Pointers to electronic production resources please?

I am seeking input from the group regarding taking an electronic protoype i nto a packaged, ready to sell item.

So, I've completed the schematics, board design, prototype fab (of boards), and tested my creation, and now I'd like to package and offer it for sale. I am looking for pointers to places that could do some or all of the follow ing in order to have a packaged product to ship (assuming I have the boards assembled and tested):

  1. Design, fab, of (most likely plastic) enclosure (e.g. injection molding, assembly of plastic and metal parts into enclosure,etc.
  2. Assembly of boards into enclosure
  3. Acquiring and assembling ancillary but required parts such as power conv erter, cables, etc.
  4. Documentation creation (paper & CD), putting product into box, ready to bulk ship the order to me (for sales).

I have a few electronic houses that can fab boards, assemble, and test the complete board assembly.

At the moment, I am considering a small production of less than 500 units. I want the entire product to look like a quality instrument (my reference p oint is the HP or Tek test instruments of the late 80's and 90s, or, for th e ppl that remember, receiving a HP 35,45,65, 28c calculators - they felt l ike good instruments and performed extremely well, the closest thing now ad ays is apple iphone and ipad).

Oh, last requirement is they must be an American company, located in the lo wer 48 states.

Thank you and your help is appreciated. John

Reply to
three_jeeps
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into a packaged, ready to sell item.

), and tested my creation, and now I'd like to package and offer it for sal e.

owing in order to have a packaged product to ship (assuming I have the boar ds assembled and tested):

g, assembly of plastic and metal parts into enclosure,etc.

nverter, cables, etc.

o bulk ship the order to me (for sales).

I never heard of any place that would do that. Getting everything in the b ox with power supply etc. is sometimes more work than getting the electroni cs working. I usually pick a box before I lay out the pcb. Connectors, sw itches, displays.. getting all the mechanicals in place, that's the hard pa rt.

George H.

e complete board assembly.

.

point is the HP or Tek test instruments of the late 80's and 90s, or, for the ppl that remember, receiving a HP 35,45,65, 28c calculators - they felt like good instruments and performed extremely well, the closest thing now adays is apple iphone and ipad).

lower 48 states.

Reply to
George Herold

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How much money do you have?
Reply to
John Fields

Here's one place I know of. This is by no means a recommendation: it's just another consultant that a customer of mine is working with. I'm thinking you can get some search terms from here that'll help you with your Google-Fu:

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You may try this guy, too. I've worked with him and know he's good at doing the mechanical engineering part, but I can't vouch for his ability to get a good look & feel (you really want an industrial designer for that) or for chasing down production issues:

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You should also consider that the more work you have done by other people, the more profits you won't get. At some point, unless you're doing something that's really awesomely unique, you'll be providing an opportunity for other people to make lots of money with your name and ingenuity. The more you can do the production in-house, the more you'll get paid for the value added.

I'd like to be able to recommend an industrial designer, but I've always had my head buried inside the system and rarely meet those guys. I do suggest that you shop for industrial designers by whether they have stuff that looks like what you want. If you're someplace that's even remotely high-tech, your local area will abound with such people, and for that sort of thing its often better to get someone local.

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Tim Wescott 
Wescott Design Services 
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Reply to
Tim Wescott

pe into a packaged, ready to sell item.

ds), and tested my creation, and now I'd like to package and offer it for s ale.

llowing in order to have a packaged product to ship (assuming I have the bo ards assembled and tested):

ing, assembly of plastic and metal parts into enclosure,etc.

converter, cables, etc.

to bulk ship the order to me (for sales).

box with power supply etc. is sometimes more work than getting the electro nics working. I usually pick a box before I lay out the pcb. Connectors, switches, displays.. getting all the mechanicals in place, that's the hard part.

the complete board assembly.

ts.

ce point is the HP or Tek test instruments of the late 80's and 90s, or, fo r the ppl that remember, receiving a HP 35,45,65, 28c calculators - they fe lt like good instruments and performed extremely well, the closest thing no w adays is apple iphone and ipad).

e lower 48 states.

