PicDude wrote:
> China still does not seem to be a good option for the low-volume folks, 
> such
> as myself.  My usual batches are ~500 pcs at a time, but I find that 
> lately
> I'm doing specialized versions of my products to specific customers'
> requests -- mostly just different layouts, but very short runs of under a
> couple hundred pieces each.  Part of the reason I'm looking into my own
> equipment is that the quote cycle time for each product or even each 
> version
> of a product is significant and it makes short runs very painful.  It's
> amazing how much time I can waste just going back and forth with CEMs 
> trying
> to get quotes.  I'm thinking I can cater to those in a similar 
> situation --
> at least for a short time to help offset the machine costs.

Neil, our company would certainly be interested. These are the options that 
we have right now:

1. Contract manufacturers (1000+, 6 week lead time, low cost)
2. In-house manual assembly (typically 10-100 units per run, zero lead time, 
medium cost)
3. http://www.aapcb.com/ (1-10 units, ~1 week, very expensive -- but may be 
necessary in some cases)

We use #2 for our Bluetooth modules, mainly because #1 is ridiculously 
expensive. CEMs assume that they will "lose" a percentage of very expensive 
Bluetooth modules, and mark up the quote accordingly. However, building 
thousands of modules by hand is no fun for the techs, and we'd be willing to 
pay at the same rate for machine assembly (currenly, ~$2/unit), as long as 
we didn't have to do it in-house. We would even accept a reasonable 
percentage (1-2%) of defective units, which can be repaired at our facility.

Best regards,

Vitaliy 

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