[time-nuts] OT stuffing boards: was GPS interface/prototyping board

[Nick Sayer]

I’ve done quite a bit of this. My assembler of choice is Small Batch Assembly.

It all sort of depends on what you call “reasonable.” PNP assembly is a bit like PCB fab in that there are rather large set-up costs and the per-unit cost after that is quite low, which favors volume.

Any way you slice it, I’d expect that 10 boards is too small a number for it to be economical. I’ve done 10-20 *panels* of boards at a time with SBA, and that’s worked out ok, but that’s amortizing the cost over a couple hundred units at a time.

SBA has a free quote widget on their site that will give you a ballpark number given your BOM size, board and panel count. I particularly like that there’s no hook from that widget to a greasy salesman trying to glad-hand you. :)

> On Jun 23, 2016, at 12:28 PM, Bob Stewart <bob at evoria.net> wrote:
> 
> One more related question before this topic dies, if you don't mind.  What about the other side of building: stuffing the boards.  My GPSDOs have about 120 parts per board, plus some custom work on the SMA connectors.  Is there a service out there that will populate boards with SMT components for small orders at a reasonable price?  Small is 10 boards.
> 
> Bob - AE6RV
> 
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> GFS GPSDO list:
> groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/GFS-GPSDOs/info
> 
> --------------------------------------------
> On Wed, 6/22/16, Clint Jay <cjaysharp at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Subject: Re: [time-nuts] RS232 / GPS interface/prototyping board
> To: "Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement" <time-nuts at febo.com>, "Nick Sayer" <nsayer at kfu.com>
> Date: Wednesday, June 22, 2016, 6:06 PM
> 
> Life is so much easier
> now,  dirtypcb is a great service,  I have a pile of
> boards here from them which are far greater
> quality than anything I could
> hope to
> produce at home or even in the lab I used to have. 
> They're also
> better quality than any of
> the local board houses I used in the past.
> 
> Having said that,  I did hand
> manufacture fifty single sided boards from
> photo laminate to completed product in one
> weekend using a Dremel drill
> press for
> somewhere around four thousand holes and hand soldering
> every
> component so it was definitely
> possible
> On 23 Jun 2016 00:01, "Nick
> Sayer via time-nuts" <time-nuts at febo.com>
> wrote:
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