Yes, I've thought about re-laying out the boards to accomodate the packagin g...I just wanted to make sure the functionality was solid. That could be on the table as an option. Thanks for your input J

Reply to
three_jeeps

e into a packaged, ready to sell item.

s), and tested my creation, and now I'd like to package and offer it for sa le.

lowing in order to have a packaged product to ship (assuming I have the boa rds assembled and tested):

ng, assembly of plastic and metal parts into enclosure,etc.

onverter, cables, etc.

to bulk ship the order to me (for sales).

he complete board assembly.

s.

e point is the HP or Tek test instruments of the late 80's and 90s, or, for the ppl that remember, receiving a HP 35,45,65, 28c calculators - they fel t like good instruments and performed extremely well, the closest thing now adays is apple iphone and ipad).

lower 48 states.

At this point, money is not in the constraint set.

Reply to
three_jeeps

Thank you...will check them out!

Reply to
three_jeeps

What's it do? How will you market it?

You might try Vital Systems in Reno. Nice operation. Talk to Hamid.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com 
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Reply to
John Larkin

I was told a few years ago that these requirements are mutually exclusive, unless you have tons of margin (premium pricing, or government/military) or automotive volumes (millions of units per year).

My suggestion would be to look at the available enclosures from people like Bud, Hammond, PacTec, etc, to see if there is one that you like. Most of them will do value-added stuff to their stock enclosures, for a price: machining holes, printing, different colored parts, etc.

I don't think getting a custom enclosure is going to work, unless you can sell each finished device for at least a few hundred dollars.

This is not hard to find in many big cities in the US. Look in the phone book under "electronic assembly". If you can, get it done locally, so you can just drive over there when there is a problem (and there will be). Expect to pay a little bit up front for tooling and fixtures, and then a per-unit charge. They may also be set up to drill holes in the enclosure; you might compare their prices to the enclosure supplier.

This isn't that hard to do yourself. If it takes a "normal" cable, just go buy a box of them at Digi-Key, Mouser, Newegg, Monoprice, places like that. If it takes a "weird" cable, design out the weird cable and save yourself grief. :) Same with the power supply - buying from a reputable vendor costs more but is a good way to get ones with non-fake UL listings, which helps you not burn down your customers' houses.

Are you going to write the copy yourself, or do you want someone else to do it? The latter may produce a nicer manual but is expensive.

There is one school of thought that in these latter days, you should include an 8.5x11 sheet of paper in the box, that tells the user how to put the batteries in and how to turn it on, and then has your URL at the bottom for the rest of it. Whether this works for you depends on the device and the market.

Having a local company do the assembly and kitting can potentially save you shipping money, too. Spending $100 on a rental truck and gas is cheaper than shipping 500 of most things halfway across the country.

Write a "first article inspection" into your agreements with everyone. This just means they set everything up, make exactly one, and send it to you. Once you approve it, *then* they make hundreds of them.

Matt Roberds

Reply to
mroberds

How many? Got $50K for tooling? $10K?

Reply to
krw

e into a packaged, ready to sell item.

s), and tested my creation, and now I'd like to package and offer it for sa le.

lowing in order to have a packaged product to ship (assuming I have the boa rds assembled and tested):

ng, assembly of plastic and metal parts into enclosure,etc.

onverter, cables, etc.

to bulk ship the order to me (for sales).

he complete board assembly.

s.

e point is the HP or Tek test instruments of the late 80's and 90s, or, for the ppl that remember, receiving a HP 35,45,65, 28c calculators - they fel t like good instruments and performed extremely well, the closest thing now adays is apple iphone and ipad).

lower 48 states.

