Jlcpcb and tariffs

random semi related rant.

My mom babysits for us on saturdays, she stayed for dinner last night. We got on the subject of what things cost back in the 60’s (shes 76 born in 48). And she made a comment about working at the toy factory in 1965, and she made 1.15’or whatever. And i was like oh was that good pay, she said no it was minimum wage there was lots of factory jobs theyball oaid minimum wage and were horrible so she got a job at jc pennys.

What exactly are we doing this for ?
 
I have weekly phone calls with my (conservative) parents, and yesterday I made a particular point to talk about how much the tariffs have been causing me stress headaches and literal lost sleep. I love my parents, but they often have a stance of "everything is fine if it doesn't affect me or my immediate family," so I have to make sure they know that things affect people.

I like JLC, compared to the number of boards I've gotten there I have had very few issues, and their setup is fast and incredibly convenient. I would love to wait and see if things get better, but I'm in the weird position where pedals make up a large part of my income, so I'm in a little bit of a hurry to make sure I can keep doing what I'm doing.
 
Going through the biggest inconvenience of moving away from JLC: part selection. JLC makes things easier for us by limiting what we're allowed to put on the board, they only allow things in their library which streamlines quoting, ordering and assembly. But if you try to get a quote from a US board house, they'll typically want manufacturer part numbers, not just values and footprints, especially some of the more specialized stuff out there.

JLC makes it easy to get in, they give you loads of options and help you set up your infrastructure around their system, and it makes it really inconvenient to leave.
 
At that stage, I'm pretty sure I could start up a side business ordering from JLCPCB from Europe and sell to you guys and even with shipping etc on top I would still make a profit and have you save some money.
 
Asdrael said:
At that stage, I'm pretty sure I could start up a side business ordering from JLCPCB from Europe and sell to you guys and even with shipping etc on top I would still make a profit and have you save some money.
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Problem is if you're just selling on the value and place of origin of the product is still china and then theoretically subject to Chinese tariffs. (there is similar issue with EV built in UK using Chinese batteries as more than 50% of the value is Chinese products.

What you could do is build PCB into full pedals and sell into the US - because then the value added is in the build and your time, not the parts ...
 
vigilante398 said:
Going through the biggest inconvenience of moving away from JLC: part selection. JLC makes things easier for us by limiting what we're allowed to put on the board, they only allow things in their library which streamlines quoting, ordering and assembly. But if you try to get a quote from a US board house, they'll typically want manufacturer part numbers, not just values and footprints, especially some of the more specialized stuff out there.

JLC makes it easy to get in, they give you loads of options and help you set up your infrastructure around their system, and it makes it really inconvenient to leave.
Click to expand...

Don’t leave!

I kid of course. Luckily for me I’m going 6-8 weeks between every batch so my hope is that the worst of this will blow over between this batch I’m now shipping out and delivery of the next.

I’ll stay the course because as you pointed out, JLCPCB is part of my process now.
 
Big Monk said:
Don’t leave!

I kid of course. Luckily for me I’m going 6-8 weeks between every batch so my hope is that the worst of this will blow over between this batch I’m now shipping out and delivery of the next.

I’ll stay the course because as you pointed out, JLCPCB is part of my process now.
Click to expand...
I have enough PCBs in stock that I can sit and wait for a little bit without issue, I'm just worried that if I wait too long and things haven't changed by the time I need to restock that I'll be left with a gap in production, and I would like to avoid that. I would love to get a new supplier all lined up and find out next month that everything is going back to normal and I can keep using JLC, but I am not a gambling man.
 
Just spent 1 1/2 hours talking to potential PCB suppliers. A couple stood out above the others, most notably I found the company that does the Rat boards for ProCo/Rapco/whatever they're called now. But it will probably be a week or so before I start getting estimates for boards and assembly.

I talked to every PCB place I saw at the show except one, because the rep they had there was so engrossed in her phone that they didn't notice me standing there, so I left. I'll go back tomorrow mostly just because the show is really neat and it's a good use of my lunch break.
 
vigilante398 said:
Just spent 1 1/2 hours talking to potential PCB suppliers. A couple stood out above the others, most notably I found the company that does the Rat boards for ProCo/Rapco/whatever they're called now. But it will probably be a week or so before I start getting estimates for boards and assembly.

I talked to every PCB place I saw at the show except one, because the rep they had there was so engrossed in her phone that they didn't notice me standing there, so I left. I'll go back tomorrow mostly just because the show is really neat and it's a good use of my lunch break.
Click to expand...
Anything looking okay for hobbyist level, or is everything more suited to commercial runs?
 
benny_profane said:
Anything looking okay for hobbyist level, or is everything more suited to commercial runs?
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There was one shop, Ninja Circuits, that says prototyping and small runs are their thing. Minimum quantity is one of the first things I ask, and where most of them were in the 100-500 range, Ninja Circuits said their minimum quantity is 1. I don't know what their pricing is, but basically they're trying to be the shop people go to for prototyping and small runs in the US so hopefully they're not absurdly expensive.

I just checked my email and I got my first quote back from Pica Manufacturing. For qty100 boards with assembly, the cost comes to about 10x what I paid at JLC.
 
vigilante398 said:
Probably? I'm not cool enough to design anything that uses them, but it seems to be a pretty common thing offered by most manufacturers.
Click to expand...
Weird! I had never heard of it until I saw it on their website. I assumed it was something obscure.
 
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