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Circuit Board Design For a Small Startup?
Patrick Bowman writes "I'm with a small (okay, it's just me) startup planning a camera-related USB device for the mass market. It's probably patentable so I can't give details. I can handle the software but have no hardware design or manufacturing experience. Does anyone have any recommendations for a company to handle the PCB design and manufacture? Instead of starting from scratch I've also considered approaching one of the companies (mostly in China) that make similar devices and asking them to modify their hardware for my requirements, and to provide their source for me to modify. Has anyone taken this route before? How did it work for you?"
Express PCB will do prototype PCBs for as little as $50 for three units. Free software to get started with (no autorouting but hey).
Depends on where you are - I recommend working with someone local. This is the kind of project where you would want to work very closely with the manufacturer. If you happen to be in Colorado - I highly recommend Premier Manufacturing (pmscs.com). They're really good at working with specific customers.
many many sources for this - look in trade journals such as EDN and Electronic Design and Embedded Systems Design.
To a lesser degree, some wisdom can be gleaned from Circuit Cellar Ink.
I have some (limited) experience with Asian contract mfrs, and would not recommend this for a startup.
GOOD LUCK
http://www.pad2pad.com/
A printed circuit board manufacturer providing all your custom printed circuit board
http://www.olimex.com/
Electronic design and PCB sub-contract assembly
http://www.eurocircuits.com/ ...also...
PCB manufacturing; verified a la carte on demand specifications
http://www.emachineshop.com/
Machine shop to create custom parts, products and prototypes
http://www.tapplastics.com/
TAP Plastics specialize in fiberglass resins and fabrics for fiberglass repair, plastic containers, and custom fabrication
(non-affiliation yadda yadda goes here)
"Good news, everyone!"
There is a cottage industry of small engineering firms that could suit your needs in the US (assuming your in the US). Generally they are run by senior engineers who have done many projects of similar size to what you're sort of talking about. Generally the firms in China do not do their own design work, and unless you speak Chinese, the language barriers will be an extra challenge to overcome, not to mention the difference in time zones. Also don't forget you will have to gain certain regulatory approvals depending on the nature of your product, and I doubt anyone in China has much background designing the product around these requirements. Personally I think it is best to stick with a local company, or at least one in the same country as you.
He has no hardware design experience, he needs someone else to design and layout the circuit. gEDA will not work for him.
That said, gEDA is ok for many things, but it lacks in features compared to the free Mentor Graphics PADS version that is probably good enough for his needs. It is also way too hard to create custom schematic symbols in gEDA. FOSS is way behind when it comes to this, unfortunately- I wish it were different.
The first hurdle is prototyping the device. If push comes to shove find a near-broke college student to do the hardware design for you, a better choice would be an outfit with experience such as Parallax, Systronix, or Digilent. But before you can go 'mass-market', you will need to test your device and not just to make sure it works. Does it meet all government requirements (FCC part 15)? Is it safe (UL certification)? Are there going to be any manufacturability issues (just because you made one does not mean someone can make 100,000 for you reliability and cheaply).
Something I don't think you will get from others is the suggestion that before you talk to anyone you get a copy of an excellent non-disclosure agreement (NDA).
With a good NDA you can talk freely about your project with little risk of the second party being able to talk to a third party without significant financial repercussions. I have worked in procurement* for the last sixteen years and I could talk for hours on the value of a good NDA. Try using Google for an example of a good NDA. They need not be complex, but they do need to spell out the repercussions if the second party talks about your idea with a third party. Get them to sign before you share any critical details.
*I hate that we stopped being purchasing and became procurement for one simple reason; one of the accepted definitions of someone who procures is pimp! I really don't think that is the impression a Fortune 500 company wants to make, but then they did not ask me. :)
We have always been at war with Eurasia!
Good luck getting source code from Chinese companies. I've tried a few times, and even with a company that I already buy tens of thousands of dollars of equipment from, the answer has always been an emphatic 'no'.
In some cases, the problem may be that the source code isn't theirs. Take two way radios, for example. There are many, many different models on the market that all share the same basic firmware. Each of the companies licenses it from one design house, probably along with some of the hardware designs, too.
It's often hard to tell who's even a manufacturer and who's just a trading company, unless you go and personally tour the factory. Even then they can make it difficult to figure out who's who.
Where I HAVE had a measure of success is in buying partial products. For example, if you look on SparkFun Electronics' website, you'll see a weather sensor assembly. I bought those from a weather station manufacturer in China, and since their usual wireless interface wasn't FCC approved and wasn't needed for my application anyway, I negotiated a deal to buy the bare sensors at a significantly reduced price that still gives them enough extra profit margin to make it worth the hassle (the unneeded touch screen display is the expensive part), while still being far cheaper than designing and producing my own hardware. The reason they're at SparkFun now is that I'm way behind schedule on designing my own electronics package and I got tired of them taking up warehouse space, and sold part of the lot at wholesale.
The good news is that lots of Chinese companies are basically family-owned, and you CAN sometimes get through to the people who make the decisions, where with US companies you might not. But again, I've never had any success getting firmware source (even relatively simple stuff that I could recreate myself in a week) from any of them. Cable assemblies, housings, and so forth, sure. But not a single line of code.
If you're serious about making it happen, consider catching a flight to Hong Kong next month. The Hong Kong Electronics Fair, electronicAsia, and the China Sourcing Fair are all there at the same time around the 12-16th, and the massive Canton Fair (this will be my first year there) is right after that in Guangzhou, but that takes a little more planning.