The base concept is a wireless (or wired) DAS with a suite of low power sen sors to measure physical quantities (e.g. vibration, temp, v, a, deflection , etc.) The application areas range from research labs to industrial plants. There are two stylized subset versions of the base system for consumer use: high precision meteorological monitoring, and in home/in plant energy moni toring. The base version is for industrial use. Ruggedized data concentrator functions as data storage/web interface/wirele ss (cellular)repeater for long distance communication of data. Patents in the works for low-power sensor interface.

Reply to
three_jeeps

We use one in Colorado (Advanced Assembly, IIRC) for stuffing our boards. They want to build from Gerbers and a BOM but we're not quite ready to go there yet. I think they do everything else, too, but I'm not sure.

I'm at home so don't have the exact information. If you're interested I can look further.

Reply to
krw

Are you sure you can sell these units? Better sell them first then make them.

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Failure does not prove something is impossible, failure simply 
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Reply to
Nico Coesel

Have you all your Regulatory Requirements finished? such as...

Is this an intentional radiator? Do you have digital circuitry with a clock higher speed than 10kHz, and thus, an unintentional radiator? Either way you must have it tested by an NRTL to either certify,or self certify, compliane with appropriate regulatory agencies. You also need to meet 'UL equivalent" Safety Requirements. Have you met RoSH standards and the new 'excluded materials lists' standards for Europe? and So America? Testing MUST be done on Production Units. So you need more than one engineering 'prototype'. All this BEFORE you can ship.

Do you have all your IP protection you desire in place? All must be done BEFORE you market the item for sale [doesn't even have to exist, just that you tell people you have something for sale is enough] Many do not opt for patent protection, because of inherent weaknesses in the system, BUT if your end goal is to sell off an existing viable company, such patents appear as 'assets' and for the money men mean something.

My recommendation? Make FIVE units, not ONE, before you say you're ready to go to Production. You have no idea how many clients have come to me with the demand "We're ready to go to Production, so fix it, but don't change anything."

I used to build three instead of five, I learned the hard way, it takes a few to find the problems you'll encounter in Production. And all this just for instrumentation volumes of 100 to 500 /month. If you really want to be ready for volume Production, make 1,000 first THEN you just might be ready.

Plus, you need representative Production samples to send to the labs, keep track of to compare against future problems, and for the labs to cut up and destroy. Destroy? ASSUME the units you did the ESD susceptibility testing on are ALL DEAD! I actually had Marketing ship the units the SEVERE radiation susceptibility and ESD testing were done on! I yelled for half an hour to no avail at getting them back, but vindication and confirmation of their idiocy followed when the units started failing in the field 2, 3, and 6 months later. That for units designed to last 10 years with telco-like reliability.

There're more basics that must be addressed, but go for it. The US needs native manufacturers.

Reply to
RobertMacy

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Thanks for the information! Currently going through test prep for NRTL, RoSH compliance - boards done, need to see about enclosure(s). UL certification - looking into that. Done this fire drill about 10 years ago and UL compliance/certification was fairly easy to meet. I have three organizations onboard for shakedown testing in their labs and factory. My intent is to give them pre-production units in 'quick boxes' t hat are not final. I mainly wanted to get feedback on functionality and ha ve them literally beat the hell out of them...Your comments lead me to beli eve I should be as close to final production packaging as possible--True? Patent(s) are being worked. system Usage and liability issues are being worked...damn, attorneys are expensive.... Marketing (e.g order takers?)? we are a very small group - determined to en gineer the best product...No marketing folks here - want to keep dead weigh t out as long as possible... thanks again

Reply to
three_jeeps

You're welcome.

You never answered if this was an intentional radiator? If so, there is a lot more effort and you have a lot of paperwork to collect AND maintain!

For quick boxes WITH some very unique plastic sliding pieces and battery compartments, we went for 3D printing. Got six working boxes for a pittance in less than two weeks and discovered some unexpected [aren't they ALL!] weakness in the mechanical design, won't fault the ME. Redesigned and actually produced units justifiably close enough to Production we could pursue 'valid' testing.

