{"id":13481,"date":"2015-12-31T16:31:37","date_gmt":"2015-12-31T08:31:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.seeedstudio.com\/blog\/?p=13481"},"modified":"2017-11-15T14:12:34","modified_gmt":"2017-11-15T06:12:34","slug":"5-tips-to-reduce-cost-for-hardware-design","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.seeedstudio.com\/blog\/2015\/12\/31\/5-tips-to-reduce-cost-for-hardware-design\/","title":{"rendered":"5 Tips to Reduce Cost for Hardware Design"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"nozzle\"<\/a><\/p>\n

If the project you are tinkering in the garage becomes popular and is overwhelmed with praises, will you think about turning it into a real product?<\/p>\n

However, making a real product is more than just combining all the components and modules together onto one board. \u00a0Ticking time bombs will be created during the construction and it is so hard to locate and dispose all of them<\/b>,<\/b><\/span> especially for beginners.<\/b><\/p>\n

\"QQ20151231-1@2x\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Seeed Studio has spent a lot of time in helping makers to prototype more than 2500 projects every month in Fusion Service<\/span><\/a> and producing our own product lines<\/span><\/a> since 2008 as the world\u2019<\/span>s 3rd biggest open source hardware platform. By distilling & applying the general tips from our experience, we hope to\u00a0help to lower the barrier of hardware development. In this chapter, we will focus on how to reduce the COST.<\/b><\/p>\n

1. Cost, Quality & lead-time form the Manufacturing Management Triangle<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Whenever you want to industrialize your project, please keep these 3 elements in mind and try to find the best position in this triangle. Losing balance in this triangle will lead to long lead-time, bad quality and high cost in production.\"QQ20151231-0@2x\"2. Take the overall cost of a finished product into consideration<\/strong><\/p>\n

Normally, the cost of a finished product consists of the following aspects: material, engineering, manufacturing, testing, set-up, shipment, management and certification. To reduce the cost, you must take all of these costs into consideration at the beginning.<\/p>\n

\"cost\"<\/a>
\n<\/a>3. Use the same components as much as possible<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

We will suggest you use exactly the same 10k 1% 0603 resistor in your whole design, the same package, same tolerance, same manufacturer and same MPN. DO NOT use both 0402 and 0603 at the same time if the size of your PCB allows, because one more different component means you need to<\/p>\n