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What I really would love is a JLCPCB equivalent in Europe. Slightly higher prices are OK, but I want to have the the Same amount of process automation and flexibility. Should be good for a scale of a few thousend per year.
Have you looked at Eurocircuits? Not quite as big, but similar kind of thing.
What I really would love is a JLCPCB equivalent in Europe. Slightly higher prices are OK, but I want to have the the Same amount of process automation and flexibility. Should be good for a scale of a few thousend per year.
Hi! Have you every checked out aisler.net? In my opinion they do an amazing job, it's not quite JLCPCB prices, but maybe only 20% higher depending on what service you take, and they deliver faster since they are based in europe. Their business model is pooling small orders and sending them to board fabs in europe, mainly germany and some in the east.
On top of that they also offer 3D printing, CNC machining, sheet metal bending, and even a McMaster-Carr-like parts store. It is literally a one-stop-shop for all your hardware prototype needs.
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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…
Could you perhaps share those PCBA businesses with us? I tried quite hard to find them when I was still in the hardware world, and I never managed to find anything even remotely close to what China offers at less than 10x the price. I'd love to give it another shot for some hobby projects if the industry has indeed changed in the last few years!
From my knowledge, the last time (2022ish) we talked about that was, that they don't take new customers for now. They are working at capacity.
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…
As other commenters pointed out, the electronics industry is quite big in Europe, on paper it generates a lot of money and sustains a lot of jobs. The issue is a bit more complex, and you point it out when you say people around you are old and old-fashioned.
Like I said in the talk: We used to laugh at the chinese products for how low quality they were 20 years ago, who's laughing now?
I don't believe europeans are unable to turn around this situation in as many years as a matter of fact, it's my core beliefs: That together with other young motivated people we'll build our own little electronics industry for ourselves, among ourselves and people who believe we can one day have theye crazy future factories in Europe.
Yes it's crazy hard, but like you I believe things will get sufficiently bad that more will see that the effort is worth it.
You should check out the 39c3 talk from Kliment, he understands this issue so well, and I'll paraphrase him here: Electronics is dominated by old dudes, the industry is hostile to newcomers, self-taught people, women, and more. But by making an effort to give people who are starting a good experience, we can turn this around.
Honestly there is no worker shortage, in my immediate contacts, I already know 2 or 3 people who are ready to work my production line: They have the smarts, skills, and time. They are unemployed because no one would respect them, and give them a meaningful mission like we would, and it's quite clear this is quite a widespread feeling among people.
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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…
>Who wants to be manufacturing technician when you can be lifestyle influencer!? Before influencers people wanted to be actors. It predates the time before Electronics was 'lost' in Europe so thats not a convincing argument. What you are saying really is that the world enjoys what we have on the backs of inadequately paid production engineers in China. As their demographic crisis does not produce a similar sized repl…
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If the only service a CM brings to the table is cost reduction, than its a doomed business model. Rule #23: Don't compete to be at the bottom, as you just might actually win. Have a great day =3
Technically the differentiation isn't cost reduction its in shored manufacturer. That can become an important requirement as firms become more wary of IP theft and other issues. Besides other than that what can you really differentiate in this field that isn't cost? Its a service that is standardized regardless of country. Maybe you can provide different "styles" of boards (ie. different specs) or improve the entire…
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> You have exactly the same burden trying to sell CN-manufactured hardware in the EU. Not if you're a Chinese OEM: you just mail it in, and thanks to the arcane operation of international postage it's cheaper to post to Germany from China than from Germany. CE is such a European type of regulation, there's almost no enforcement, while at the same time it's so vague that simply working out what directives you might ne…
Europe is starting crack down on individual CN import - for exactly this reason. But that's still not going to solve the real problems EU-based hardware companies run into. The whole problem is that the EU electronics industy is laser-focused on those defence and aerospace runs. They expect everything to be bespoke and complicated, so their entire business model is built around it. But the vast majority of hardware i…
CE for simple consumer products is actually not so pricy, and things are moving very quickly there in the right direction. We work with Smander.com for compliance, but there are others who offer it for cheap. The more expensive measurements are EMI, but in Germany universities will let you use their chamber at low cost or even for free if you are a small business or single person.
Honestly the problem with CE is misinformation most of all. It does not need to be complicated: Cheap standards can be bought from evs.ee for 30€, a couple of hours of a CE consultant cost is only a couple hundred, getting close to a university costs only time...
The goals of the EU is also to simplify these regulations, and things are also moving very fast there.
What I really would love is a JLCPCB equivalent in Europe. Slightly higher prices are OK, but I want to have the the Same amount of process automation and flexibility. Should be good for a scale of a few thousend per year.
Eurocircuits does the same kind of service (bar the parts library) but has the DRC - but you aren't going to get slightly higher from anyone in Europe
For a lot of parts the exact details aren't crucial. If I'm using 4k7 0603 I2C pullup resistors I'm more than happy to swap them for 5k6 0402 if they just so happen to have a reel of those lying around and it means not having to wait two days for a restock.
Same with plenty of other parts. Maybe 10% is crucial, the rest can relatively easily be swapped out with whatever happens to be available. Transistor from a different manufacturer, generic level converter with two extra channels, LDO in a different package? If I know what is available, for a proto run I'm more than happy to make a few small changes!
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…
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…
Learning by mistake isn't painful; it is how you learn best. I keep iterating on that point to my children. But that isn't merely what these guys were doing. They were doing more, since they were documenting their (expensive!) learning process. Documenting your learning process and sharing it freely is allowing others to not make the very same mistakes, but to do better instead. It lowers the barrier of entry for com…
This is exactly what we wanted to convey: Let's act, our way isnt the best way, but it is the path we're on, and there is little we can do on our own to get to another path.
We don't want to build the european JLCPCB, we don't even know what our company will be in 20 years if it still exists.
What we want is to give knowledge and see more people get into the business of electronics. We also want to give meaningfull jobs to engineers and factory workers which will eventually join us.
We are not going to change the world, I would settle for selling 1 unit of 1 well made product to 1 customer. I would settle for giving one person a job that they love working with cool guys to make electronics. I would settle for the ability to pay my rent from this, from bringing value in the world.