[HN Gopher] Ask HN: How to improve PCB prototyping iteration time?
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Ask HN: How to improve PCB prototyping iteration time?
I'm building wearable tech, and the JLCPCB lead times are my
biggest bottleneck for iteration. 3-4 weeks is way too long. Has
anyone figured out a way to make this quicker? Strongly considering
moving to Shenzen to build the prototype. Has anyone done this, and
was it quicker/worth it?
Author : RohKo
Score : 19 points
Date : 2024-04-23 20:42 UTC (2 hours ago)
| ysso wrote:
| We are using JLC for PCB + PCBA and usually the boards are ready
| and assembled between 5-6 days and then takes 3-4 days to get
| them shipped to europe.
| RohKo wrote:
| I see, I'm also based in Europe (London) so hopefully shipping
| time ends up being similar!
| talldayo wrote:
| > Strongly considering moving to Shenzen to build the prototype.
|
| That seems like a profoundly personal decision that would have
| more ramifications than you expect.
|
| Breadboarding should be possible, same with soldering together
| prototype PCBs as long as you're not concerned with wearing the
| prototype yourself. There's also (albeit expensive) circuit
| modelling/validation software you could try to use. I don't think
| many circuit designers have a workflow where they perpetually buy
| finished prototypes to check if they're working or not, though.
| RohKo wrote:
| Interesting I see. I'm moving from breadboarding to PCBs
| because I'm using ICs which are way too small to solder by hand
| and I've already prototyped with their off-the-shelf dev board
| versions.
| mikeInAlaska wrote:
| It's just faster and easier to iterate PCBs anymore than
| large breadboard creations.
| jon-wood wrote:
| How small is "too small" here? I'm by no means an expert at
| soldering but with some patience I can hand solder down to
| 0603 components, and I know people who can go much smaller
| than that (right down to the sort of thing where if you
| sneeze finding the components you just scattered around is
| like finding a specific grain of sand on the floor). You can
| get practice boards for next to nothing online if you don't
| want to risk damaging high value components.
| xargon7 wrote:
| Consider ordering reusable chunks of your circuit as PCBs
| instead of iterating on entire boards. You can connect the
| chunks with breadboards or connectors or something.
| nerpderp82 wrote:
| You haven't given us enough information to make a recommendation.
| oakwhiz wrote:
| What kind of board specs do you typically deal with? This can
| have a significant effect on leadtime and who you ultimately
| decide to deal with.
|
| If you just need a lot of unique double-sided boards to play
| around with in "alpha" and you can wait longer for the "beta"
| boards from your supplier, you can use several different small
| scale processes to accomplish that, such as photoresist, milling
| or printing.
| RohKo wrote:
| Using flexi pcbs with SMD parts on one side only - does that
| change your answer at all?
| quasse wrote:
| Do you have in-house SMD assembly experience? When I was
| doing fast turnaround prototyping, being able to build up the
| boards in house was invaluable.
|
| Do you need your prototypes to be on flex PCBs? If you can
| get the electronics ironed out on FR4 you're going to save a
| lot of time and money on prototype revisions.
|
| If you're waiting for JLCPCB to assemble all your boards for
| you you're slowing your process _way_ down. Pay for 2-3 day
| processing at PCBWay and then assemble in-house. If you can
| prototype on FR4, PCBWay can literally manufacture the boards
| overnight and DHL them to you before noon the next day.
| RohKo wrote:
| Great idea! I've never soldered SMDs but can defo learn.
| We're getting are boards assembled rn because soldering
| LGA-12 package ICs by hand is unfeasible, and it seems
| pointless to pay the setup fee and not get the other
| components done as well. Does that change your answer at
| all?
| gchadwick wrote:
| Getting the tools and skills to do PCB assembly and SMD
| rework seems like a no-brainer (indeed I'd say
| essential!) if you're aiming to do serious work with
| building hardware. Not something I've done myself but
| soldering an LGA-12 doesn't look too hard with
| appropriate tools.
| eyegor wrote:
| Lga12 with soldermask stencils and a hotplate doesn't
| work? Should be doable for prototype quality. Might want
| a computer controlled pick and place with a suction
| arm/microscope but it's definitely feasible. Look up some
| of the gpu repair guys for inspiration, they often do
| some insane bga parts (nand chips) by hand.
