PCB design/manufacture/assembly
jools
Say I wanted to get a board made in reasonable amounts to make it cost
productive. Do firms do the whole kit, as I only seem to be able to
find firms which make the pcb, I need it made and populated with
parts, some are surface mount and some through hole.
Do I have to get a separate firm to do this for me, ie populating with
parts.
Also the circuit uses a PIC can a pcb firm program it when its in the
board or is it best to get in done externally and bought in programmed
so it can be soldered directly into the board.
Finally is it cheaper to do it in the uk or abroad do you think?
Thanks in advance.
jools
Tilmann Reh
> Say I wanted to get a board made in reasonable amounts to make it cost
> productive. Do firms do the whole kit, as I only seem to be able to
> find firms which make the pcb, I need it made and populated with
> parts, some are surface mount and some through hole.
>
> Do I have to get a separate firm to do this for me, ie populating with
> parts.
>
> Also the circuit uses a PIC can a pcb firm program it when its in the
> board or is it best to get in done externally and bought in programmed
> so it can be soldered directly into the board.
You need a contract manufacturer. Normally these people can order
the PCB directly, get the parts, program any programmable device,
assemble the complete board, and finally test or calibrate it also.
You don't have to care about anything except payment :-)
We, for example, also do this kind of manufacturing.
> Finally is it cheaper to do it in the uk or abroad do you think?
Mainly depends on quantity. For lots of, say, up to hundreds
you'd probably better look in your neighbourhood, for hundreds
of thousands you'd better ask someone in taiwan or red china.
(But then you'd probably not have been asking here...)
It also depends on time and flexibility. If you need them next
week, forget taiwan :-)
--
Dipl.-Ing. Tilmann Reh
Autometer GmbH Siegen - Elektronik nach Maß.
http://www.autometer.de
==================================================================
In a world without walls and fences, who needs Windows and Gates ?
(Sun Microsystems)
Ian Stirling
> Hi
>
> Say I wanted to get a board made in reasonable amounts to make it cost
> productive. Do firms do the whole kit, as I only seem to be able to
> find firms which make the pcb, I need it made and populated with
> parts, some are surface mount and some through hole.
A hundred, or ten thousand?
2 8 pin SOIC, or 32 400 pin BGA...
>
> Do I have to get a separate firm to do this for me, ie populating with
> parts.
You don't have to, it depends on what facilities and skills you have, and
how you value your time.
For the first case (a few SOIC chips, and the rest through hole) you can
do it in the garage with little more than some solder, a soldering iron,
and a wet sponge.
Getting reliable results with the second would require substantially more
investment.
>
> Also the circuit uses a PIC can a pcb firm program it when its in the
> board or is it best to get in done externally and bought in programmed
> so it can be soldered directly into the board.
It depends.
Nearly all PCB firms will be quite happy to take a tube of preprogrammed
PICs and do it that way.
It may or may not work out cheaper to use in-system-programming.
You may well want to consider doing it yourself.
A large number of processors nowasays can be programmed using only a few
pins, rather than needing to connect to all or even most of the pins.
This you connect to from the PC using a programming cable, and download
the software.
>
> Finally is it cheaper to do it in the uk or abroad do you think?
Maybe.
--
http://inquisitor.i.am/ | mailto:inqui...@i.am | Ian Stirling.
---------------------------+-------------------------+--------------------------
"An enemy will usually have three courses open to him. Of these he will
select the fourth." -- Helmuth von Moltke
EEng
My company will do the whole shebang for you in one shot. As far as
buying your PICs already masked, Microchip has a one time minimum fee
of $5000 and a minimum hardware requirement of 5000 parts, however we
routinely burn PICs here before they're stuffed to the board.
Let's hear some numbers though, because I can't advise you to expense
without knowing parts count, size of board, number of laminates,
etc......
Feel free to contact me at nomai...@EEngineer.com and remove the
nomail_ to get through. We do a lot of design and manufacture for
many Fortune 500/1000 companies, DOD, and others but have no minimum
lot run requirements like many companies. We tend to come in
somewhere around 80 cents on the dollar from our competitors and have
facilities in China as well as in-house state side.
MikeB.
weeks turnaround for assembled boards, and the boards were cheap and top
quality. No connection to them, just a happy customer.
I've ordered in batches of 50 boards, up to batches of several hundred
boards.
Most contract manufacturers will either buy parts for you, take drop
shipments of your parts, or allow you to send them parts. Usually these
guys can program the microcontroller for you, or will take your controller
preprogrammed, or you can add some pins (or use a cable) to program it
in-system.
-Mike
"jools" <j.p.m...@ncl.ac.uk> wrote in message
news:7fb35ec4.03043...@posting.google.com...