Just showing up in person and leaving business cards (bring a few hundred, seriously) will get you much better responses later in email. They know you're serious enough to make the trip, at least. That was a benefit I hadn't foreseen my first trip. Also, allow a couple of days extra after the fairs for meetings with vendors if you do make some good contacts.
Also, one book I've found particularly useful in understanding the business culture in China is "The Essential Guide for Buying from China's Manufacturers" by James Lord, ISBN 1419628461. Wish I'd read that before my first trip there. (Tip: Beware the phrase "no problem". =])
If you do make it to Hong Kong, drop me a note and I'll meet you for a beer some time.
scott@argentdata.com
I work at Plexus, a global Electronic Manufacturing Services company, in the engineering services division. We do hardware, PCB layout, software, mechanical, test, project management, etc. Whatever piece or pieces you are looking for, we can do. If you want to use us for manufacturing eventually, great. You pay for the development, so you own the IP and can take it wherever you want. We work with multi-billion dollar companies but also have worked with 1-man startups before.
http://www.plexus.com/contactus.php
This generally isn't true. A VC will get preferred stock and as such in a liquidation event they will be able to recover their money before anyone else can. (So if you take on 1M in funding, sell the company for 500K, you're right, you get nothing and they lose 500K). I'm guessing this is what you're thinking of.
If you sell the company for 2M and they put in 1M, they get their 1M back and the rest of the pie can be sliced up in different ways depending on the term sheet. (Google participating preferred stock cap)
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I've had nothing but success with EZPCB. They charged around 150$ for 36 boards... They design, routing and assembly services too.
The way I coordinated with them, because they are in china, is by MSN instant messenger when I was about to go to bed.
They are courteous, they make a good product, and are inexpensive.
expect a 2 week delay from order to reception.
You can get some short-term IP protection by filing a PPA. Filing fee was $100 last I knew (small entity). Go to nolo.com and buy "Patent It Yourself" for about $30. Read, understand, and follow all safety instructions. Then you can talk to potential partners, investors, vendors, etc. more confidently.
Just a thought
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
It's much easier to defend yourself with copyright law than with patents.
Also, patents last only 20 years, while copyright is unconstitutionally (despite what SCOTUS says) forever for all practical purposes. Plus, patents require lawyers and cost thousands of dollars, while registering a copyright is cheap; the ones I registered in the 1980s were only $20 each (they've probably gone up).
If you have to defend it, you're going to need a lawyer in any case.
Free Martian Whores!
There's no reason all those EEs you mention can't be the same person, unless you're hiring someone with less than a few years experience, or has worked only in a large company all his career. There are many small (1 or 2 people) design firms that have the expertise to see a design from concept to production.
Find a local design consultant, someone relatively senior in experience. Let that person worry about finding a PCB house for prototypes and small-scale production. If the product is successfull, and the small-scale run sells, then hire someone on full-time to manage the large-scale production.
Seeing as the poster is a one-engineer outfit right now, a single EE is probably good enough, assuming he or she is experienced.
You need an EE to design the circuit.
Then you need a manufacturing EE to redesign the circuit so it does not use any rare or known unreliable or hard to surface mount or single sourced parts.
Any EE worth your money isn't designing circuits that are infeasible. If you need a second engineer to make sure the design produced by the first actually works, just pay the second more and have him or her do the whole thing.
Then you need a quality engineer who will redesign things so the hot voltage regulator is not right next to the electrolytic capacitors, and shuffle the pcb traces so they're less likely to short out from tin whiskers, and rearrange them for better ESD protection, and they will test it in an environmental chamber for performance over a wide temperature range.
This means your engineer should have experience designing products of a similar nature. You hardly need another salaried employee to tell you to keep the regulator heatsink away from heat-sensitive components!
Then you'll need a standards EE who will make sure it meets EU and US standards for safety and toxicity and flammability and electromagnetic emissions.
To be honest this isn't very difficult. If the poster is interested in entering a consumer products field (some sort of digital camera peripheral, it was indicated) it is unlikely that he or she will need to delve into standards beyond verifying that all of the off-the-shelf chips and components used are RoHS compliant or whatever standard needs to be met. Also, there are relatively few standards that do need to be met for the indicated field (though it was vague). Again, not worth another salaried employee.
Then you need someone on site at the manufacturing facility to do QA and make sure they don't divert your product into the black or grey market.
What sort of one-engineer firm has a dedicated manufacturing facility with staff on-site? He or she is probably going to be ordering batches without further contracts, at least for the near future. This will probably entail doing some research,visiting the manufacturing facility, and cutting checks every x months for a new batch.
I would imagine that a single EE would suffice for the poster's needs. I do think that hiring a salaried engineer is important though. All-in-one hardware shops provide constant quality work with a contract... but not necessarily good quality work. Hiring an employee means you have constant contact, have flexibility with product changes, and have immediate experience available for reference.
If the poster needs anyone other than a single EE I would recommend a logistics/inventory/distribution employee - someone who has some experience dealing with distributors, knows how to do responsible ordering and planning with respect to keeping inventory, lead-times, etc, and can deal with distributors one-on-one, optimally with some proficiency with electronics engineering, if not necessarily design experience. Dealing with distributors and ordering supplies and so on is a mix of business skills, social skills, and technical wherewithal - plus it's a relatively inexpensive position to fill.
But 5 in-house EEs to accompany one software guy on a USB peripheral project? Not necessary.
http://kicad.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
Great schematic capture, auto-router, parts list, etc.. all open source!
-Marko