| jon-wood wrote:
| LGA-12 is totally doable yourself, make sure you get
| solder stencils with the boards and buy yourself a cheap
| reflow oven. Then you just put solder paste on the board
| using the stencil so it's in the right places, place the
| components, and the oven melts everything into place.
| dboreham wrote:
| Not trying to be rude, but someone who is complaining
| about PCB turnaround time, but has also never soldered
| SMDs sounds odd. You need someone who knows what they're
| doing on staff. Either hire that person or become that
| person.
|
| It's been a couple decades since I was involved in the
| H/W business, but there are usually tricks you can use to
| assemble even very fine pin-pitch devices in your
| kitchen. Heat gun, microscope, etc. I'm guessing there
| are 100 YouTube videos on this. Assemblers will tell you
| it needs ZYX special machine that only they have, but
| actually you can do it yourself, albeit slowly and with
| defects here and there.
|
| Back when, there were decent PCB houses in the UK (up in
| the midlands typically, not near London). Perhaps they're
| all out of business now but you might go looking for one
| of them vs back and forth to Asia for prototypes.
|
| Edit: a quick search suggests that there are many UK
| manufacturers still alive. E.g. [Forward, Newberry,
| Leicester, Stevenage]circuits.
| MobiusHorizons wrote:
| Can't plus one this enough. These skills are very
| achievable, and IMO are required for successfully
| building prototypes. Especially if you want to be able to
| salvage an experiment where a couple of mistakes were
| made, you may need to cut traces solder a few wires and
| possibly bodge some components on in order to validate
| the design before ordering the next iteration.
| quasse wrote:
| I'm assuming OP is using JLCPCB for assembly instead of doing
| it in house, because if they just want bare boards they should
| just be paying for rush processing.
|
| PCBWay can ship bare boards by noon the day after you order
| them if you pay the $99 to rush the order. Much cheaper than
| moving to Shenzhen.
| krasin wrote:
| > I'm building wearable tech, and the JLCPCB lead times are my
| biggest bottleneck for iteration. 3-4 weeks is way too long.
|
| Hm... my experience with JLCPCB is that I get 7-10 days
| iterations from sending my gerbers to getting my boards in SF Bay
| Area. Still long, but much shorter than your experience.
|
| Is it shipping, PCB manufacturing or PCB assembly that takes so
| much time?
| RohKo wrote:
| PCB manufacturing. They said the assembly is just about to
| start and they'll be shipping day after tomorrow. I'm in London
| so will have to see how long shipping takes!
| krasin wrote:
| In this case, it's not going to be changed by moving to
| Shenzhen, as you can really only cut on shipping times. But
| yeah, finding a vendor that can produce flexible boards
| faster than 2 weeks should be possible, even while you're in
| Europe.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| This is exactly what prototype PCB manufacturers are for. If
| you're in the Bay area, SF Circuits (and a dozen others) will
| give you 24h/48h turnaround times. This is a highly commoditized
| service. Even the generic manufacturers like PCBway have options
| you can purchase for faster turnaround if you meet the
| constraints.
|
| Don't move to Shenzhen. You don't have the social connections for
| that and it'd just give you a bunch of new problems.
| RohKo wrote:
| Lol that's defo true - I'm driven to this thought as lead times
| are super frustrating!
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| You mention in another comment that you're London based.
| PCBTrain is probably a better suggestion for that locale [0].
|
| [0] https://www.pcbtrain.co.uk/
| stingrae wrote:
| Sure but it comes at a huge cost penalty.
| mrbungie wrote:
| Moving to Shenzen also comes with cost penalties of many
| kinds. Bigger penalties than just shelling out more money to
| local companies.
| the__alchemist wrote:
| I am guessing, based on previous research into similar
| services, that this costs 20x more and doesn't do assembly. Is
| this accurate?
| michaelt wrote:
| Right, but JLCPCB pricing is like $5 for 5 boards. Maybe
| less. So paying 20x as much is still only $100.
|
| You don't get many engineer hours for $100.
| AdamH12113 wrote:
| Where are you located? 3-4 weeks seems very slow for JLCPCB. Are
| you shipping to South America or something?
|
| If you can afford the time, effort, and expense needed to move to
| China, maybe you should look into working with a local board shop
| that could provide more rapid turnaround.
