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

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

#61

Post by abielefeld »

lnsru wrote: post #59
abielefeld wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi, Augustin here, one of the presenters. 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 lau…

I am afraid, that when it gets too bad and too obvious it will be too late. For me first steps would be turning bureaucratic ship around and making regulatory framework simpler and cheaper. With some exceptions for startups/small companies during very first months or years. The industry would be more attractive and with more demand for European electronics manufacturing. With more demand it would slowly start growing…

This is happening already! The 28th regime (https://www.europarl.europa.eu/committees/en/the-28th-regime...) will simplify the framework to register and operate companies in the EU, also the push by the EU commission to implement the Draghi report (https://commission.europa.eu/topics/competitiveness/draghi-r...) is one of deregularization of the industry.

Of course quasi monopolies of European industry are hoping to lobby these measures to suit them more than small players, but I am hopeful, as we have some very good legislators and politicians who are on our side.

Also Eurostack (of which Eilbek Research is a member) is a lobbyist group pushing for Draghi-adjacent policies, most of all: Relocating the entire cloud stack to Europe. And while for the bigger members of this organization it means having our own Google or Facebook (including their harms), it cannot help but inadvertently push the EU to pass laws that will further the agenda of eroding the USA-Tech monopolies.

Cory Doctorow pushes this narrative (https://pluralistic.net/2025/10/15/freedom-of-movement/) that this can only be a benefit in the medium term.

Things are moving in the right direction, not many are talking about it, but when things hit mainstream news, they're already old by the reality's standard.

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

#62

Post by Joel_Mckay »

nebula8804 wrote: post #34
Joel_Mckay wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Consumer hardware like the iPhone would not do well when the next model is 20% slower with a 35% retail price reduction.

>what can you really differentiate in this field that isn't cost?

Don't worry about it... =3

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

#63

Post by raverbashing »

abielefeld wrote: post #44
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…

Hi, Augustin here, one of the presenters. 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 lau…

> 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.

Completely agree.

Then the Semi industry wonders why they're running out of people

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

#64

Post by mapt »

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.

COVID and the supply chain crisis made apparent just how over-reliant we are on Shenzhen and Taiwan for the most basic components. There are several hundred ICs on dozens of circuitboards in every car now that are dumber, slower, and less efficient than a 1990s calculator, that we have lost the ability to produce domestically. These are now bottlenecks to manufacturing in any disruption to world trade.

It doesn't need to be cutting edge, if you have a few board assembly shops and some fabs pumping out small chips in 20-30 year old process nodes it helps the resilience of the economy and geopolitical situation a great deal.

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

#65

Post by f1shy »

PinguTS wrote: post #11
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…

Funfact: If you are working in the industry, you know that there are many companies who produce electronics in Europe in general and some even in Germany. Bosch, Continental, Siemens, Palfinger, FAUN, Webasto, Phoenix Contact, Beckhoff, …

Fun fact: some of those companies are shutting down productions sites as we read this forum...

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

#67

Post by atwrk »

The comments here seem to show a typical US-EU divide in perspectives, people talk past each other. Yes, mass-market low-margin consumer products (the US view) probably won't be produced much in the EU in the next few years.

But much of the electronics industry in the EU is B2B and centers around producing high-margin products where 10.000 units of a product would be huge.

The company I work for, for example, usually produces a few hundred units of a product before the next revision replaces it. Whether or not the PCB costs 20€ more or not really isn't that important if you only plan to sell 100 devices of it per year for 10k€ each. Aspects like quality and regulatory conformity are way more important here.

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

#68

Post by utopiah »

nubinetwork wrote: post #9
utopiah wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bit pricier https://www.crowdsupply.com/pcb-arts/vapor-phase-one

Ngl, everything on crowd supply is overpriced. I bought an sdr through them several months ago, and the antenna I bought with it could be found on mouser for at least $10 cheaper.

Eh... well yes CS is not cheap but also... CS is Mouser. They got acquired 7 years ago https://www.crowdsupply.com/announcements/crowd-supply-has-b... .

You can buy the exact same products if they have enough in stock on either platform so price should be about the same e.g. https://www.crowdsupply.com/mouser-electronics and the opposite https://eu.mouser.com/manufacturer/crowd-supply/

They might have big margins on generic products but nothing obvious to me. FWIW bought uSDR with antennas just last month.

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

#69

Post by varispeed »

clacktronics wrote: post #40
micw wrote: post #23

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

I have been using them in the past, when I needed a board overnight. Problem is that they are prohibitively expensive. For the price of a couple of bare unpopulated boards I could get dozen boards populated (with parts priced in) from China and they would arrive at the same time. Once Brexit was fully implemented their shipping was slower than from China, so they lost all edges to me.

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

#70

Post by grumbelbart2 »

atwrk wrote: post #67

The comments here seem to show a typical US-EU divide in perspectives, people talk past each other. Yes, mass-market low-margin consumer products (the US view) probably won't be produced much in the EU in the next few years. But much of the electronics industry in the EU is B2B and centers around producing high-margin products where 10.000 units of a product would be huge. The company I work for, for example, usually…

That is an excellent point. The development costs of such low-volume projects are often way higher than the production costs. Having production in house or close often allows tighter, thus faster, prototyping and feedback during development, which in turn saves money.

The whole "But how can this be scaled and monetized" crowd here also does not seem to understand the point of such projects and Germany's Hacker community. It is about learning and just doing it, much less about building a high–revenue business.

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