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by Cyan488 355 days ago
Electronics can be surprisingly easy and cheap to build these days. He designed the circuit and layout with software called KiCAD (free and open source) then submitted the designs to a fabrication house - probably a popular offshore one - that easily can handle that level of board and component placement complexity. It would probably cost only a few hundred to build and ship, with 1 month turnaround time.

You can also hand-assemble surface mount parts by applying solder paste carefully to the pads, then placing all the components on the paste and heating the board until all the solder melts. That would have very time consuming for all those LEDs!
2 comments
Cthulhu_ 355 days ago
There's also some homebrew pick-and-place machines and soldering ovens, but that's probably a bigger upfront investment than the offshore companies can offer.
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burnt-resistor 355 days ago
As long as there aren't surprise 50% tariffs.
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alnwlsn 355 days ago
This was something I had to look into earlier this year. We found that even if tariffs were 200-300%, JLC and PCBway are still half the cost of domestic USA board houses, while also somehow providing half the leadtime. They are an absurdly good deal.
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FinnKuhn 355 days ago
I remember William Osman (who established Open Sauce) talking about how they manufactured the badges for the convention, which are mostly just one large pcb, and how they looked into having them made in the US but there were no companies even offering the same kind of service. So it is not just that the Asian suppliers are cheaper, it is also that there isn't really a competitive US made alternative even if you were willing to pay more for it.

Here is the link to the episode (without a timestamp): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S78lYvjo2JQ

And this is how the badges looked/worked: https://www.digikey.com/en/maker/tutorials/2025/assembling-y...

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burnt-resistor 355 days ago
Yep. And if you go to Shenzhen, some shops will take on varying amounts of board design and prototyping for you. It's possible to get boards fast and for cheap, like less than a few days and even cheaper when the goal is larger quantities for semi-serious products.

For a few hobby or toy things, the fixed rate board stuffing shops are the way to go.

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