'William Chops" Westfield ' Now, while I myself am primarily a hobbyist when it comes to building > hardware, it has always been my perception that there are a large > number of "real companies" out there making "real products" that are > never-the-less not in an economic position to commit the sort of > resources needed to create a design based on such a part (4-layer > extra fine-pitch PCB and probably outsourced assembly), especially > during initial development. There are surprisingly many small companies that sortof do something electronic related and are stuck in the stone age. There are even some larger companies where electronic thingies that may go with their mechanica= l products are more a afterthought and they do things the old fashioned way because they are somewhat scared of things electronic (I was visiting one o= f those just yesterday). However, there is no need for any of this. There is a well supplied and diverse market for assembly services. You just have to be comfortable with the process and know how to interface with these suppliers. Some of these companies will be more high end and invest in the machines and techniques t= o build the latest boards. In other words, you don't need to have this expertise since you can hire it out when needed. The number of small electronic assembly shops near you will likely surprise you if you ever dig around and really look for them. In my area (30 miles northwest of Boston Massachusetts), there are probably a dozen close enough I could visit in a single day if I really needed to. We have everything from one that specializes to hand work only, to some hand work with a old pick and place and oven, to fully automated capable of dealing with the latest technology. It's rare that we build our own prototypes, even when the parts are within our capability. We have soldering irons and a hot air station, and can do down to QFN PICs if need be. However, all this is labor intensive, and it makes more sense to pay a local company $35-$50/hour for assembly services than to pay a engineer to do the same thing that could be doing billable work at $125/hour. Also, it's just boring and annoying to build stuff. I'= d rather be designing the next thing, then get back to debugging the previous boards when they come back from the manufacturer. So the short answer is that anyone can have access to advanced assembly technologies, including small companies. We typically pay $80 to $200 per board to get prototypes assembled in small quantities. Often it's just 2 o= r 3 boards. These are to test and debug with, and have a extra or two to compare in case things don't work right or you blow up something. For production volumes starting at 100 units or so, we send things out to where assembly is much lower cost. Djula is usually the top of the list fo= r this, although sometimes customers have specific vendors they want to work with. Let the folks like Djula invest in the fancy machines for the latest production technologies. They have the volume and can keep the machine busy. You pay for just a little slice of that when you need it. This is a world market (Djula is in Serbia, for example). There is plenty of competition so you can get access to high end manfucturing when you need it at a fair price. For the vast majority of electronic products, it makes no sense to do the actual production yourself. ******************************************************************** Embed Inc, Littleton Massachusetts, http://www.embedinc.com/products (978) 742-9014. Gold level PIC consultants since 2000. --=20 http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist .