Hackaday is all about the neat hacks and the repurposing of old components into new projects, but numerous people then try to take those projects and turn them into businesses. We’ve seen lots of people offer their stuff as kits and sell them on Tindie, with the rare few going on to develop a consumer electronic product at scale.

The Hackaday prize 2017 best product highlights this journey. “Scale” itself is a vague term, but essentially it implies to be able to produce enough to meet market demand. We hope that market demand is roughly 7 billion units, purchasing yearly, but the reality is that it is somewhere between 1 and a few hundred thousand, with very big differences in manufacturing at each purchase of magnitude. So how do you start with a proof of concept and design your product from the very beginning to be optimized to scale to meet whatever demand you can handle?

鴻溝

The hardware startup world calls it the retail chasm, and it’s the huge gap between making your first few units in your home, and mass producing tens or hundreds of thousands of units. This is where many startups fail, because they can’t get the benefit of large volume discounts on components, they can’t afford the injection molds, and assembly is expensive if they can find someone to take on the work at all.

But they can’t charge any much more than they would be able to sell it for in volume, so the margins are non-existent and it is really hard to grow. The trick to crossing this chasm is to design the product FOR the chasm. To use components that are easily acquired in low volume, and assembly methods that are still available without expensive tools.

Get comfortable with SMT

Surface mount components on circuit boards save cost, space, assembly time, and are much more readily available than through-hole counterparts. If you want to manufacture a product in volume, use SMT whenever possible. I’ve had enough connectors ripped off the board that I’m pleased to make an exception for components where mechanical stability is essential, but SMT makes everything better. There is a lot of worry about making the transition and the skills required, but the landscape for making circuit boards at home has gotten much better, with much more resources like OSH stencil and experimentation into reflow controllers like the Controleo.

When looking through the best product list of submissions, it is clear that products that are much more refined and scalable are all using SMT where possible. It’s common to start with breakout boards for various components and wire them together through a breadboard for the proof of concept, but then rapidly relocation to SMT for the first revision of the customized PCB. heartyPatch started with a development board wired through a breadboard and has refined to a small PCB with practically entirely surface mount components, and practically entirely on one side (the temperature sensor is on the back side and needs to be, but that will complicate assembly).

The heartyPatch can be put together on a hot plate.
Assembling PCBs at home is easy, and mostly just requires a pair of tweezers and a hot plate or toaster oven. Of course producers are set up to do SMT really well, so scaling is simple.

Use Existing Parts

It’s tempting to design a customized enclosure that is slick and tiny, or to source a transformer with limited suppliers, but that will only get you in trouble. In the short run it implies you’ll pay a lot for the parts and may have to purchase a minimum number that’s beyond your initial demand. start with an enclosure from Polycase or Hammond, then modify it as needed. numerous of the enclosure companies offer modification and printing in house, too, implying you can purchase your parts completely ready with very little up front cost.

Extruded aluminum cases are another popular option, because you can customize the length as well. The City Air quality project chose this route and ended up with a robust and good enclosure without needing to pay for tooling costs. They have built in scalability. The part cost may be higher, but the initial investment required is much lower, making it simpler to cross the chasm of manufacturing in small volumes until your demand grows enough to afford to invest in your own mold.

Another example is the USB TinyTracker, where [Paul] started with the enclosure and developed his USB TinyTracker to fit inside. If he scales up he can eventually design his own enclosure, but for the beginning he has all he needs.

The City Air quality project uses an aluminum extrusion for the enclosure.
Remove Parts

If you don’t need it, you don’t have to source or assemble it. It’s not unusual in some factories for an unobserved producer to try to save money by removing a component and if it still works they ship it. naturally you want to be in control of this, but the idea has merit.

At every opportunity, ask yourself if you need此組件（或者如果您可以從產品中刪除它，並提供兩個不同的版本，如WiFi，或者不提供）。正如必要的只是試圖找到加倍有用性的機會，這樣你就可以消除一部分或裝配步驟或夾具。例如，設計您的機箱，以便將其捕捉在一起，並使用老闆將PCB保持在位。這消除了擰緊步驟，採購螺釘，也可能是膠合步驟。它很誘人地添加零件和功能，使您的產品更具吸引力，更多的人更具吸引力，而是每種添加量增加了每個增加的時間和成本和失敗點和復雜性。

優化組裝時間

裝配時間的每一分鐘都乘以製造的單位數量，它很快就會增加。此外，設置和取下裝配過程可以考慮到過程時間多得多，使得批處理必不可少的過程。它更好地組裝100個PCB，然後編程100個PCB而不是組裝1，程序它，組裝，程序，並重複100次。讓你的車站易於設置並儘可能地取下，以便何時製作另一批單位，你不會在開銷上失去大量的時間。

花一些時間看看過程中減慢的東西，或者導致生產不一致以及質量控制。幾個小時修復問題可以輕鬆節省時間並提高產量。

但更重要的是，更精煉設計與彙編時間。盡可能消除零件，使用捕捉而不是螺釘，並在Sanity檢查和對齊引腳中構建，使得部件只能在一起。可以輕鬆地編程微控制器，並不定位部件，使它們阻擋其他部件。

結論

越過鴻溝真的很難，但從一開始就發展你的項目將節省大量的痛苦。您可以隨時換掉零件並在您的縮放時進行改進，但您應該在開始時準備較低的捲，並使用更便宜的工具更加耗時的裝配。

你現在最好的產品旅程嗎？在Hackaday獎品最佳產品類別中輸入它。您有機會與提前的採用者聯繫，這些採用者構成了Hackaday社區，並為您的產品發布產生早期嗡嗡聲。有現金獎項（二十個決賽選手獲得1000美元，其中一個最佳產品獎金為30,000美元），並且有一個大量的乘數，來自我們社區內的一個心愛的硬件製作人。

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