Thread

1. ac29 · 1786033928 · focus · HN ↗

   Any idea what pricing will be like? The fact that you call out Drone and Defense industries on your page suggests to me this is extremely expensive.

   I recently priced out getting a PCB done in China and its insanely cheap. My design isnt complicated, a few ICs, a few connectors, an a dozen or so passives. PCB manufacturing, parts, and soldering/assembly is on the order of $10-20 total per board and that is with zero volume discounts. The parts alone would cost that much in the US, and I suspect the sort of companies that you contract out to also aren't really interested in tiny orders so they would probably quote huge setup fees (looks like your average order so far is ~$7000).

   1. irishcoffee · 1786037078 · focus · HN ↗

      Drones and defense have nothing to do with expense. It is 100% about getting on the approved vendor list, at which point the prices go up.

      It’s not like PCB boards in the defense industry are somehow special, though they probably should be.

      1. walrus01 · 1786038010 · focus · HN ↗

         > Drones and defense have nothing to do with expense

         I would disagree? Look at Helsing, the german manufacturer of loitering munitions, and its direct competitors who are trying hard to get per-unit costs way down. Without even mentioning the myriad of Ukrainian manufacturers who are building cheap and cheerful things under $10,000 per unit (or even under $2500 per unit). There is a very real push within all NATO militaries now to basically copy many of the capabilities the Ukrainians have built in the last 4-5 years.

         Not saying that we won't still have lots of huge dollar items and massive programs like the AGM-158 JASSM, but there's a reason why the US paid a company to basically clone the Shahed-136 as the LUCAS at under $50k per unit.

         1. willcarkner · 1786038713 · focus · HN ↗

            Volume unit costs matter a lot. What matters less is cost during prototyping and development, where speed to iteration becomes way more important.

            1. walrus01 · 1786038904 · focus · HN ↗

               I absolutely agree, if you have just a few people who are each paid 180k a year sitting around waiting for something to arrive because the low-quantity prototyping vendor is slow, it's not the best use of resources at all. One of the reasons why certain companies spend a lot of money buying their own laser sintering 3D printers for low volume test-fit protoypes in the aerospace industry, or invest in their own small-scale CNC stuff to do similar.

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