I just wanted a quote. But signup was painful it needs a major review. Then I uploaded a zip of my gerbers and it came up with some error that I could not figure out and halted any further movement. I'd love to do my PCBs domestic but the site makes it way too hard.
Pretty strict board requirements. They give an example motor controller, but then require your board to be 1oz copper. Motor controllers in particular often use 2oz for high current. No buried vias is an interesting requirement too. I'm not sure how often our guys use them but dense designs probably need them.
Still, looks super cool and I don't think the price difference is very high for a company doing prototypes.
I'd imagine that just because they've decided it's good enough to go public with it, doesn't mean it's done getting better. Or that someone else can't do it better, now that it's been shown to work.
I'm surprised they don't offer next day turn around (whenever fedex's last pickup plus however long to build). Even same day if you live close to their factory.
Meanwhile as a hobbyist I'd be glad for the discount "we will get around to it sometime in the next two weeks discount"
Hi Andrew founder of CircuitHub here. Happy to answer any questions. Hardware design has been in the news a lot lately as it's going through the same AI revolution as coding. We're happy to make it easy to turn those designs into physical products.
Andrew, congrats on the launch! Great to see another scaled manufacturer and assembly line here in Massachusetts. I helped scale another startup with personalized for 3D prints for orthodontic braces (https://lf.co/blog/deloitte-fast500-2024), so feel to reach out to exchange tips since the generic mass manufacturing world is not well suited for this new world of “one size fits one” at a global scale.
Also, one question to pick your team’s brain: What’s your team’s AI PCB workflow and design tips to work with your production line? Any specific tips for ESP32-related integrations?
Looks interesting. As a US manufacturer/designer I will be keeping an eye on this closely.
Currently, all assembly is done in house (in the US) but bare PCBs typically are still made in CN.
We used to produce everything overseas and just do the QA/test in the US but during the chip shortage I ended up setting up the production line to attempt to eliminate any possible shortages/tariffs.
It is a difficult struggle manufacturing commercial products in the US (doubly so with an openhardware project) since the final cost is the major blocker but I decided it was worth it for many reasons. Big issue though is knowing that even if I pay someone 2x the going rate for an employee it still will not be a living wage. Not sure the fix there. I see you are planning to lean heavily on automation/AI for this, will be watching to see how it all progresses.
There are still some major blockers in the US. Commercial/Industrial real estate being a big one. Costs are not going down...even if employee count is minimized.
> Big issue though is knowing that even if I pay someone 2x the going rate for an employee it still will not be a living wage.
Being mindful of wages is great, but eventually you have to accept that creating a job at a less than ideal wage is better than not creating any job at all. If the pay is not enough then you’ll get the signal through being unable to hire because workers are taking better paying jobs.
An unintuitive feature of the job market is that creating more low paying jobs actually puts upward pressure on wages. Ideally the low end of the job market should be saturated with job opportunities, which creates a situation where employers have to compete with each other to raise wages to find and retain employees, which means pay goes up for everyone.
So don’t let worries about not being able to pay as much as you’d like get in the way of paying anyone at all. The alternative (less jobs, more outsourcing) is worse in every way.
> Being mindful of wages is great, but eventually you have to accept that creating a job at a less than ideal wage is better than not creating any job at all.
For the employee, maybe. For the employer, it depends on how much time/money you have to put into training and what turnover is. Paying non-living wages leads to high(er) turnover because people will leave for anything better.
It’s incredible that you set up an in-house PCBA pipeline. I’m curious about what that looks like, and what you are building/manufacturing, if you don’t mind sharing!
I run some used Manncorp/Autotronik equipment. Pnp, oven, bunch of hand tools and such for rework (Metcal irons). If I didn't have this I would likely build a line using an openpnp based machine.
Making boards for the Smoothieware/Smoothieboard project. [1]
> Big issue though is knowing that even if I pay someone 2x the going rate for an employee it still will not be a living wage. Not sure the fix there.
The fix is you will just have to buy American and pay higher prices for higher "living wages". There's no way around it besides taxes or tariffs on foreign goods to equalize the wage/price difference (which does have some down sides).
I buy American and western-made products as much as possible, and I pay higher prices (assuming high quality) for those higher wages. If you want low cost, you can't by definition support "living wages".
There's no "oh if only the CEO makes less" way around it either. Labor is simply more expensive in the west and will remain so and you can vote with your wallet, as I do, or you can pay people less than living wages.
We've had a few batches of mostly assembled (minus through hole parts) prototype boards made with y'all recently, pretty stoked how quick it is. Plus no tarrifs vs the last PCBway order.
