39c3: In-house electronics manufacturing from scratch: How hard can it be? [video]

Post by gmueckl » Mon, Jan 12, 2026, 9:12 AM UTC

PinguTS wrote: post #18

crote wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is the gap between hobbyist project and hundred-thousand-unit production run. You can't easily and cheaply get 10, 100, or 1000 units manufactured in the EU the way you can in China. This pretty much kills hardware startups and scaleups wanting to do local manufacturing. If you're not a multinational or have an essentially-unlimited budget for your small-scale run, you have to outsource it to China.

I work with companies, which have a more like small scale production. They are about 100 or so workers. Yes, this is also possible. They grew their business in the last 25 years, when it was even harder to produce something than these days. At least one of these business have PCB suppliers in the EU, which helped them in the post COVID crises where everybody struggled with supply. I just named some big name brands. I…

Post by micw » Mon, Jan 12, 2026, 9:37 AM UTC

Post by rcxdude » Mon, Jan 12, 2026, 9:54 AM UTC

lnsru wrote: post #8

Animats wrote: post #2

This is painful. They got a used solder mask holder, a Lumen pick and place machine, a bunch of old Siemens feeders, and a small automatic reflow oven. All these tools needed major work. Everything with firmware needed firmware mods. Everything else needed assembly or major cleaning. Everything needed adjustment. They had to 3D print their own solder paste squeegee. They're six months in and still trying to produce o…

Electronics in Europe is so dead. It is past the point where where it can be revived. One thing is sick overregulation to spin hardware product. Last nail in the coffin today is Cyber Resilience Act. It dwarfs all the regulations before it. Second thing is talent. People can’t hardware anymore. I mean putting a 0402 capacitor on the printed circuit board is not hard. But doing that in meaningful way gets hard. As a c…

Post by pjc50 » Mon, Jan 12, 2026, 9:58 AM UTC

crote wrote: post #12

lnsru wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Electronics in Europe is so dead. It is past the point where where it can be revived. One thing is sick overregulation to spin hardware product. Last nail in the coffin today is Cyber Resilience Act. It dwarfs all the regulations before it. Second thing is talent. People can’t hardware anymore. I mean putting a 0402 capacitor on the printed circuit board is not hard. But doing that in meaningful way gets hard. As a c…

The regulations argument is a red herring: those mostly apply to electronics products sold in the EU, not manufactured in the EU. You have exactly the same burden trying to sell CN-manufactured hardware in the EU. Worker's shortage is a real problem in China as well. Their approach? Automate everything . Focus on manufacturing 1000s of designs using a handful of standard formulas, instead of treating every design as…

Post by lefra » Mon, Jan 12, 2026, 10:14 AM UTC

crote wrote: post #14

Animats wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not possible to make a competitively priced product that way. What are you going to do, sell artisanal circuit boards on Etsy? Here's a small US-based PCB board and assembly facility in the US, in Hesperia, California.[1] Looks like it might have 20 to 30 employees from the building picture. This is probably about as small as a viable business of this type gets. It doesn't have to be done in a huge plant like JL…

That depends on your definition of "competitive", doesn't it? Being 3x as expensive as China but 0.1x as expensive as current small-scale EU manufacturing can be extremely competitive. Plenty of people looking for <1000 unit runs would be willing to pay extra for a "made in EU" label.