Close to Production? You have to answer that yourself and be able to justify it. For example, are packaging and parts placement the same? Are clock speeds the same? Is this the same software running? You must decide if a change impacts your test results. The advantage of self-certification is that you get to make some Engineering jusdgment decisions. I've seen some wild VP's claim, to me fraudulently, that such and such change will make no difference, but it was THEIR name on the Letter of Conformance, not mine.I've also seen clients [I dropped] take units to 5 different test labs [the data can vary as much as a total of 12 dB, I've seen it! and this is with labs that match their certifications within 0.5 dB!] before the dropped client finally got data that said they passed. Just shopped around til they complied.

I'm a firm believer in meeting all compliance requirements with beaucoup margin. That makes any last minute change unlikely to impact you and makes version two more likely to breeze through also.

You can ship non-compliant units to shows and demos and ship for evaluation, just can't obtain any revenue of any form for it, though.

US patents are different than International, so if you go after patents find out the significance of those differences. If it's important to you.

You mention attorneys as expensive. Welcome to the US, where when you stand up, you have to drag a bunch of leeches with you! Not that attorneys are leeches. I used to have two great attorneys! One was awesome, struck fear in every attorney around, the other used to say to me, "Mr. Macy, if you want Law, come to me. If you want Justice, put a brick through their window." I always marveled at his wisdom.

Hope that answers your question(s)

Can you send me a Product Announcement, would like to see it.?

Reply to
RobertMacy

[snip]

I have worked with these guys on several projects for the mechanical work. Very knowledgeable on the me/fab/injection molding side. They are out of N.Y. Good bunch of folks, easy to work with and very good with GoToMeeting :)

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Chisolm 
Republic of Texas
Reply to
Joe Chisolm

Marketing, done correctly is as valuable as Production. Those two places are where you MAKE your money!

Get your Production costs down and Marketing revenues UP. You will cover every ill in your company and product!

There's a reason the divvy of revenue in most companies is: Marketing 30% Production 30% Administration 30% [those often include product returns! warrantee repairs, etc etc] Engineering 10%

I used to work at HP in the RF/Microwave Instrumentation Division, and I remember their original attitude that 'we are engineers making tools for engineers, so build what you would want' One thing I brought away from HP, was how to transfer Product from Engineering into Production, not a simple task. But HP had it down cold.

But your point I agree with about not adding all the accoutrements of a company until it is really justified is, "Don't do anything until you need to." But keep in mind that at that time: DO IT THOROUGHLY AND CORRECTLY! That way you don't have to address the issue again, ...well, for quite a while.

Reply to
RobertMacy

If you combine wireless, like Bluetooth, zigbee, and/or Wifi with cellphone, means you have two antennas in close proximity. Look at each module's certification. You will see excluded is close proximity [20 inches?] to another module's antenna. If so, you will have to test at a really knowledgeable lab several weeks schedule delay for testing and the hit will be in the range of $10k+

You're going to have two antennas if you have GPS anyway. And the two next to each other will preclude 'piggy backing' onto their certifications. If you're transmitting significant power, like 1W for cellphone use, you may have to address SARs too. That's energy absorption into humans. that's what? 3 days of testing? and $$$ and only done once, if you pass.

Just a 'heads up' for you.

A good low power micro for portable use that can operate around all those Tx/Rx peripherals is TI's MSP430, cheap easy to program. I once put it inside a plastic box with 1 meter cabling sticking out all over [going to remote sensors] that was compliant with the emanations, that the technician kept asking, are you sure your unit is on? because the radiated was less than the noise floor of their instrumentation.

My point? if you do very careful design, you can do a lot to streamline that push into Production. Just make all those processes 'rubber stamping' and not 'discovery'

Reply to
RobertMacy

Interesting--I'll have to go visit. They're about 20 minutes from here.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

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Dr Philip C D Hobbs 
Principal Consultant 
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Reply to
Phil Hobbs

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