suprabeast

Was thinking of possibly setting up my own business doing electronics manufacture.

All of this talk of sideline incomes etc. has got me thinking and I have realised that you'll never get rich working for yourself.

Just wondered from those who work in the electronics industry, how many of you send out your electronics pcbs to be manufactured (soldered) off site, and how many have in house equipment??

Any feedback would be appreciated.

Thanks

P.s. i am an expert solderer so i'm already qualified to do this, but i just dont earn enough doing it for my current company

Vette_76

Expert solderer my ****!!

Graz

Off site - you need special (read very expensive) machines to place and solder BGAs

suprabeast

yeah you are right there, bgas are a tough one because of the fact there is never 100% accuracy and you also need a reflow oven or hot air machine.

What about pcbs without ball grid arrays??

Goochie

I think there is a revolution in PCB manufacture on it's way Imagine the tracks being laid down on alomst any surface, not just smooth ones, one off's being really cheap and the posibility of variable height tracks

For now that is all I can tell you.

mart360

from what i can remember

either a wave flow solder machine or a hot air oven / conveyor system..


we used one where i worked,, it took 8 people running shifts to make the thing pay.!!!!!!!!!!!!!


M

AndyC_772

iTrader: (2)

Hate to p*ss on your chips, but there's an awful lot of work in electronics manufacture if you're at all serious.

If you can solder, then you'll certainly be able to get contract work doing in-house repair work and prototype assembly for electronics firms. In fact, PM me your details and I'll put you on my list - I'm always having to take time out from design engineering to solder stuff and we could use a good wireman. You might get a tenner an hour for that sort of work if you're lucky.

However, if you're thinking about volume production then - frankly - you can forget it now. Hand assembly is all but non-existant these days, it's simply not economic to do unless volumes are very low and the technology level is similarly conventional. If you want to get into machine assembly then you'll need a screen printing machine (for solder paste), a pick & place machine, reflow oven, rework station and some sort of AOI or ICT machine at the very least. That's a small warehouse full of kit - it'll cost millions and need half a dozen staff to keep it running.

Sorry to be negative - I really wish there were more competent assy companies out there, it would make my job a lot easier - but it's a hard business to get into. Margins are tight and turnover is high, so even a few problems would cause you serious financial headaches. You'll need staff who are really, really good at what they do - please take it from me that there are more bad production engineers out there than good ones.

Soldering is a useful skill, but a hard one to make a living at. There are people who do it all day every day, but they're not well paid - they have to compete with machines, after all. Do you have any other complementary skills? Could you, for example, develop and assemble something like DVD player or console chips?

As it happens I have a batch of boards that do need some rework doing on them right now - 50 boards x 80 0603-size resistors each = 4000 components to replace. Care to quote for the job?

AndyC_772

iTrader: (2)

ps. BGAs don't generally require any special equipment to assemble - any modern pick & place machine can do them and they're actually more reliable once you've got the reflow profile correct. It's inspecting and reworking them that's difficult.

FYI, almost all companies contract out their assembly these days. There's precious little overlap in core skills between design and assembly, so it makes good sense to keep them separate. It's also important for the companies who do the design to be able to choose different manufacturers for different product lines - use a cheap & cheerful outfit for the simple stuff and a high-price, high-tech organisation for the fineline BGAs, large multilayers, bed-of-nails testing and so on. You don't want to find yourself unable to build your product just because the competent production engineer quits the company you're using...

kevin stanton

i work in the power supply industry and theres **** loads of sub contract companies out there. we manufacture in house with autoplacement smt and axial machines, 2 blakell hand placement machines and wave solder.
if production gets too busy for us, we just ship it out to the far east. they can make it for pennies.

boxst

Hello

As a very small sideline that will earn you beer money (if you are not an alcoholic anyway), is soldering ModChips to an X/Box, PS2 etc...

The guy who is vaguely in this area, charges £20 or so, and he is booked weeks in advance.

Steve.

Jiggerypokery

We contract out the manufacture of the bare PCBs but we do the pick+place in house. I really can't see there being much of a market for manufacture in the UK, the cheapest places are probably going to be in the far-east.

At a previous company we had a manufacturing house in Mexico, and even that was too expensive, so we sold the lot and got the PCBs manufactured and placed in Taiwan.


As for hand-soldering, this is really only suitable for very (very) low volume or prototype runs on small PCBs.
I normally manufacture my own two-sided PCBs and solder them at home, for home projects. Even 208 pin PQFPs are easy, and it's quite enjoyable so I wouldn't dream of paying someone to do it for me!

AndyC_772

iTrader: (2)

UK-based manufacture is fine for relatively low volume products, where frequent engineering changes are made and where proximity to the manufacturing site has value in itself. I'd never want the first batch of anything to be made in the Far East simply because of the lead time and batch size problems. Getting last minute BOM or program changes incorporated is tricky.

Full-blown, high volume production is another matter, though. Stable design? Batch of 250 boards or more? China, please - and yes, of course we can pay in noodles.

suprabeast

thankyou for all of your replys..

just to answer a couple of questions,

I'm studying for an electrical and electronics engineering degree at the moment and i'm soldering for space applications at my current company which means i've got a current ticket with the european space agency for soldering.

I was primarily only thinking about small volume stuff and only looking for an opportunity to boost some earnings!

I guess prototyping is probably the best way to go and i'll think about looking into it but as a few people have said, i suppose these days its very difficult to compete with larger companies that have small margins.

AndyC_772

iTrader: (2)

A thought: you might do better not as a wireman, but as a production engineer. If you understand how solder joints are made, and what differentiates a good one from a bad one, then you're already doing a lot better than many QC people!

Do you have any experience with operating, maintaining or even inspecting the stuff that comes off an automated assembly line? Maybe your current employer could even be persuaded to help your broaden your horizons a bit? It's not even especially difficult; I'm a design engineer but constantly seem to be beating up suppliers for things as simple as p*ss poor soldering. If I can do it (on the strength of a few factory visits and a few dozen badly assembled PCBs), then for a trained production engineer it should be a doddle.

Monkeh

The electronics industry is going to change radically in the next coupld of years as organic semiconductors become commercialy available. I think this will have as big effect as the transistor did.

AndyC_772

iTrader: (2)

Care to elaborate? What device made with these organic semis is going to change the world?

Just curious - and wondering why I've not heard of them

TopBanana

If it's beer money you're after, the XBOX / PS2 idea sounds like a good one!