[h317]

Not the topic poster, but speaking from the similar experience, the cost can be as low as $4,000 in China for the size of these parts. In USA/Canada it would start with a $60k minimum, and with a 6 month timeline instead of 1. And 9 times out of ten, the local fab is making their moulds in China anyway.

[mips_r4300i]

This is similar to my experiences, the really good ones still in the US have heavily specialized on high-end boutique orders. They can be very competent but also very non competitive for any normal work.

Same with with US based PCB shops. They all want to do high dollar ITAR restricted boards for govt contractors.

There is a middle ground. US sub shops that oversee captive Chinese operations with their own crew and keep you in the loop. This worked well for my personal projects and wasn't too horrendous. About 16k for a simple design that I could've had done with our work team for about 8k. But I never had to fly over, play WeChat tag in Mandarin, and I got PowerPoint DFM updates regularly.

[ahaucnx]

Original poster here. Yes this is also what I heard from people that did molds in Europe. Much much more expensive and takes 4 times as long.