Dan Maloney
The whole "dragging the feet" and "quoting high" is not a real set in stone business decision. It's just the natural side effect of human beings doing their work. If your potential customer is frustrating to work with and doesn't know what to do, you just naturally put it off. Like washing the dishes or vacuum cleaning I guess lol
What would a good "starting project" cost? A "get to know each other" walk through? Doesn't matter what gets made, just make something to learn the steps. I am sort of thinking of a tutorial for Hackaday.io starting engineers who have never been involved, but want to learn. Pool money and ideas, make "anything" and use it for training.
The podcast is a direct answer to that problem though. We know customers don't want to be frustrating their suppliers. 99% of the time it's just pure, forgiveable, ignorance. They just don't know. So we try to help.
Great answer, thanks Chris.
Customers don't intentionally try to make their suppliers (and their own) lives hard. But it's also a tough call to take on a customers job and the task of educating them as well.
@RichardCollins mmm.... hard to say really. It's so dependent on the design. For example, a 100% single-sided SMT board can be very cheap to assemble. In fact, each day we accept these kind of SMT only prototype orders at an aggressively discounted rate. But it's first come first serve until the capacity is filled for the day.
But let's say you wanted to assemble something with a little bit of complexity, and thru-hole. Say something like an Arduino Uno...
Sorry, I'm trying to use our quoting tools to figure this out in real time lol
I see Hackaday as a single community. Rather mixed group, but probably overall most everyone would like to know more about the kind of work you do. A well documented following of a board through the steps at a known facility would be worthwhile. A group could afford it. Take a few of the "good" things, with general use from Hackaday,io and make them for sale and distribution. To see how it works.
For a double-sided SMT board with some thru-hole that's about the size of an Arduino Uno... you're looking at maybe about $2,000 to get 50 made (not including PCB's and parts. Just talking the labor of assembling it).
Keep in mind, this is in the northeast of the United States with a highly skilled and reasonably well paid staff, using state of the art equipment. An Arduino Uno is kind of childsplay.
How about an "official" HaD badge?
I will give you $2000. Would you make something that had broad use by Hackaday.io young engineers and designers - ADC, SDR, amplifiers. Lots of people making the same thing. i cannot design these things the way you want your designs sent to you. But I can see what people need. And give a few dollars.
oh! that sounds quite promising
@RichardCollins I agree. I've long wanted to put together a YouTube "mini-series" that's just like 10 or 12 episodes long. Maybe 20 minutes each. Each episode just walks you through each of the processes involve in getting something out of KiCAD and into your hands.
That is not enough to pay for everything. But maybe if Hackaday could focus, and go through all the projects, there are some perennial projects that people keep trying - but they take forever because they don't know best practices, don't know how to make pcb designs, and don't have enough money to even start.
Oh man, I'd watch the heck out of that
The podcast has that, but in verbal form. It's much easier to produce than video, which is why it exists
@Dan Maloney lol - me too. My podcast co-host Melissa is *amazing* at video production. She produced our Join Us video. We've talked about doing it for years. Perhaps we just need to do it. https://www.worthingtonassembly.com/joinus
I vote yes, if that counts for anything!
...and my axe! =D
Look at the Tindie. Most are too narrow in purpose. And poorly designed. I doubt they sell. But with the manufacturer helping, Hackaday helping - with the intent to train ALL of HD young and old engineers it would be worthwhile.
@RichardCollins Yes, we've done pooled production before. There were a bunch of universities with some kind of neuroscience project they were working on together. They all pooled their resources and got a hundred of them made and we shipped appropriate quantities to each university.
ooh!
yall ever made, like, a blog post about that or something?
feels worth covering!
@Arsenijs blog post about what? Pooled production?
yes! and
especially "this is a project we've done in collaboration in universities, here's how it went"
*with uni
sounds exactly like a story that HaD readers would love to hear
ahhh... yeah I'm not sure if we did talk about it publicly or not.
actual hardware production is a Topic
like,a fundamental topic that is under-covered
and could change things in a big way
You're so right
@Chris Denney I have to get going. Thank you for the interesting and informative presentation and answers. If someone wants to try a group project, send me a private message. I expect there are companies who will match donations. Crowdfunding almost always gets over subscribed. The process, with planning, financial modeling and market research is the usual way.
We're at the top of the hour here, and it sounds like Chris has plenty of work that we're keeping him from, so I'm going to call an official end to the chat. I want to thank Chris for his time today, and to everyone for the great conversation. Feel free to carry on the chat, of course -- the Hack Chat is always open!
Thanks @Chris Denney
thank you so much!
It's incredible under-covered. Our little podcast is like a bit of ice water in hell
Yeah you're very welcome. I'll stick around for a while. I had already booked a couple hours just in case anything ran overtime anyway.
Thanks, @Chris Denney, and everyone for participating.
Cool, I'll hold off on pulling the transcript for a bit.
If you want a quick 20 minutes of "this will change your life" kind of design tips, I recommend the talk I gave at KiCON in 2019 (2018 maybe...)
https://www.worthingtonassembly.com/blog/2019/6/21/your-manufacturer-is-stupid-help-them
WORTHINGTON ASSEMBLY INC. CHRIS DENNEY
Your Manufacturer Is Stupid - Help Them - Worthington Assembly Inc.
Here's a link to my talk at KiCon 2019 titled "Your Manufacturer Is Stupid - Help Them"
Read this on Worthington Assembly Inc.
Sort of my top 5 things of "Please help your manufacturer by doing this"
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