It's a little ironic that you're trying to save a penny or two on your
design and think that bitching about free advice is somehow going to help
you achieve that goal...

Look, call up a dozen or so vendors and get some price quotes -- it'll give
you some idea of what a 'reasonable' price should be. Figure out what you
can charge for your product... if there's enough money left for you to make
profit, just go for it and leave the rest of your learning/profit
maximization until you actually have an income stream and some track record
of the difficulties in building your products.

Anyone worrying about $.01/sq. in. either has such a huge volume that they
should be able to afford an expect to get the best prices and redesign the
product (this oftens makes a huge difference!) specifically to be easy to
manufacture or else is probably never going to get their product out the
door in the first place. I've seen many people who seemed to have viable
product ideas never get anywhere because they spent far too much time
worrying about how to squeeze the last penny out of manufacturing costs and
ran out of enthusiasm to simply design and document the product properly.

---Joel Kolstad

Finally a thoughtful response. BTW I have called up the vendors,
that's just common sense, but the prices they quote are rediculous
even if you promise them volume. They don't believe you about the
volume (rightfully so, that's why I am asking someone who has the
volume) and at those prices there is no business. I have done all
that analysis.

Yes, I am worried about $.01/sq in. That's a buck on a 100 sq in
board. That's A LOT of money to me. BTW, I have done as much antenna
footprint minimization as possible (that's a different topic). Now to
your point about never getting anywhere due to too much time squeezing
out pennies. I have experienced a lot more of the opposite, where
people build stuff without paying enough attention to the costs and
then figure out that its too expensive and try to cost reduce. At
that point their previous decisions limit their options and the stuff
can never be built cheap enough. So I am trying to strike a balance.
And if I can get a quick answer on what those costs are, that would
leave me more time to optimize the design. BTW I am NOT asking who
you are, I am just asking how much you pay. That's the beauty of
these boards. I don't see the foul.

ps Free advice is the goal of these boards, I am not bitching about
the advice, I am bitching about lack thereof.

basketball_jones wrote:

It's a little ironic that you're trying to save a penny or two on your
design and think that bitching about free advice is somehow going to help
you achieve that goal...

Look, call up a dozen or so vendors and get some price quotes -- it'll give
you some idea of what a 'reasonable' price should be. Figure out what you
can charge for your product... if there's enough money left for you to make
profit, just go for it and leave the rest of your learning/profit
maximization until you actually have an income stream and some track record
of the difficulties in building your products.

Anyone worrying about $.01/sq. in. either has such a huge volume that they
should be able to afford an expect to get the best prices and redesign the
product (this oftens makes a huge difference!) specifically to be easy to
manufacture or else is probably never going to get their product out the
door in the first place. I've seen many people who seemed to have viable
product ideas never get anywhere because they spent far too much time
worrying about how to squeeze the last penny out of manufacturing costs and
ran out of enthusiasm to simply design and document the product properly.

---Joel Kolstad

Finally a thoughtful response. BTW I have called up the vendors,
that's just common sense, but the prices they quote are rediculous
even if you promise them volume. They don't believe you about the
volume (rightfully so, that's why I am asking someone who has the
volume) and at those prices there is no business. I have done all
that analysis.

Yes, I am worried about $.01/sq in. That's a buck on a 100 sq in
board. That's A LOT of money to me. BTW, I have done as much antenna
footprint minimization as possible (that's a different topic). Now to
your point about never getting anywhere due to too much time squeezing
out pennies. I have experienced a lot more of the opposite, where
people build stuff without paying enough attention to the costs and
then figure out that its too expensive and try to cost reduce. At
that point their previous decisions limit their options and the stuff
can never be built cheap enough. So I am trying to strike a balance.
And if I can get a quick answer on what those costs are, that would
leave me more time to optimize the design. BTW I am NOT asking who
you are, I am just asking how much you pay. That's the beauty of
these boards. I don't see the foul.

ps Free advice is the goal of these boards, I am not bitching about
the advice, I am bitching about lack thereof.