Curious, why are surface mount USB-C connectors not able to be done as part of the surface mount components (treated as a through hole I think)? Too fiddly?
The site quotes prices for ≥4 layer board production are on the order of 10x JLCPCB. I can pay for DHL overnight from JLC and still come in from uploading my design to holding it in my hand ~7 business days or less.
A domestic PCB manufacturing pipeline, has been a pipe dream for me an many other Hardware startup EEs for a long time. Until costs are more competitive, CN still gets the business. Hope you can bring costs for small batch prototype PCB manufacturing down further in the future, then you will have our business!
Thanks for the feedback. For 5 units of 2 or 4 layer turnkey assembled boards, so long as you fit in the Grid Proto spec it's a little bit more expensive (not 10x, more like 1.3x) and much faster - we have benchmarked this quite a bit. 7 days to the US with any consistency is not possible, we have a lot of data points on that, median is about 10 days. To other countries it might be faster?
Awesome. Wish I could work on a project like this. I wonder how it scales compared to a long linear assembly line with lots of preloaded pick and place machines. I've been expecting the next stage of electronics automation to look more like an amazon warehouse. Parts distribution and assembly happening under the one roof, fully automated.
kudos! for solving a hardwares, hardware problem, but especialy for the open, matter of fact demenour devoid of rhetoric.
aaaand the web site renders perfectly on my less than standard browser, fast too.
> So you pay about $165 more than the Shenzhen shop and get your boards five days sooner, with no customs and a supply chain you can count on.
A supply chain that also comes from Shenzhen... last time I checked, North America doesn't make chips or other components either.
I just wanted a quote. But signup was painful it needs a major review. Then I uploaded a zip of my gerbers and it came up with some error that I could not figure out and halted any further movement. I'd love to do my PCBs domestic but the site makes it way too hard.
Pretty strict board requirements. They give an example motor controller, but then require your board to be 1oz copper. Motor controllers in particular often use 2oz for high current. No buried vias is an interesting requirement too. I'm not sure how often our guys use them but dense designs probably need them.
Still, looks super cool and I don't think the price difference is very high for a company doing prototypes.
Faster than Shenzen, fine ... but quite a bit more expensive, even taking into account the USA tariffs, which we do not have in the rest of the world.
Seems to me that Shenzen still wins at least for the non-USA world.
Costs come down at scale. Vote with your wallet, tell your friends, and we just might have our faster+better+cheaper problem solved.
For now.
I'd imagine that just because they've decided it's good enough to go public with it, doesn't mean it's done getting better. Or that someone else can't do it better, now that it's been shown to work.
The first Circuit Hub link posted to HN was in 2013.
I could be misremembering, but wasn't it mostly a software offering at that point?
But for prototyping, paying extra for quick turnaround is often very sensible
I'm surprised they don't offer next day turn around (whenever fedex's last pickup plus however long to build). Even same day if you live close to their factory.
Meanwhile as a hobbyist I'd be glad for the discount "we will get around to it sometime in the next two weeks discount"
Right.
Plus if you can get someone on the phone there can be value in that.
And if a sales engineer comes out and sees your operation you might get more than a free lunch…
Hi Andrew founder of CircuitHub here. Happy to answer any questions. Hardware design has been in the news a lot lately as it's going through the same AI revolution as coding. We're happy to make it easy to turn those designs into physical products.
Andrew, congrats on the launch! Great to see another scaled manufacturer and assembly line here in Massachusetts. I helped scale another startup with personalized for 3D prints for orthodontic braces (https://lf.co/blog/deloitte-fast500-2024), so feel to reach out to exchange tips since the generic mass manufacturing world is not well suited for this new world of “one size fits one” at a global scale.
Also, one question to pick your team’s brain: What’s your team’s AI PCB workflow and design tips to work with your production line? Any specific tips for ESP32-related integrations?
Looks interesting. As a US manufacturer/designer I will be keeping an eye on this closely.
Currently, all assembly is done in house (in the US) but bare PCBs typically are still made in CN. We used to produce everything overseas and just do the QA/test in the US but during the chip shortage I ended up setting up the production line to attempt to eliminate any possible shortages/tariffs.
It is a difficult struggle manufacturing commercial products in the US (doubly so with an openhardware project) since the final cost is the major blocker but I decided it was worth it for many reasons. Big issue though is knowing that even if I pay someone 2x the going rate for an employee it still will not be a living wage. Not sure the fix there. I see you are planning to lean heavily on automation/AI for this, will be watching to see how it all progresses.
There are still some major blockers in the US. Commercial/Industrial real estate being a big one. Costs are not going down...even if employee count is minimized.
