When does the delivery time start?

Deliverables for your project don’t start until design requirement reviews are completed and we correctly identified and resolved all technical challenges and planning for your design. Once the project and design is completed we will request payment and transfer deliverables through our portal.

What are the deliverables?

Our house will deliver the CAM files required by the manufacturers for production, these files include a Bill of Materials, Manufacturing Information, as well as Pick and Place.

Does your office do assembly?

Currently we are a small business starting up so we do not offer assembly services, most manufacturers offer these services via Pick & Place files for a small amount. Be sure to check with your manufacturer what services are offered.

Do you offer services for manufacturing, what are the expected costs?

We do not have any involvement with the manufacturers, you will need to coordinate with them. A simple prototype for a 2 layer board design can be quite cheap with the right suppliers, around $200-400 for the total assembly. However as the complexity of the design increases expect your manufacturer cost for prototypes to be anywhere from $1000 - $10,000.

What is the Service Process?

We offer a unique approach by allowing any of our customers to involve themselves in the requirements engineering and technical review phases of the design process. This process is mediated and handled through our portal. This works the following way:

1. User lists all device requirements, these are to be taken literally, as in if your device needs standby modes, or low battery power consumption you must specify these requirements in the design process.

2. We will take these design requirements and due a feasibility study, this ensures that the components, suppliers, and software exist to achieve your design goals.

3. We will update the design for a final phase review based on feasibility and requirements conclusions. We generate the technical operating conditions of the device and include that in our complete technical requirements review. This is sent to the customer for verification and review.

4. We also need to do a firmware requirements review, it’s important the customer understand firmware requirements required by all of the assembled devices and how to communicate and setup those devices correctly, this ensures that the received device can be operated correctly. This may entail for example multiplexed communications buses, additional micro-controllers, HID compliant USB interfaces, JTAG support etc. If your MCU has debugging capabilities with JTAG we suggest including JTAG ports on the device for testing and prototyping purposes.

5. Once signed we begin the schematic design for the device. When the schematics are complete the PCB design process can begin.

6. This starts the PCB Package Deliverable Timeline for our customers.

How do I avoid wasting money on prototypes that don’t work as intended or need refinement?

We avoid engineering failures on prototypes by employing the following models, a basic Electrical Rules Check, a design rules check based on manufacturer specifications, and lastly we take the extra time to simulate PCB functions via electrical simulation models. We will only deliver you a product once we are certain it will function as intended.

With that being said you still want to limit your risk when manufacturing. We suggest using initial large board layouts with only 2-3 layers, no blind vias, and plenty of track width when doing an initial prototype. This ensures that you’ll be able produce a prototype at the cheapest cost possible. We recommend suppliers who offer prototype services as well with no Minimum Order Quantity for prototypes.

If the design is unsuccessful we will offer a 100% refund for services with us and if desired redesign the product at no cost.

Can I iterate on a successful design with your house?

For successful designs our iteration policy is that we will redesign your next PCB iteration at 1/4 the cost of the original service as long as < 10 component are being added and we are only changing form factor and layering.

1. Basic $15 Iteration

2. Intermediate: $50 iteration

3. Advanced: $100 iteration

4. Premium: $300 iteration

Do you do the firmware programming and device configuration?

Only if you have requested a premium service. If you do the premium service we request that the manufacturer deliver the completed design to our business address, at this point we will configure the hardware to contain and necessary firmware for basic operation.

Typically small devices on the device may need configuration before the customer accesses the main MCU with their custom user program, for example certain power management devices and flash memory controllers need to have their registers set on startup before the device can fully function as intended.

For this we typically will add a bootstrap microcontroller device with an EEPROM memory. After that the device can be custom programmed as needed.

What if I require full custom programming of the hardware for full operation?

Fully complete designs are outside the scope of our operations because designs like this typically involve technologies and systems outside of our purview, for example if the user wants a full fledged application that has a host application that registers their device on a WiFi network via bluetooth, we would be designing additional high level software that takes our focus away from the true scope of our operations for now.

I will offer full product designs with the exception of the mechanical packaging for a $10,000 flat fee, this is due to the large amount of time and effort required for a full product launch.

Will I own the Intellectual Property

Inherently your company will not immediately own intellectual property rights for certain designs, however we will have no problem legally transferring all intellectual property to business owners as required.