What every hardware startup needs to know about hardware startups is that if you need to read a blog post to know about these issues you better get someone onboard who has hardware experience.<p>Most of the comments so far seem to focus on KS projects. Of course, there are issues well outside of KS campaigns. Software is easy. You have full control of just about everything you need to assemble your product. Hardware is a different beast.<p>There are issues in the design and manufacturing of physical products that border on being surreal --until you understand the reasons behind some of them. The first time a distributor told me "delivery for those parts is 22 weeks" I could not comprehend how they could stay in business. As I gained experience I realized they did that precisely because they are trying to stay in business (among other factors).<p>Also, while true to a great extent, going with authorized distributors isn't necessarily a guarantee of getting good parts. I have a couple of wire racks with enough defective components to buy two brand-new entry-level BMW's to back that up. Sometimes authorized distributors can get, shall we say, creative. Under special circumstances they'll work with brokers to bring in parts to fill orders that might be in allocation. They'll have you agree to NCNR terms and then, if there are issues with the parts you are on your own. If you don't know what "allocation" and "NCNR" mean and you are in a hardware startup...GOTO paragraph 1.<p>One of the interesting side-effects of our current plug-together "engineering" environment is that kids are coming out of school with very little real hardware experience. Snapping together a bunch of Arduino compatible hardware isn't equivalent to designing and making said hardware. I read lots of complaints on HN about software engineering applicants not being able to code. I've seen the same kind of thing with EE's not being able to design their way out of a paper bag. Pretty sad state of affairs.
I wish there was more of this type of information about injection molding, that seems like more of a dark art than electronic assembly.<p>What do you guys think of having the component manufacturer source the parts? I've seen some that purchase parts directly from Digikey, but I'm not sure if they pool together orders for discounts, or if they just handle the purchasing so you don't have to. It seems like they could get a better deal than I could (I always assumed that a manufacturer would try to source locally in China and get stuff for dirt cheap, but they buy from Digikey too - seems kind of strange).<p>Does anyone know any good US based contract manufacturers? All the ones I've seen are ridiculously expensive ($17 for a 4" x 1" board with ~60 components, as opposed to ~$6 at Myro (thanks theunixbeard for catching that error)). I'd love to get something made here in the US, but I can't eat another $10 for my lights - especially for a service like assembly (where the quality seems like it won't matter that much - the light will work or it won't work). I've been toying with the idea of a stretch goal on Kickstarter to assemble some delta bots to do the electronic assembly (it'd be about $1200 for a single bot, whereas contract manufacturing is about $2000, but I'd have something to show for that money with a pick and place machine). Having a machine where you could throw a stenciled PCB on in any orientation, then pick and place the parts onto, and cook it on the spot (moving the camera up and watching for reflow) would be pretty awesome.<p>It's sticky being in the 'middle' - big enough where you need to use services rather than hand assembly, but small enough where you don't really have any purchasing power. The road to production has a big no man's land in the middle.<p>Ch00f has a great write up on the process of going through with contract manufacturing, and some of the hurdles he saw with the process - <a href="http://ch00ftech.com/2013/04/16/making-55-of-something-without-lifting-a-soldering-iron/" rel="nofollow">http://ch00ftech.com/2013/04/16/making-55-of-something-witho...</a>
Bunnie Huang (Xbox hacker, Chumby designer, etc etc) also has a good blog series about such things. Here's the first one in the series about making a <i>real</i> BOM (it's more than just the parts!): <a href="http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?page_id=2812" rel="nofollow">http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?page_id=2812</a>
I wish the Lockitron folks had read this before they started...<p>I think they're, what, 7? months behind schedule due to hardware issues. I get emails about it, and they're super nice, but 7 months is a long time.
This is an excellent basic article but ignores some significant advantages available. For starters, "brokers" don't really exist in the way described. Many franchise and most independent distributors broker parts from each other. Arrow and Future in particular. Secondly, brokered parts can be an excellent source of cost savings; many will buy a 5k reel to sell 1k pieces and are left with extra inventory that can be had for pennies on the dollar. There is risk admittedly , but finding a reputable independent distributor like America 2 or Signature Electronics can be a benefit to purchasers. Aside from cost savings, these companies can offer forecast information to help you avoid some of the problems listed.<p>As for finding a good contract manufacturer, there are services like EMSforce that can take a project and present multiple bids to you in a way that offers competitive pricing without sacrificing service.
Part ordering is time consuming and annoying, and the pricing in low volumes (typical for development work or upstart products) is really awful (high, and large disparities between suppliers). We created <a href="http://sandsquid.com" rel="nofollow">http://sandsquid.com</a> for making it easier to purchase components online (especially at the early stage of the product life cycle) while still maintaining reasonable pricing and an ability to easily scale up the orders as needed.<p>Sandsquid was born out of our own need, manufacturing USB test jigs for a customer of our consulting business (we then made it as a bunch of scripts, but then decided it's too good to keep for ourselves). We just couldn't come to terms with the amount of effort it takes to order parts for a moderately complicated PCB.
here, Sr. Hardware Engineer from big consumer electonics corp.
this blog is tooo basic.
for startup, they should co-work with design house instead of homemading hardware.
the big cost is the equipments, not the components.
from prototype to engineering sample, u dont need to think about components or BOM.
make it work, make it meet your req of spec, fix all the bug, p/r it, mp it.
Keep it in mind of BOM, but not from beginning, but from the engineering sample.
I remember moving a few of our older products to NRND status at my old gig. It basically meant that we're EOLing the products and it's your last chance to buy in bulk before they'll become unavailable. We let this be known very clearly to our main customers, but I doubt small time buyers who buy from our Distis really got the message :(<p>Definitely a good thing for hobbyists/Kickstarterers to keep in mind!