I wish nothing but the best for the project.
> Big issue though is knowing that even if I pay someone 2x the going rate for an employee it still will not be a living wage.
Being mindful of wages is great, but eventually you have to accept that creating a job at a less than ideal wage is better than not creating any job at all. If the pay is not enough then you’ll get the signal through being unable to hire because workers are taking better paying jobs.
An unintuitive feature of the job market is that creating more low paying jobs actually puts upward pressure on wages. Ideally the low end of the job market should be saturated with job opportunities, which creates a situation where employers have to compete with each other to raise wages to find and retain employees, which means pay goes up for everyone.
So don’t let worries about not being able to pay as much as you’d like get in the way of paying anyone at all. The alternative (less jobs, more outsourcing) is worse in every way.
> Being mindful of wages is great, but eventually you have to accept that creating a job at a less than ideal wage is better than not creating any job at all.
For the employee, maybe. For the employer, it depends on how much time/money you have to put into training and what turnover is. Paying non-living wages leads to high(er) turnover because people will leave for anything better.
It’s incredible that you set up an in-house PCBA pipeline. I’m curious about what that looks like, and what you are building/manufacturing, if you don’t mind sharing!
I run some used Manncorp/Autotronik equipment. Pnp, oven, bunch of hand tools and such for rework (Metcal irons). If I didn't have this I would likely build a line using an openpnp based machine.
Making boards for the Smoothieware/Smoothieboard project. [1]
Mostly small SMT stuff on there. 0402, BGA, etc.
[1]https://github.com/Smoothieware/Smoothieboard2
> Big issue though is knowing that even if I pay someone 2x the going rate for an employee it still will not be a living wage. Not sure the fix there.
The fix is you will just have to buy American and pay higher prices for higher "living wages". There's no way around it besides taxes or tariffs on foreign goods to equalize the wage/price difference (which does have some down sides).
I buy American and western-made products as much as possible, and I pay higher prices (assuming high quality) for those higher wages. If you want low cost, you can't by definition support "living wages".
There's no "oh if only the CEO makes less" way around it either. Labor is simply more expensive in the west and will remain so and you can vote with your wallet, as I do, or you can pay people less than living wages.
We've had a few batches of mostly assembled (minus through hole parts) prototype boards made with y'all recently, pretty stoked how quick it is. Plus no tarrifs vs the last PCBway order.
Curious, why are surface mount USB-C connectors not able to be done as part of the surface mount components (treated as a through hole I think)? Too fiddly?
The site quotes prices for ≥4 layer board production are on the order of 10x JLCPCB. I can pay for DHL overnight from JLC and still come in from uploading my design to holding it in my hand ~7 business days or less.
A domestic PCB manufacturing pipeline, has been a pipe dream for me an many other Hardware startup EEs for a long time. Until costs are more competitive, CN still gets the business. Hope you can bring costs for small batch prototype PCB manufacturing down further in the future, then you will have our business!
Thanks for the feedback. For 5 units of 2 or 4 layer turnkey assembled boards, so long as you fit in the Grid Proto spec it's a little bit more expensive (not 10x, more like 1.3x) and much faster - we have benchmarked this quite a bit. 7 days to the US with any consistency is not possible, we have a lot of data points on that, median is about 10 days. To other countries it might be faster?
What's the refinement process been like over the last five years? Many small problems or a few larger ones?
Are you manufacturing in the UK as well? Saw on your site you are hiring mechanical engineers here.
I'd love to see you successful, so wanted to comment:
The app feels very vibe-coded, and gives impression it's not well tested and polished for a new user/project.
I appreciate PCBs aren't the usual the consumer-level type of user, but I felt confused by a lot compared to JLCPCB. Hope that helps.
Awesome. Wish I could work on a project like this. I wonder how it scales compared to a long linear assembly line with lots of preloaded pick and place machines. I've been expecting the next stage of electronics automation to look more like an amazon warehouse. Parts distribution and assembly happening under the one roof, fully automated.
How long until you've built the Grid into a shipping container and are selling those?
Can't wait to see how quickly I can get boards next time I need a batch! The adage 'hardware is hard' is getting less true every day
The link back to your home page is a dead link. At least on mobile.
Amazing. Is something like this available now, or in the future, for hobbyists? Happy to pay retail prices.
This is great! Are you able to do IFA for UL certification? That would be a killer for us!
kudos! for solving a hardwares, hardware problem, but especialy for the open, matter of fact demenour devoid of rhetoric. aaaand the web site renders perfectly on my less than standard browser, fast too.