Jim Kelley wrote in message ...
basketball_jones wrote:

It's a little ironic that you're trying to save a penny or two on your
design and think that bitching about free advice is somehow going to help
you achieve that goal...

Look, call up a dozen or so vendors and get some price quotes -- it'll give
you some idea of what a 'reasonable' price should be. Figure out what you
can charge for your product... if there's enough money left for you to make
profit, just go for it and leave the rest of your learning/profit
maximization until you actually have an income stream and some track record
of the difficulties in building your products.

Anyone worrying about $.01/sq. in. either has such a huge volume that they
should be able to afford an expect to get the best prices and redesign the
product (this oftens makes a huge difference!) specifically to be easy to
manufacture or else is probably never going to get their product out the
door in the first place. I've seen many people who seemed to have viable
product ideas never get anywhere because they spent far too much time
worrying about how to squeeze the last penny out of manufacturing costs and
ran out of enthusiasm to simply design and document the product properly.

---Joel Kolstad

Finally a thoughtful response. BTW I have called up the vendors,
that's just common sense, but the prices they quote are rediculous
even if you promise them volume. They don't believe you about the
volume (rightfully so, that's why I am asking someone who has the
volume) and at those prices there is no business. I have done all
that analysis.

Yes, I am worried about $.01/sq in. That's a buck on a 100 sq in
board. That's A LOT of money to me. BTW, I have done as much antenna
footprint minimization as possible (that's a different topic). Now to
your point about never getting anywhere due to too much time squeezing
out pennies. I have experienced a lot more of the opposite, where
people build stuff without paying enough attention to the costs and
then figure out that its too expensive and try to cost reduce. At
that point their previous decisions limit their options and the stuff
can never be built cheap enough. So I am trying to strike a balance.
And if I can get a quick answer on what those costs are, that would
leave me more time to optimize the design. BTW I am NOT asking who
you are, I am just asking how much you pay. That's the beauty of
these boards. I don't see the foul.

ps Free advice is the goal of these boards, I am not bitching about
the advice, I am bitching about lack thereof.

I gotta think you must be taking the wrong approach with these PC houses
if you can't get an answer from them. Besides, the answers you get from
us don't amount to much if you can't get anybody to make your boards for
the prices "quoted" here.
Bottom line is you won't get the low digit price unless you're going to
spend some big money. If you let the PC houses know how big a project
you have, and it's big, then they'll be plenty anxious to quote you a
good price.

73, Jim AC6XG

Folks we are missing the point here. I can certainly get a quote from
them. You can safely assume I already have it. Ok, that tells me the
MOST I am going to pay. Now I want the LEAST I can possibly pay. The
only way for me to get that is to go through board manufacturers' cost
structure and assume their take. I am not TI or HP, I don't have the
resources to do that, and even if I did I wouldn't get it right. Now
why would I want to know the LEAST even though I can't get that price
at this point. Well, the situation is likely that if I have to pay
the MOST, I lose money. Do I still lose money when I get to pay the
LEAST? (As far as getting the houses to quote a big project) I can't
get the big project funded, much less quoted until I understand that.

Look people. Determining the 'right' price is one of the 'killer aps'
of the internet. Use it.