Chinese board makers to be trusted?

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dewey
 
Posts: 4
Joined: Wed Jan 13, 2010 4:20 pm

Chinese board makers to be trusted?

Post by dewey »

Even though I work on open source designs, I may at some point not want to release something to the world, or at least a part of it. Many folks are extolling the virtues of the website Seeedstudio.com as a way to get cheap pcbs made (I believe they are a Chinese company or use a PCB house in China). They have a great deal on boards if you agree to release your designs as open source, but even if you don't, the deal isn't bad.

I have an Asian coworker who used to work at HP designing high-end satellite communications PCBs who I shared some of my kit-making ideas with. She expressely warned me a couple times during our conversation not to send anything to any Chinese board houses that you ever wanted to keep under wraps. If it ever even slightly gains in popularity she said, you can expect to see it produced for sale by them without any consultation of you, even if you specified it was your design and that it not be released to the public.

Is this generally true? Has anyone had any experience with their designs showing up elsewhere? And on that note, has anyone found that they did any better or worse (financially) when changing from open to closed source designs or vice-versa?

It's easy enough to copy a circuit board, so even if it didn't start open source, things can be reverse engineered, so maybe my concerns are moot anyway in that if I made something proprietary and it sold really well (hey, I can dream can't I?), it would eventually get copied anyway.

Thanks for any insights.
-Dewey

adafruit
 
Posts: 12151
Joined: Thu Apr 06, 2006 4:21 pm

Re: Chinese board makers to be trusted?

Post by adafruit »

not sure about secrecy concerns but we've found the best quality PCBs are at 4pcb.com - thats who we use.

charliex
 
Posts: 179
Joined: Sat Nov 28, 2009 5:54 pm

Re: Chinese board makers to be trusted?

Post by charliex »

yes there is truth too it, a lot of out stuff is made and then knocked off in china and offered for sale elsewhere. Some of the companies knocking it off even try to sell it to us as a better deal, its funny when you meet the company at a trade show and see your stuff for sale like that.

But on the other hand its one of those how popular will your product be and whats the tradeoff cost. as you say it can be copied even if they don't have the original designs.

mikeselectricstuff
 
Posts: 164
Joined: Fri Jun 11, 2010 9:21 pm

Re: Chinese board makers to be trusted?

Post by mikeselectricstuff »

for bare PCBs :
I use PCBCART.COM a lot.
I think you're being paranoid about ripoffs - PCB layout is a small part of any product. If your product gets so popular that i'ts worth someone ripping off, it won't make a lot of difference if they use your PCB or do their own.

If you're worried about a complete product or PCB assembly that's being assembled in China, and has some firmware in it (what doesn't?), then only give them test firmware that just does enough to verify the hardware, and load the real code when it gets to you.

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chuckm
 
Posts: 159
Joined: Thu Dec 24, 2009 3:31 am

Re: Chinese board makers to be trusted?

Post by chuckm »

My experience is that this is a weird issue. I've had a design "ripped off" by a Chinese manufacturer who sold them out of Hong Kong.

In my case I had kept it non-open source but gave anyone the license to make fewer than 10 for themselves and if they were going to make 10 or more for some club to send me an email. I wasn't interested in profiting but was concerned about support.

The company (which is now either out of business or operating under a different name) started selling them and pointing folks at my web site for "support." When I started to get people calling me up and asking questions I was amazed to find out both that they had bought the board online, and what they had paid for it. When I told them I didn't have the resources to support them and zero $ of the sale they had just made had come my way, some were understanding but a non-trivial number were irate and angry (they had spent real money, even if they hadn't sent it to me). I ended up collecting some ill will, and no money, from that experience. It made me much more careful about how much information I "give away" on the web and I'm always clear that if you didn't get it from me I don't offer support.

That being said, if you're design is popular enough that someone in China decides to make some on their own (nominally known as 'counterfeit' although sometimes the fakes are made in the same factories with the same parts the 'real ones' are made of, ask BANNED about that) then you have both a good problem and a not so good one. The good problem is you've made a cool enough product that lots of people want it and others have stepped in to fill that demand, the not so good is your customers may get confused about who is and who isn't allowed (or authorized) to sell something. Take AdaFruit here, you buy a motor shield from Makershed you're pretty sure its legit. But if you get this one: http://hackable-devices.org/shop/produc ... shield-kit it looks the same but there is no way to know if the good folks here at Adafruit are benefiting from the sales or not. (I would hope so since Adafruit sells it for about $20 and even with the lower Euro these guys are selling the same thing for over $50, plus VAT).

Stay with the fact that pirating is the sincerest form of flattery and you'll do well. If you start losing sleep over trying to figure out how much money you would be making if you got a piece of the action every time your board was sold, and you end up going down the whole digital rights / copy protection nightmare.

--Chuck

adafruit
 
Posts: 12151
Joined: Thu Apr 06, 2006 4:21 pm

Re: Chinese board makers to be trusted?

Post by adafruit »

hey, we're sorry to hear about that. we do have people pirate our kits. however, we want to make it clear that hackable-devices is one of our newest resellers! (not yet on our reseller page but will be soon) so please feel confident in purchasing goods from them :mrgreen:

We usually just make it clear to people who have purchased clones that we only offer support for adafruit products, most people have been very understanding

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