I gotta think you must be taking the wrong approach with these PC houses
if you can't get an answer from them. Besides, the answers you get from
us don't amount to much if you can't get anybody to make your boards for
the prices "quoted" here.
Bottom line is you won't get the low digit price unless you're going to
spend some big money. If you let the PC houses know how big a project
you have, and it's big, then they'll be plenty anxious to quote you a
good price.

73, Jim AC6XG

Jim Kelley wrote in message ...
basketball_jones wrote:

It's a little ironic that you're trying to save a penny or two on your
design and think that bitching about free advice is somehow going to help
you achieve that goal...

Look, call up a dozen or so vendors and get some price quotes -- it'll give
you some idea of what a 'reasonable' price should be. Figure out what you
can charge for your product... if there's enough money left for you to make
profit, just go for it and leave the rest of your learning/profit
maximization until you actually have an income stream and some track record
of the difficulties in building your products.

Anyone worrying about $.01/sq. in. either has such a huge volume that they
should be able to afford an expect to get the best prices and redesign the
product (this oftens makes a huge difference!) specifically to be easy to
manufacture or else is probably never going to get their product out the
door in the first place. I've seen many people who seemed to have viable
product ideas never get anywhere because they spent far too much time
worrying about how to squeeze the last penny out of manufacturing costs and
ran out of enthusiasm to simply design and document the product properly.

---Joel Kolstad

Finally a thoughtful response. BTW I have called up the vendors,
that's just common sense, but the prices they quote are rediculous
even if you promise them volume. They don't believe you about the
volume (rightfully so, that's why I am asking someone who has the
volume) and at those prices there is no business. I have done all
that analysis.

Yes, I am worried about $.01/sq in. That's a buck on a 100 sq in
board. That's A LOT of money to me. BTW, I have done as much antenna
footprint minimization as possible (that's a different topic). Now to
your point about never getting anywhere due to too much time squeezing
out pennies. I have experienced a lot more of the opposite, where
people build stuff without paying enough attention to the costs and
then figure out that its too expensive and try to cost reduce. At
that point their previous decisions limit their options and the stuff
can never be built cheap enough. So I am trying to strike a balance.
And if I can get a quick answer on what those costs are, that would
leave me more time to optimize the design. BTW I am NOT asking who
you are, I am just asking how much you pay. That's the beauty of
these boards. I don't see the foul.

ps Free advice is the goal of these boards, I am not bitching about
the advice, I am bitching about lack thereof.

I gotta think you must be taking the wrong approach with these PC houses
if you can't get an answer from them. Besides, the answers you get from
us don't amount to much if you can't get anybody to make your boards for
the prices "quoted" here.
Bottom line is you won't get the low digit price unless you're going to
spend some big money. If you let the PC houses know how big a project
you have, and it's big, then they'll be plenty anxious to quote you a
good price.

73, Jim AC6XG

Folks we are missing the point here. I can certainly get a quote from
them. You can safely assume I already have it. Ok, that tells me the
MOST I am going to pay. Now I want the LEAST I can possibly pay. The
only way for me to get that is to go through board manufacturers' cost
structure and assume their take. I am not TI or HP, I don't have the
resources to do that, and even if I did I wouldn't get it right. Now
why would I want to know the LEAST even though I can't get that price
at this point. Well, the situation is likely that if I have to pay
the MOST, I lose money. Do I still lose money when I get to pay the
LEAST? (As far as getting the houses to quote a big project) I can't
get the big project funded, much less quoted until I understand that.

Look people. Determining the 'right' price is one of the 'killer aps'
of the internet. Use it.

basketball_jones wrote:
Do I still lose money when I get to pay the
LEAST?

I think what you need is a book on the business of manufacturing. The
price is basically going to fit a line y = mx + b. Think of b as a
tooling charge. The unit cost is m. x is the number of units, and y is
what you pay per lot.

73, Jim AC6XG

BTW You have NOT answered one question I asked so far. It would be
helpful if you either answered the questions or stopped wasting my
time. You, my friend are the one that's playing games.


Please Kevin,

Don't be so righteous. I told you what to do on a private e-mail, way before
you sent this. If you couldn't get pricing from the reps--REAL pricing--then I
would provide it.

I, too, have priced out boards for microwave apps, and I certainly didn't need
to go around the reps.

We need to keep a viable substrate industry continuing in this country, and
anything that could be construed as undermining them is not in my vocabulary.
They've bled way too much already.

73,
Chip N1IR

(basketball_jones) wrote in message om...
Jim Kelley wrote in message Well, the situation is likely that if I have to pay
the MOST, I lose money. Do I still lose money when I get to pay the
LEAST? (As far as getting the houses to quote a big project) I can't
get the big project funded, much less quoted until I understand that.

Look people. Determining the 'right' price is one of the 'killer aps'
of the internet. Use it.

I think the price is going to be fairly constant within a certain
volume, unless you can find someone that does it on the side for a
lower price. I used to work at a circuit board company about 20-25
years ago. "Chemetch". I don't think anyone really got any special
deals, unless the order was ready to be placed, and the volume
required was pretty much known. You just gotta dicker with the sales
person. That company was quite high priced actually. Maybe the highest
in town, but I didn't do sales. But the quality and inspection was top
notch. Thats how they justified the high price. But, the owner knew a
few people that did small volume board work on the side, and he let
them "rent" his facilities to make boards at night before normal work
hours. It's one of those types you want to talk to , as they are
always looking for work on the side. We made boards for loads of big
companies, and also NASA. The NASA guys were *real* picky about their
boards, and thats why we got most of their work. But they probably
paid through the nose... They used to have guys in MIB suits/white
shirts come around to inspect the boards during the construction
stages. We also made boards for loads of other companies, including
TI, medical co's, oil , etc. I use to make HUGE double side boards for
medical gear. But also little round boards for digital watches and the
like on the other end...I used to have to inspect so many of those
silver dollar sized things, it nearly gave me brain damage...The
copper lines, etching, etc is nasty work. My skin used to stay green
all the time from the copper dust, and my breath probably smelled like
formaldehyde fumes. :/ I had to give it up after a while. The crap was
killing me... MK

Jim Kelley wrote in message ...
basketball_jones wrote:
Do I still lose money when I get to pay the
LEAST?

I think what you need is a book on the business of manufacturing. The
price is basically going to fit a line y = mx + b. Think of b as a
tooling charge. The unit cost is m. x is the number of units, and y is
what you pay per lot.

73, Jim AC6XG

Excellent, thanks, now, what is the rough equation for 'm' vs volume for PCBs?

basketball_jones wrote:
Excellent, thanks, now, what is the rough equation for 'm' vs volume for PCBs?

To first order, it's a constant which is proportional to the size of
your PC board.

73, AC6XG

basketball_jones wrote:

Jim Kelley wrote in message ...

basketball_jones wrote:

Do I still lose money when I get to pay the
LEAST?

I think what you need is a book on the business of manufacturing. The
price is basically going to fit a line y = mx + b. Think of b as a
tooling charge. The unit cost is m. x is the number of units, and y is
what you pay per lot.

73, Jim AC6XG


Excellent, thanks, now, what is the rough equation for 'm' vs volume for PCBs?

I hope you are kidding !!!!

Contact the vendors and get a price schedule showing price breaks as a
function of layers, area and quantity of boards.

Do you want finished boards, or will you cut boards from a master sheet,
etc.?

What level of quality control is required? If you are selling into the
NASA or Military market there are VERY SIGNIFICANT documentation,
traceability requirements, and QC requirements and certifications
required. Even to controlling the exact chemistry of the board material.

Depending on your customer your unit material cost may be buried in
recurring paper costs. I'm an expert in this area {Program Chief
Engineer, USAF WS-118, RS/RV ... MX Missile]

basketball_jones wrote:
Folks we are missing the point here. I can certainly get a quote from
them. You can safely assume I already have it. Ok, that tells me the
MOST I am going to pay. Now I want the LEAST I can possibly pay.

In many companies that are large enough to have the kind of volumes you seem
to be after, I suspect that purchasing is done by, uh, the purchasing
department and not the design engineer and said purchasing folks are
probably rather unlikely to be reading this newsgroup. :-) Although I'd
grant you this is about the best place to ask that I could think of...