You can't even buy the base material for that sort of money.
Generally electronics as a hobby has changed in the last decade(s).
Now it is often about connecting modules together.
I mean I do this myself - need a battery powered soldering station:
buy the ready made PCB on Aliexpress.
Need a worklight: buy the LED board and DC-DC converter from China.
I can't even buy the components for what they want for the whole
module. Sure, it often needs some finish and modification, but that is
still easier.
The whole microcontroller based Arduino Raspberry Pi stuff is mostly
based around modules too.
You just connect them together and you can do amazing things without
ever making a PCB at all (maybe even without any soldering!).
It's different for sure. Better / worse, I'm not one to judge and it
is too easy to indulge in nostalgia.
But it sure made electronics as a hobby a lot more popular again.
For me the quality of the end product is even more an issue than the
amount of work.
I mean a single sided PCB with no soldermask, sure, I can knock that
out fairly quickly at home.
But if you want PTH through holes, which are often necessary for
thermal management of modern components, soldermask, silkscreen, the
effort to do this at home quickly becomes very unreasonable. In my
eyes anyway.
If I can have professional quality boards made for ~$20, including
shipping, that changes the game, why would I limit my self
technologically to what I can make at home?
As for the company I linked too initially, you can see the $2 offer is
a marketing price and they are probably losing money on it based on
the volume pricing structure:
2 Layers Size ≤ 100x100mm FR4, 1.6mm, 1oz, HASL, Green Solder Mask,
White silkscreen
10pcs $2.00
100pcs $80.38
1000pcs $669.00
So you should probably expect $10 as sustainable price for 10pcb, the
same ballpark as other chinese suppliers have been offering for a
while.
ST
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On Fri, Jun 15, 2018 at 11:15 AM, Dylan Smith <dyls@...> wrote: Well, we were taught about anthropogenic global warming here in school - in
1986, and by the late 80s it was already a widely discussed subject.
I think part of the decline of homebrew PCBs isn't just that it's got a lot
cheaper to send off a design to get it made in a factory, but it still
remains a lot of work to do it yourself and there still aren't any good
automation options that don't cost a king's ransom. You can't beat the
turnaround time making your own of course. It would be nice if there were
more automation options to preparing and making the PCB in your workshop,
but the market is terribly small.
On 15/06/18 02:00, Steven Hearns wrote:
Well all the global warming debates, DID get heavy when China got .com
capability
when the internet came along and the entire globe began making purchases
for
goods directly from China. Think of 4x billion Chinese escalated out of
poverty in such a short time
we are talking less than 20 years. Never heard an utterance before that
about global warming....unless
I am ignorant and its been an ongoing debate over in your part of the
world since before that.
Heres a video from the early 90's regarding GAT trade agreement and the
fellow from the UK foresaw
where the world is right now, even mentions border problems, illegal
immigration etc:
I have been in the consumer electronics trade since 1995, and I have some
knowledge of what I have seen -
counterfiet semicondustors from China, plenty of corners cut by making
boards thin, easy to break, lots of
pc boards that the traces and foil will lift off when repair attempts are
made, and so fourth.
I was even one of the first sites online in the late 90's selling hard to
find components. I use to get buyers
from all over the world so that tells me my country led the charge in
obtaining things the rest of the world
did not have...in reality very little of the rest of the world was online
back then at all. So we deserve some
credit for devising the internet, at least, large numbers of peoples lives
were vastly improved just by that move
initself , but now when its come full circle and anyone anywhere on the
globe can buy direct from China, how soon
the people from this side of the Atlantic Ocean are forgotten, and ought
not even open their mouths.
All the people who use to buy from me in your part of the world, only come
to me now for a price, and since
my costs have gone up because every country with internet access, is now
all of a sudden a capitalistic country,
the leverage is now in favor of the buyer because I hand out a high price
due to tring to recover from doing all the heavy
lifting for 10+ years to get a business model like a website rolling, then
people just dial up the website using our own means
we freely provided them , and can show the quote to China, and get it for
less, and still make China even wealthier as all China has to do is
ask for 50% less than my quote and you will go there, as there is no
difference where money winds up I guess...as long as price is cheaper.
Also it has given people the idea copy the concepts of the capitalist
websites, as if anyone with a credit card and internet access can do this,
and tells the average small business owner like myself, that your website
is nothing a child cant do, so theres competition on a global scale
for one guy who happened to get a set of obsolete transistor made in
China, had to buy thousands of them, but before he can empty his stock,
they are all over the internet for "too good to be true" cheap costs. Now
whats to come of all these goods sitting on the shelves collecting dust?
Especally when China just continues to produce and flood the market with
cheap disposable products the parts cant be purchased for,
and even now, the spare parts they produce are many times fakes and
frauds.
At some point, you may have to rethink what you are doing, and consider
who started the internet, it was not China, sorry to say.
But when the China bubble explodes, I am sure we will hear its the USA's
fault because of the new Tariffs.
Of course we had factories here that mishandled waste, and GREED was the
cause of it, but not all factories did things like that.
The ones who lasted and were clean, eventually were sold and now have 3rd
world countries doing that work because its cheaper.
Sure cost is now cheaper, but you have more disposable junk which will
eventually pollute the groundwater just as easy as the now haunted
empty American factory once did, perhaps worse.
I have not even touched on copyright infringement....the artificial
islands and their increasing military. Seems the world is feeding a swarm of
locusts. The more you give them, the more they want.
Steve Hearns
Technotronic Dimensions, VT [USA]
WWW.TECHNOTRONIC-DIMENSIONS.COM
1.518.663.3421 (MAIN)
1-877-817-9885 (Voice / Fax Toll Free - US Only)
E-Mail: Steve@...
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Webmaster, Parts-Link: ()
Group Moderator:
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With political leadership that has effectively neutered the EPA,
believes global warming is a hoax, water and air pollution are not
worth their time, views the CDC and FDA with disdain, maybe you should
not be one to talk.
Sure the environmental protection in China could be better but large
scale factories like this are much better than the 1000 small backyard
outfits you used to see.
They are dumping chemicals directly into the next ditch and there is
zero protection for workers.
Would I be happy to pay $4 instead of $2 and have better conditions,
certainly.
As for the competence of the guides, you saw a heavily cut and edited
version in case you didn't realize.
The engineer probably spoke very little English, likely relying on
Lily to translate, and even Lily herself was difficult to understand
for some viewers.
Neither you nor I know how much explanation was given to the host off
camera, but on at least one occasion you saw Lily explain something
and then the host repeat it in his own words to make it clearer.
I don't know if the host was simply already familiar with the process
and didn't need much explanation, or if it was given off camera, but
it makes no difference to me.
ST
On Fri, Jun 15, 2018 at 12:27 AM, Harvey White <madyn@...>
wrote:
On Thu, 14 Jun 2018 19:31:09 +0200, you wrote:
Interesting to see how this is done these days:
And you'll never believe the prices, so I won't even write them down
here.
And apparently there's a bit of a price war going on.
Once your designs (if they do) migrate to plated through holes, I
suspect that the average person sends them out somewhere.
Harvey
ST
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