If you can get to JLCPCB levels of automation (in their fab) and produce a better frontend experience (shouldn't be too hard, JLC's is awful but still one of the better ones) then that will be amazing! North America desperately needs something like this. Good luck!
Launch HN: ProvenMetal (YC S26) delivers circuit boards in days instead of weeks
151–160 of 161 posts
Re: Launch HN: ProvenMetal (YC S26) delivers circuit boards in days instead of weeks
#152A very welcome service! Here's a request: I haven't tried the process, so maybe you do, but if you don't offer a variety of PCB materials you will potentially lose opportunity in the mmWave space where antennas are printed on the PCB so the material must be from a subset of those material that are available overall.
Re: Launch HN: ProvenMetal (YC S26) delivers circuit boards in days instead of weeks
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The reason they are ahead in the first place is labor cost & the QOL workers will tolerate That hasn't been accurate in a decade. Chinese labor costs have been higher than Mexico since before Covid. They have more efficient firms, business processes and so much more. The parenthesized "(and intentional government investment)" is related to how they developed nimbler systems, but ignores the totality of industrial p…
In this case specifically they also have a huge amount of automation and process learnings from being around for 20+ years.
They also have a pretty organised society and a strong focus on education, so given money they will run with it a long way.
Re: Launch HN: ProvenMetal (YC S26) delivers circuit boards in days instead of weeks
#154Any idea what pricing will be like? The fact that you call out Drone and Defense industries on your page suggests to me this is extremely expensive. I recently priced out getting a PCB done in China and its insanely cheap. My design isnt complicated, a few ICs, a few connectors, an a dozen or so passives. PCB manufacturing, parts, and soldering/assembly is on the order of $10-20 total per board and that is with zero…
This is essentially the problem with a lot of US fabs. Many exist only as a technicality for the defense industry to make things domestically. This means they get the "$1,000 hammer" margins. When you approach them for a prototype, they essentially don't want your business.
Re: Launch HN: ProvenMetal (YC S26) delivers circuit boards in days instead of weeks
#155Does the 7 day turnaround hold up for more complex boards (8-12 layers, laser drilled, blind micro-vias etc.)? Not looking for a detailed quote - just a hand waving answer.
I'm in the UK and we have our own electronics assembly but the actual PCBs are made elsewhere. Lead time on a bare board almost seems to be a direct multiple of the number of layers, however much you are willing to pay. Our ability to design and build prototypes has got faster and faster on some projects, but having the board made is the limiting immovable factor.
Re: Launch HN: ProvenMetal (YC S26) delivers circuit boards in days instead of weeks
#156> we have a heuristic harness that Fable 5 uses to check the board for DFM issues So OpenAI gets a full copy of every customer board? I wish that was mentioned on the upload page.
I'm pretty sure Fable 5 isn't by OpenAI
Oops, true. I regard Anthropic and OpenAI as essentially the same company. Neither of them seem capable of securing their infrastructure.
Re: Launch HN: ProvenMetal (YC S26) delivers circuit boards in days instead of weeks
#157I'm trying to find your capabilities. I.e trace and space minimums, hole to edge minimums, min annular ring, etc. Are you not at that stage yet? Will you ever publish a standard spec?
Re: Launch HN: ProvenMetal (YC S26) delivers circuit boards in days instead of weeks
#158Is there a standard parts list of immediately available parts, like JLBPCB? [1] [1] https://jlcpcb.com/parts/in-stock-parts
Everything in stock on US distributors, but we will make a tool for this too.
No, that's misleading. "Immediately available" means parts you already have in stock and can start populating without waiting for another supplier - it doesn't mean things that you could order.
Re: Launch HN: ProvenMetal (YC S26) delivers circuit boards in days instead of weeks
#159Congrats on launch! Have you considered providing engineering consulting as a part of the package? We always started with an amazing CM here in the US and scaled manufacturing in China. We usually spent more with our US CM to go 0 -> 1 -> 500 than what we paid the Chinese manufacturer to go from 500 -> 100,000. He was an amazing guy with consultants sitting at every aspect of the process. We would not have succeeded without the us CM.
I always thought there was a business in making that consulting easy to find. Its usually a very hard thing to find good consultants.
Re: Launch HN: ProvenMetal (YC S26) delivers circuit boards in days instead of weeks
#160I ran a hardware startup for about a decade. We ended up doing all PCB assembly in China. We did try to find this in the USA, but it was indeed too slow and expensive. The bottleneck in assembling a PCB is usually component sourcing. My product was not the most complicated, and even then, to assemble in Shenzhen, China, it often took a few weeks to get all the components. The core issue here is that latency is determ…
Not to negate your core points but almost all the HW engineers I've worked with who are experienced absolutely consider sourcing and availability in the decision making process.
It was a reason years ago Maxim's ICs were almost always on a "never design in" list since obtaining them was near impossible in reasonable time frames.
Most "seasoned" HW engineers who are working lower volumes verify availability with distributors and for high-volume (i.e. 100K units+/yr) work with sourcing people internal to company to get commitments for key ICs.