards and see how they stack up. I bet you'd be pleasantly surprised. I was.

So, to us US types, Araldit :=3D=3D epoxy (resin + hardener) There are polyester resin/hardener things, too, but they aren't glue- like.

ogether glue

Thus, in a US catalog, Bison kit :=3D=3D contact cement Not necessarily from a tube, I've seen bottles, rattle-can sprays, and paintcans.

On a sunny day (Sat, 2 Jan 2010 11:22:02 -0800 (PST)) it happened whit3rd wrote in :

Yes I have a can of it somewhere too.

Some buy insurance, some don't. Our margins are quite high and the insurance is affordable.

You go to China, too. That is something he would *never* do.

I'm sure everything would go right, until they don't. Really, our other products aren't nearly so deadline driven but are capacity limited. It would be smart to off-load some of them. We did contract our battery charger (design and production). After some startup grief, that seems to be going well. It was cheaper than building it in house, except it looks cheap. ...at least the prototype does.

Many of my clients don't either and that's ok. Plenty of good contract assemblers right here in our country.

A capacity limit is a serious reason to contract out some stuff. The boards I got back from places like Burch never looked cheap. Even the ones from Shenzen don't.

(snip)

Who do you use in Shenzen?

The point being that he's been bitten badly in the past. He likes being in control of his destiny, even with all the problems.

Not the board, though I don't like red solder mask. ;-) I haven't taken the board out to inspect it; not my project. The plastic case looks cheap. Since the PS is a rat-in-a-snake, the charger itself feels cheap. Again, not my issue.

Sure, that happens. But it's supposed to be embarassing.

We make blue boards and I think we should use red wires. But production insists on blue.

John

That's much more efficient than a million lines that don't work. Execution time is better, too.

John

This company: