Custom one-offs are expensive because the manufacturing process requires you to build a lot of specific machinery and equipment to build the actual board.

One thing you could look into is 3D printing technology. There are 3D printers now, for around $10-20k, that can do circuit boards. You just have a two stage process, stage one does the printing in the resin, stage two you inject molten metals into the circuit board to finish it.

How would this be crowd sourced? Do you need anything other than feedback on the idea, or help building the site/ordering web application? Building the application for customization itself?

This is the whole idea behind having chip array boards. Where the manufacture prints all the gates on one board and the customer just makes the connections. Been done in the industry.

Unless you are talking about some home brew stuff, which leads into a different line of stuff.

The major development here would be the software that allowed you to lay out the circuit and generate standard bill-of-material type lists of components needed. This is the kind of thing that CAD systems do so architects and engineers can lay out building systems and generate bills of materials needed for construction.

Does this type of software not already exist for electronics? I've used circuit design software, but it was mostly designed for prototype testing, not fabrication layout.

Check out this article: http://www.newscient...ial-revolution-.html

There are some cool 3D Printers coming down the pipe, we are already seeing them able to print in multiple resins, and starting to see aluminium and coppers... very cool stuff.

Ooh Comments!

Ok so my neighbor and his father own a software company that makes the software to optimize and generate price lists.

And mabye I'm thinking too broadly?

But Kevin, explain your last sentence please

Well, PCBs are not that new of a concept. I can all ready build a PCB online and have it manufactured and shipped. Plus you can make your own at home which is not to hard.

I think it's a good idea. One obstacle with this is if you don't want or can't assemble the PCB's by hand you would need to set up a machine production line. Such production lines usually consist out of several modules(seperate machines with their own function) which cost (new) about $15000 - $30000 per module. So it's definitely possible, but can get quite costly unless you can get the machines for a bargain.

Zentropy: That is why I keep pointing out 3D printers. They are not just for rapid prototying any more... in a few years you'll see consumer versions.

No, I don't think so at this point, sorry.

5 stars.

Programs for laying out PCBs and producing parts lists exist, as micco suggests - many of them also simulate the circuit in operation, allowing you to test your design before you make it.

Services that will custom-print a PCB and ship it to you also exist. I believe it's possible to send off the output from one of the aforementioned programs, or even a simple graphic, and have it made, but I've never used a service like this so don't quote me on it.

However, what I think Patrick_Jones is actually suggesting is custom printing AND ASSEMBLY of a complete electronic device. I don't know of anybody who provides this service, so it would be a new niche to move into. It does have a few problems though. First, is it required? I can't imagine there are many people out there capable of designing a single-board circuit more complicated than they can solder, given the PCB ready printed. Secondly, what do you do about quality control and testing? It's hard enough to test and troubleshoot a circuit when you know what it's supposed to be doing; it's next to impossible when you don't. What happens if I send in a flawed design? Will you ship it to me complete with burnt-out ICs and smelling of molten heatshrink?

HOWEVER, the concept of open-source hardware or open-source electronics does work, and it does exist. It centres on making the design open-source, rather than outsourcing the actual production of a given unit.

In other words, I won't make one for you but I will tell you how I made mine so that you can make one for yourself. Feel free to improve on my design, but make sure you post it again so that everyone else can benefit from your modifications.

If that makes no sense, I suggest you check out MAKE's excellent summary of and introduction to the topic:
http://blog.makezine...e_hardware_what.html

You could build much of it in CAD based software ( or MAYA! ) and have it spit out components that the end consumer snaps together like lego...

Electrogo! The electronic LEGO!

Its a nice idea, and it can already be done, for a (largish) price - which is affordable in industry.

There are a lot of outfits that will make a PCB form a cad file. That's the easy part, and pretty cheap too even for multi layer boards.

Kitting, populating and QC'ing the board however is far more expensive using existing prototyping services.

I think some progress on cost could be made if you heavily standardised the range of components that could be selected, but that's taking away the design freedom. Maybe a modest start with a standard board, standard enclosure and a customisabel area would be a start?

Thats great in theory but i think it would be hard in practices. Unless I do not understand this idea you would make electronic boards for small business... I know my brother designed on in College and it cost him $500 to have it made in California.

how are you going to make the process cheaper?

I think where i was going with this was a service that would print your board and add/ solder the components for you. You would have to program (if the design is programmable) the board yourself but pretty much we would get the hard part out of the way for you. And yes, you could only use certain parts in certain ways.

The program would be something like a dumbed down schematics program that would allow you to create your circuits and then see if it meets the companies guidelines and rules (for whatever reason they would have them) and then you choose your components and so on. Then on the site you could upload your CAD file or whatever format is used and then choose your casing. Any board will fit in ANY case, all of the screw holes would line up. The Front and back panels would be made out of plastic and (in the original program) they would design the panels to fit the board.

Making more sense at all?

Thanks for the comments by the way.

Pat

I'm sorry but ... isn't it what any prototyping company is already doing ?
You send your CAD files together with a BOM and requirements on the assembly, you can send CAD files of the housing and you get 5 of them for a fairly high price ? ...

What is your added value ? What do you do smarter than anyone ? ... I would love to hear you found something awesome :))