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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]

#71

Post by markus_zhang »

abielefeld wrote: post #50
Fnoord wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Hey! Talk speaker here, thank you so much for these words. 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…

Just curious, is it possible to get some basic production "kit" from China and go from there? I'd assume it's going to be new and cheaper and more "modular", and you only rely them on these basic items. I have never been into electronics manufacturing so not sure if it makes sense.

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

#72

Post by Slartie »

gmueckl wrote: post #21
PinguTS wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I can second that there are relatively small electronics manufacturers in Germany. I know a few myself, although I'm not working in that field.

I can third this observation. I've even had my flat above one of these for 10 years. Small company, privately-owned, five employees or so. They have a few pick-and-place machines (SIMATICs as far as I have seen) located in a small factory building and manufacture small production runs with them.

They don't have a real website advertising their services, but they seem to do well, probably their customers know them. They've run their business continuously for at least those 10 years I've lived at that spot. I could smell the soldering oven running constantly.

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

#73

Post by monegator »

crote wrote: post #13
PinguTS wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, …

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.

Disagree. The main reason we use chinese fabs is because we can actually get the goods in less than three weeks, so if we have a surge in sales we are covered pretty quickly.

The other reason is that we do some low complexity boards all specified with chinese parts, JLCPCB for the win, and our contractor agrees with us. They are not interested in those jobs because they can't possibly compete.

However, for our batch size/complexity our local contractor beats the chinese, by a good margin, and they keep growing the business. In Italy. The only problem we have with them is lead time, because there is always some hiccup, some missing part, some email that gets answered a day too late. I've been asking them for years to just provide their catalog with their partnumbers so i can just specify them in the BOM, and we won't waste all that time back and forth, but it's never been a true priority, but they do need to streamline the process. All european manufacturers need to streamline their process.

Another comment here lamented that the issue is that the fabs may try to treat every board as unique, whereas is should be us designers that adapt to them. I agree. That's a general issue in our attitude to designing a product, in many areas.

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

#74

Post by joe_mamba »

abielefeld wrote: post #51
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…

Hey, I'm one of the two speakers :) The commenter above you phrased it well: "Price-reasonable", to us, it's first about breaking even. I will look into the companies you linked, looks interesting! Though to give you food for though, I will tell you about a french drone manufacturing company, they manufacture in house, they turn over probably around 10 million € a year. I know first hand they stencil print around 10k…

>I will tell you about a french drone manufacturing company [...]

Can you also tell us the name?

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

#75

Post by joe_mamba »

f1shy wrote: post #65
PinguTS wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

I feel like HN posters simply know the names of these companies because they're big, but don't actually work at those companies, otherwise they would know about the massive waves of layoffs and offshoring happening there lately.

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

#76

Post by joe_mamba »

throwaway132448 wrote: post #20
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…

You sound like you're stuck in a rut. I don't see any of this.

Where do you live/work that you don't see any of this?

I heard Poland is doing amazing right now, but where I live half my friend group including me has been through layoffs in the past 2-3 years and every day when I open the news, large companies in my country are announcing layoffs or hiring freezes, and small to medium sized ones are announcing insolvencies.

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

#77

Post by joe_mamba »

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…

>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

Actually, I DO believe we are unable to turn it around. I've done EE work both in Europe and in China for over a span of 10 years, and what sets China apart from Europe that enabled them to overtake us is the mindset, both at government support level AND at individual level.

Chinese operated a lot closer in mentality of the US compared to Europeans, as in very cutthroat move fast and break things, wanting to ship a new product every 6 months(!). This mentality is lacking in Europe who mostly stick to slow paced industries where there's a national security, regulatory or bureaucratic moat like aerospace, defense, telco, industrial automation or automotive, but nothing cutting edge in consumer space that's dominated by China, Korea, Japan and US.

Then there's the massive investments and support from the Chinese state that's missing in European electronics industry. To get an idea compare to the massive sums Europe invests in pharma(or life sciences) versus pitiful investments in electronics for example, and you'll get what I mean.

Until those change, we have no chance, we're just dreaming and huffing copium that somehow things will magically improve out of the blue.

>the industry is hostile to newcomers, self-taught people, women, and more.

Pretty much this, minus the hostility towards women part. I've had few women colleagues everywhere I worked in EE, there's no gender hostility or discrimination, just that young girls looking for a career, aren't really into sitting hunched down over a table and soldering and probing PCB's in a lab somewhere in a techo-park in the outskirts of town as a career, when stuff like HR, marketing, brand design in the city center, is way more hip and appealing to young urbanites. You can't force people to be attracted to a specific industry or line of work. Similarly how there's not much women in construction, welding, oil industry, fire fighters, LEO, etc and it's also not due to hostility, or how there's not too many men in nursing, HR or childcare.

> They are unemployed because no one would respect them, and give them a meaningful mission like we would

I hope you realize, you're not really selling the European electronics industry optimism here with this example of skilled people being passed on for employment.

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

#78

Post by PinguTS »

joe_mamba wrote: post #75
f1shy wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I feel like HN posters simply know the names of these companies because they're big, but don't actually work at those companies, otherwise they would know about the massive waves of layoffs and offshoring happening there lately.

I feel like some HN posters simply read news and don't work in the industry and have actual insights on what's happening.

Like Hydac moved some of there assembly from China to Germany.

A company in the district nearby, just moved their whole production from Thailand back to here. Yes, production costs are higher. But there is not transportation costs. They don't have long lead times anymore and can react more better to demand. So the overall costs assessment lead to the decision it is better to have production here locally.

I recommend to go to SPS, Agritechnica, and so and talk to actual people.

BTW: Even as Continental has layoff. There are other companies around that happily absorb those people. Because 2 years back, that had problems employing people.

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

#79

Post by joe_mamba »

PinguTS wrote: post #78
joe_mamba wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like HN posters simply know the names of these companies because they're big, but don't actually work at those companies, otherwise they would know about the massive waves of layoffs and offshoring happening there lately.

I feel like some HN posters simply read news and don't work in the industry and have actual insights on what's happening. Like Hydac moved some of there assembly from China to Germany. A company in the district nearby, just moved their whole production from Thailand back to here. Yes, production costs are higher. But there is not transportation costs. They don't have long lead times anymore and can react more better…

>that had problems employing people

Who is "that" in this context? Can you be more specific.

>Even as Continental has layoff

Not just Conti, but all major automotive suppliers, semiconductor, embedded companies spread across Europe had mass layoffs.

And not everyone was quickly absorbed. I have EE friends almost a year unemployed after the layoffs. They apply but only get rejections, not sure why. It's a bloodbath right now in industries in high-CoL regions.

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

#80

Post by abielefeld »

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…

Hey, talk speaker here, that's a great point!

A discussion that got cut from the talk at the early draft process was defining what "small-series" and "large-series" mean.

To me, at a human scale and without dystopian monopolies, a small series is anything under 1k, a medium series around 50k and a large series 100-500k.

I wanted to define a special class of series, because to an american a small series is probably more like 100k, and a large one 1 million or more, last year something like 230 million iphones were sold globally and that's an absurd number imo.

Because my vision of a healthy electronics industry is 200 companies each selling competing runs of 1 million units, rather than apple selling all 230 million.

In my ideal world then, the only way for apps to be distributed is a marketplace that is regulated and prevents apple from imposing their 30% tax on every dollar spent on the app store.

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