|
| The best way to improve your development time is by doing fewer
| iterations. Often easier said than done, but you should be
| designing for test and rework and thoroughly reviewing your
| designs before submission. You said you're making flex PCBs --
| have you considered doing fast-turnaround prototypes on rigid PCB
| to make sure your electrical design is good? What kind of
| problems are you having that are forcing you to do extra
| prototyping runs?
| RohKo wrote:
| We've avoided local shops due to cost until now, but when put
| like that, we should consider them now.
|
| Yep we've been optimising to reduce reruns, but the time spent
| doing so + the lead time is super frustrating. Standard
| engineering woes I suppose...
| bsder wrote:
| If the difference between $200 and $2000 prototypes is
| material to you, you probably shouldn't be doing hardware.
|
| Hardware has an _enormous_ set of things that cost money to
| surmount. Packaging, testing, certifications, etc. If chunks
| of $2K matter, you 're never getting over the next hurdles.
|
| Hardware isn't software. It isn't cheap.
| abetusk wrote:
| Fiber laser. Even a 20W fiber laser will ablate copper. 30W-50W
| are now avaiable for under $2k, maybe even dropping still.
|
| You'll be limited to single or double sided, without vias but
| considering its rapid prototyping, these are the compromises to
| be had.
|
| You could always try CNCing prototypes but this is fraught with
| trouble. Fiber lasers offer the simplicity, repeatability and
| speed that normal laser cuters, but with metal.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PoYcjyghDx4
| bsder wrote:
| Is there no local PCB manufacturer near you? Normally, local
| manufacturers can do that sort of thing for about $2K or so with
| quick turnaround (<1 week). Assembly is normally anywhere from 1K
| to 5K extra depending upon complexity.
|
| You should be able to buy quite a few local turns for the price
| it would cost for you to spend time in Shenzhen.
|
| Unless you're Chinese is _very_ good or you have a trusted local
| contact, you 're not likely to benefit much from heading to
| Shenzhen in person.
| DHaldane wrote:
| Without knowing exactly what you are working on, here are a few
| ideas:
|
| 1. Figure out if you can do fewer slow iterations. What's driving
| the need for a full PCBA run for each iteration? Might be able to
| split out to rigid assembly and flex for example.
|
| 2. Run more experiments in parallel. If you have multiple ideas
| or variations to test, design them all and fabricate them all.
| Flex antenna? Make like 30 parametric variations.
|
| If design then becomes the bottleneck, then automate that next.
| krasin wrote:
| I would like to give this response a signal boost, based on the
| fact that the comment author knows _a lot_ about PCB design,
| prototyping and manufacturing.
| RohKo wrote:
| Gotcha - thanks for the advice. The IC performance on the flex
| circuit is a key part of the product so will figure out how to
| test that in a lofi manner.
| buescher wrote:
| You're confounding lead times on assembly services with iteration
| time.
|
| If you're bootstrapping, find a good quick turn board house and
| assemble the boards yourself. Get an lga-12 stencil and hot air
| tools, maybe a benchtop reflow oven.
| junon wrote:
| Don't assemble via JLC. Get a good soldering iron, skillet, sand,
| paste, and order from mouser to do them yourself. If you're
| iterating errata with a full run each time you are wasting
| unbelievable amounts of both time and money, and you're probably
| not tinkering with the board enough, increasing your overall
| iteration count.
| utensil4778 wrote:
| Yeah, definitely don't rely on them for assembly. For prototype
| runs of a couple to tens of units, just do it yourself. Hire an
| intern for assembly and just order bare boards. Standard lead
| time for boards is on the order of a week, if not 24h.
|
| The equipment isn't expensive and you don't need much labor. I
| bet a 2-3 week wait costs you a lot more than a part time
| assembly tech.
| spxneo wrote:
| side question: is there a LLM that can create PCBs from text?
| rock_hard wrote:
| https://flux.ai
| spxneo wrote:
| thank you! this is exactly what i was looking for
| cjk2 wrote:
| Add why to a checklist each time you fuck up. Then validate the
| fuck ups aren't happening next time.
|
| I usually get boards right first time now. But it took me 2 years
| to get there.
| the__alchemist wrote:
| JLC is 10 days order to arrival, for US east coast, with
| assembly. 8 days without. You're using DHL, right?
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