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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]

#81

Post by abielefeld »

grumbelbart2 wrote: post #70
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 commun…

I think so too, because the bar to economic sustainability is not incredibly high. I know a lot of one-man businesses operating with one Siplace pick and place machine and making a good living out of it.

Many people don't have the desire to expand forever. In my case I hope the company grows o 20 or 30 employees, and then I would work stabilizing it so it can last 50+ years. e.g. setting up a trust to oversee the well being of employees, the quality of the products, etc.

This is completely alien to most american founders and businessmen, in the words of Larry Elison: "it's not enough for me to win, it's about everybody else losing"

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

#82

Post by abielefeld »

joe_mamba wrote: post #74
abielefeld wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Sadly I cannot disclose it

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

#83

Post by abielefeld »

monegator wrote: post #73
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.

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…

Yes, it's all about fast turnaround without pain.

Manufacturers in china just do it fast, and avoid all the pains, they actually care about customer experience above all, something we have to learn from ourselves obviously!

As I said in another comment, I fully expect things to change for the better: Some manufacturers will go out of business, but yet others will turn around in time.

All these people that were laid off will find jobs again, revitalizing moribund companies. Some will create their own companies, I view myself as part of this group.

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

#84

Post by [deleted] »

Fnoord wrote: post #33
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…

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…

[deleted]

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

#85

Post by abielefeld »

Slartie wrote: post #72
gmueckl wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Th…

For an example with a website, see Waterott, it's run by one person who has a single Siplace SMT machine and stencils manually, and he has no issues earning money.

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

#86

Post by graemep »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #57
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

The schtick for Capitalism is that it is supposed to push all companies to the top of optimal resource production, the place you call the bottom. Was it always the case that Western Capitalism was about optimising profits for an over-class, the optimising of resources was always just propaganda, or did it once have ethics?

> Was it always the case that Western Capitalism was about optimising profits for an over-class, the optimising of resources was always just propaganda, or did it once have ethics?

Adam Smith wrote a whole book about ethics.

I actually think the ethical corruption has been very recent and driven by multiple factors, but the most important is the myth that people are rich because they deserve to be, and if they are poor it is because they are stupid or lazy. The rich therefore tend to feel far less noblesse oblige.

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

#87

Post by nubinetwork »

utopiah wrote: post #68
nubinetwork wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Ah... good to know... I don't have anything to shop for right now, but if they're the same, I'll just go to the source.

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

#88

Post by graemep »

joe_mamba wrote: post #77
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 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…

> There's no gender hostility or discrimination

I disagree. There is a great deal of variation between countries and companies. My daughter is in automotive electronics (in R & D rather than manufacturing) and her employer and country are at the better end of the spectrum, but there are definitely places where it is very difficult for women.

> You can't force people to be attracted to a specific industry or line of work.

That depends on culture and upbringing. If you bring girls up to think that electronics or software or whatever is a male pursuit they will avoid it. A lot of this is set in early childhood and subtly so. Have you seen the difference in the toys little girls and boys get? Or who helps dad (and its almost always dad!) with the DIY or setting up a new gadget or similar tasks? I was my kids primary parent, so they picked up I liked and I just assumed my kids were likely to be interested in things I found interesting.

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

#89

Post by smeeagain2 »

Animats wrote: post #7
napkinartist wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are saying the same thing they said -- it doesn't scale. It's not how you build a large factory. They acknowledge this and pretty quickly move on to say that they are aiming for smaller and sustainable. They even specifically call out why they chose not to use a conveyor based oven in the video. Basically they believe they can be price reasonable at small scales, small batches. Build process knowledge and experti…

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…

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

#90

Post by f1shy »

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…

I’m sure there is one or another company generating employment. I didn’t stated something different. Did I?

I just named a fact. I know people in at least 3 different companies in the list that lost their job last year, and many others which are in the list until 2030. The people that lost their jobs are/were more than 1 year searching. I’m talking with many “actual people” in different industries, and it is not looking very bright…

Most of the open positions is management of projects in other parts of the world. I see almost no development in SW or electronics going on here, much less production.

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