Small proto boxes with LCD and buttons?

Cheap and low volume are not a good combination. The enclosure makers will eat the profits, and you won't likely get a great fit (meaning lots of work, and more likely quality issues).

I've noticed that European suppliers are pretty good in this area (OKW, for example), probably because there are so many smallish electronics companies in Europe.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

Hello Folks,

Many of us have been there: You or a client want to test market a new small gizmo. It needs the usual, a small no-frills graphics LCD, some buttons and a battery. All in a nice little plastic case but shelling out >10k for molds just isn't in the cards at this stage.

Is any company offering such generic prototype boxes? Ideally they should contain a small graphics LCD, 3-4 buttons, a battery holder and cost under $5 in qties of, say, 1000. Size of a pager maybe, with room for one or two square inches for the circuit board.

Regards, Joerg

Hello Martin,

Thanks. We have used their stuff before. Nice. The problem is that there won't be any LCD or buttons. Doing that in a contract setting adds a lot of cost. Also, the minute you want something as mundane as a battery holder in there the pricing shoots up to several Dollars. Like this one:

Regards, Joerg

$125 selling price doesn't imply a $5 case/display/switches, that company was offering a variety of different instruments all with the same case/display/switches, but with a large difference in price.

The display is probably custom, 1000 units of a custom display is not pretty, I have no idea what volume these guys are doing, lets assume

I suspect the case/display/switches/assembly are about $35, with the electronics/sensors in the lower priced instruments less then $10,with a 3x parts markup for selling price. So the lion share of the cost is the case/display.

For the $500 instruments the lion share of the cost is the electronics/sensors, reusing the case/display/switches.

The only way display/case/switches cost less then $5 is when you make millions, like pagers, cell phones, electronic toys etc, here I am of course assume China manufacturer not US/Germany.

Hello Martin,

Yes. One method is to search for exisiting products that kind of match the mechanical requirements and have the right kind of LCD on board, then talk to their technical leadership to see if they would be interested in an OEM deal. Problem is, often they aren't interested.

They make good enclosures. The web site is indeed not too great, the customary mistake of assuming that everybody and the world is familiar with their trademark names such as Euromas and so on. Many European companies seem to have difficulties creating an efficient web site.

Absolutely. It would be a huge business opportunity. Ideally it should be a company that can then also take care of the assembly side, ROHS and all that.

Regards, Joerg

Hello Martin,

Thanks! Some of the names sound very familiar.

Regards, Joerg

Hello Spehro,

That's why I believe the only way may be to convince a company with a very similar product but in another market to run this one "on the side", like a shuttle.

OKW is more high end. For example their Datec Control-S is about $20. Just the plastic shells without the optional battery holder. Ouch. It would be cheaper to buy toy games at Walmart and have someone scrape the innards out.

Regards, Joerg

how about

martin

Hello Steve,

You can, but not necessarily in the US. How else could they sell these starting at around $125?

It's not the cheapest kind of display but FSTN. Still, the LCD is by far one of the least costly items in analyzers like these yet it does have a graphics portion, plus lots of other character based sections.

Regards, Joerg

As you said, a diiffcult situation. I did notice that pactec have a custom site somewhere on their page.

In the past the company I meddle with used Bopla, (a dreadful website) for small runs, with membrane keyboards, with a transparent section covering the LCD They weren't too expensive, but it was a few years ago

Maybe we need an Olimex/pcbexpress for boxes

martin

Years ago I used BAF boxes (BAF = Bend And Fold).

Instead of mouldings, they take a sheet of thermoplastic and mill V grooves where they want a fold or other grooves where they want edges to clip together. They then heat the folds and bend them, then allow them to set.

This works fine for two classic '[' shaped halves, but they can do some very clever boxes as well.

They were fine for the project I did.

I don't know the money details, but it was certainly cheaper than custom mouldings!

"Joerg" schreef in bericht news:Ph9Fe.337$ snipped-for-privacy@newssvr13.news.prodigy.com...

You want the enclosure + lcd and buttons... for

from my enclosure folder, its a bit old, from my IE4 days

martin

scuba gadgets with custom graphic LCD's appear to be in the $100's (first hit on Google)

For the RF stuff, probably they make less money on the $100 unit then on the $500 unit, the 1/3 rule applies to everything you sell, not to each specific product, its an average, you could have loss leaders that sells for 1/2 cost/sell ratio to get customers in the door, and then sell others with a 1/5 cost/sell ratio to keep you business.

You can buy LCD digital clocks with a nice case and buttons for under $10, but they make billions of these. The problem is there is no standard for a small graphics LCD box like you describe, every customer wants something slightly different, a clock is slightly different then the scuba stuff which is slightly different the RF stuff which is slightly different then bike odometers etc etc, so its always custom work. Probably that depth gauge could be made for $20 if everyone standardized on a particular box/LCD display, but would the scuba guy buy a $20 depth gauge that looks like a digital clock? I have no idea, maybe the smallest/shape is very important and is worth the $250 bucks. just my thoughts on the subject

They appear to have but one custom case, spread over units that sell from EUR 100 to EUR 1000. Maybe they shelled out $25K or $50K for that tooling. Big $%$$ deal, how many hours of engineering does that buy these days? Their custom LCD glass won't add much to that, and the rest is soft tooling.

Suggest you tell your client to think bigger.

I'm working on a handheld instrument with roughly similar housing requirements, the minimum list price will probably have to be about $400 US to allow for discounts and a distribution chain.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

Under $1 from the factory.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

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Hello Steve,

This display will be more since it's much larger than what I am looking for.

It clearly has to be custom. I would think the volumes would be in the

If that was $35 the company would most likely not exist anymore. The old rule is that a unit's cost (all the cost) should be about 1/3 or less of the final sales price. Since the smallest unit retails for 100 Euros and contains a lot of other stuff including RF the case/display/sw/assy can't possibly be $35. And 100 Euros is the price if you buy only one.

But how then do they make money with the 100 Euro version?

Mfg in China is pretty much a must, or maybe elsewhere if the Yuan appreciates too much after they unleashed it from the Dollar. But there must be a way to achieve low prices through the adoption of standard parts. IOW live with what's already there for other higher volume applications. I do not recall the details since I am not active in that environment but I have seen small scuba diving gadgets with graphics LCD (to display depth profiles) that didn't cost much at the store at all. pretty small market, too.

Regards, Joerg

Hello Kryten,

A client of mine achieved huge cost savings by doing that with large metal enclosures. There was a room with a big machine in there. A steel coil was hooked up outside and then you heard an incredible racket. Afterwards all it needed was just one long weld and a few spots. This shows that cost savings are possible even when everybody else says it is not possible.

Regards, Joerg

My client in Hong Kong was amazed how expensive batteries are at retail in the West. He knew they were 'expensive', but was still astounded at how much a couple button cells go for. His main product has a CMOS chip, battery, and some electromechanical stuff (maybe a dozen or two parts) and sells for about fifty cents. The crappy competitive versions sell for less than a quarter.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany