back

by gregsadetsky·11d ago·view on hn ↗
I’m extremely grateful for your informative answer, thanks a lot! I may have been wrong about everything I thought I knew, but at least I was not wrong about the interesting conversation that would come out of posting this pdf :)

If I could ask one more thing, and be even more direct about it - I’ve been curious whether it would make sense to start doing board assembly in NY. I don’t have a plan, and I don’t have the necessary knowledge - but in some sense it seemed like a “more” automated assembly line, … better software (?)…, and fast/guaranteed turnaround could interest some part of the market - especially those doing small runs and hating to wait 2-3 weeks per revision. That, and tariffs.

Is this crazy and silly, or worse? Is there any juice in trying to run any pick and place operation? In or near Brooklyn?

1 comments
I wish there were more domestic assembly companies that catered to high-mix/short-run. The few there are are mostly terrible or unaffordable. But it's a tough business to be in.

Your competition is JLCPCB on the one end and the boutique local companies on the other. You will never match JLCPCB's pricing, but you can beat their turnaround time. Sit down and write a list of why people use each company, and what people hate about each one. Try to split the difference, see what you can provide that sits in the middle. It is not easy. Then see if you can provide that at a profit (this is the real challenge!).

It isn't a hard business to be in, technically. But it's low-margin, high-capital, very-high-competition.