[sdiy] rising cost of PCB's?

[Samppa Tolvanen]

On Sun, Apr 26, 2009 at 10:01 AM, yves usson <yves.usson at imag.fr> wrote:
> Yes prices have been rising.
>
> I see two main reasons for this :
> 1) the price of copper has ramatically rised over the five past years
> 2) most of the boards are now RoHS, which requires different processing
> techniques...

Well,

Even with trendy "Makezine" and Arduino stuff pleasing the great
public with their tinkering needs - Your not supposed to do that! Be a
proper CUSTOMER, ready made is all you need. You can see this in the
business models of certain component dealers - Farnell being my
trouble, they just don't understand why private citizen without VAT
exemption registration would buy electronic components.

So, are the actual PCB prices going up? I don't know - basically
one-offs/prototypes and small runs are "service", it doesn't make a
living for anyone. Basically fabs could pump up the price tenfold and
companies needing prototypes would be happy to pay, it's still a
miniscule cost in the whole product development cycle and the profits
from the end product.

Samppa