How much does custom electronics and PCB assembly cost per unit?
Confidence 4/5 Established practice
Unit cost for custom electronics and PCB assembly:
Bare 2-layer prototype boards: a few dollars each in small quantity. Assembled boards are dominated by component cost, and quoting without a firm BOM and a component availability check is guesswork.
Sources
- PCB fabrication and assembly service terms — Published fab-house and assembly service guidance
- Printed circuit boards under HS 8534 — World Customs Organization HS nomenclature
- Section 301 tariff actions on Chinese goods — US Trade Representative
What goes wrong with custom electronics and PCB assembly
- Quoting from a BOM without checking component availability and lifecycle status.
- Assuming the factory will handle FCC or CE. It usually will not; that is a separate test house process.
- Designing in a single-source or end-of-life component.
- Skipping functional testing definition, then receiving boards nobody has verified.
- Treating the bare board and the assembly as one quote from one supplier when they are usually two.
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