[sdiy] Board sales rant (was The Dreaded ROHS)

[Ian Fritz]

At 06:19 AM 2/15/2009, Suit & Tie Guy wrote:
>however, i wanted to voice my support of people who sell PCBs to
>hobbyists treating it seriously as a business. there's nothing more
>irritating than a PCB offer which is only for you if you're hip
>enough to know about it when the initial offer is. make it available,
>make the pads big and the copper weight heavy (2 oz finish is not
>expensive. please engage it), use tin-lead finish, put power
>footprints on there for more than just your favourite format (you can
>support dotcom, euro, MOTM/frac, and Modcan with only three
>footprints), debug it to the point that trace cutting is not
>necessary, and make sure you price the PCB enough over your cost to
>make it worth sending to me whenever i want to add some random cool
>module to my rig. this community is filled with kind and intelligent
>people doing interesting things, and it's very hard to keep up with
>everything nifty that pops up to build.
>
>you help your fellow hobbyists by making it available to them when
>they need it, and making it easy to build. please make it worth your
>time to take it to the post office, and worth the space it takes in
>your home to keep stock.

Hmmm ...

As a person having some experience in the area, may I present a somewhat 
different viewpoint?

As for "treating it seriously as a business" -- there is no way to treat it 
seriously as a business. I can't even believe someone would write 
that!  There is no business plan that will allow me to recoup the thousands 
of hours of my time that have gone into learning even the meager amount I 
have absorbed about The Art.  As a pro consultant I can make over $100/hr 
in my career field.  Selling boards at what the market will allow entails 
an incredibly small unit cost ($10) and a miniscule volume of sales (100 
units).  There is no way I can make any real money at this.

As far as having boards always available to suit peoples' whimsical 
purchasing decisions, please remember that the manufacturing costs have to 
be bourn up front.  There is no guarantee that a large run will 
sell.  Furthermore, selling in batches allows one to set aside a time 
period to handle the orders and sales, rather that having to deal with 
orders dribbling in over time (i.e., more trips to the PO, etc.).

As far as specific features on the board -- well, you have your 
requirements and other people have theirs.  The amount of time required to 
develop a board with all the requirements that everyone asks for could 
easily be 50% more than it would be otherwise.  And the increased board 
area would significantly increase the price of the board.

"you can support dotcom, euro, MOTM/frac, and Modcan with only 
three  footprints"  Sure, but what are they?  Everybody wants something 
special, but they are never willing to provide details.

"it's very hard to keep up with everything nifty that pops up to build"  Oh 
Jeez, exert yourself.  :-)  All my boards are available through 
Bridechamber. Seems easy to find as far as I can tell.  How many of them 
have you, yourself, bought?  Built?

"and make sure you price the PCB enough over your cost to make it worth 
sending to me"  OK. How does $10,000 apiece sound?

Finally, as far as I have been able to tell, only a very small fraction of 
boards that are sold actually get built out.  Certainly less than 25%.  One 
poster here actually bragged about having 162 boards in his "backlog".

Your ideas are noble and lofty, but where is the incentive?  You're not by 
chance part of this "entitlement generation" we've been reading about, are you?

   Ian