I am now in Singapore. Singapore is in Southeast Asia and the majority
of the population are Chinese but there are quite some Malay and 
Indian as well. 

We are doing mass production but not in the sense of mass production 
in the consumer electronics. Most of our product have annual quantity 
of 1k to 20k with very few product above 50kpcs per year. I am told 
by the SMD/PTH department that a PTH machine is not worth the initial
investment since majority of components are SMD parts here and the 
direction is going to smaller and smaller parts. We have more than 600 
people in Singapore and another 300 people in a nearby subsidy
in Bintan Island, Indonesia. It is quite expensive to do manual insertion
and soldering in Singapore (of course still cheaper than in the
headquarter in Mannheim, Germany). But in Bintan (similar to China in the
aspect of cost but without the high quality work force but it is
only one hour to Singapore), the price is quite cheap.

We have quite some SMD machines though and they are not cheap especially
when the accuracy of placement is high. Most of them are Siemens Siplace 
machines. They are really quite expensive. We do not have Computerized 
Vision Inspections system either. Therefore we are doing manual visual 
check (with microscopes) of the quality of SMD reflow soldering.

The number of vias may affect the PCB price. This is especially true when
the size of the vias is quite small. So you need to do some calculations.

However PCB price are generally more depending on the quantity and 
tolerance and the number of milling and V-cut than the number of vias. 
PCB price negotiation is quite difficult when the quantity is low. 
We try to procure PCBs from mainland China. However, those with good
quality does not accept our order quantity and price. Those accepting
our order quantity/price does not meet our quality requirement. ;-(

Regards,
Xiaofan

----------------------------------------------
Xiaofan Chen
R&D Engineer, Photoelectric Sensor Development
Pepperl+Fuchs Singapore
http://www.pepperl-fuchs.com
Signals for the world of automation
--------------------------------------------

-----Original Message-----
From: Vitaliy 
Sent: Monday, October 17, 2005 2:24 PM
To: Microcontroller discussion list - Public.
Subject: Re: [EE] Board Manufacturing

A very interesting discussion!

Xiaofan, when you say

> [...] we do not have automatic placement machine for
> PTH components since manual insertion is still cheaper.

I assume you're talking about a Chinese factory? Is an automatic placement 
machine more expensive because of high operating costs, or do you mean that 
in the sense that it requires a substantial initial investment?

If I remember correctly, on my visit to our contract manufacturer I was told

that their state-of-the-art pick-and-place SMT and PTH machines were $300k 
apiece. Perhaps what you said would only apply to (relatively) small 
factories, which are unable to use the machine to its full capacity?

We just sent the Gerbers for our latest product to the board house on 
Friday. This particular PCB has SMT on both sides, with PTH LEDs, IC socket,

and sub-D connectors on the top. Although initially we were able to jam-pack

the parts on one side, the resulting number of vias was ridiculous - IIRC, 
x3 or more compared to the two-sided approach.

So here's a question for people with more experience: is it better 
(cost-/performance-wise) to have SMT parts on both sides, or have three 
times as many vias?

Best regards,

Vitaliy
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