I've finished the schematic of my first board for my student senior project and am planning on having about 10 printed / assembled. I'm planning on having all the SMT components such as resistors, capacitors, inductors and tqfp / qfn assembled by 3rd party, and doing through hole connectors such as DB9 / PWR myself. I've finished the schematic which contains:
Microchip PIC
CAN controller
Zigbee Chip
TCP/IP
I2C
RS232 and more...
My Question Is: How do I reduce the cost of assembly?
Is one size SMT like 0402, 0604, 0805 cheaper than the other?
How much cheaper would it be to just mount the resistors / caps / inductors and do the rest myself?
Does putting SMT devices on both sides of board increase a lot of cost?
Can TQPF80 and QFN40, SO16, SSOP, SOT-23 be assembled by machines like resistors - Are these relatively expensive?
Also - does anybody have any idea of relative (ball park) cost to print / assemble 10 boards 100mm x 80mm with:
40 smt capacitors - 8 types
20 smt resistors - 6types
5 smt inductors - 3 types
1 tqfp80
1 qfn40
2 sot223
1 sot23-5
1 so-16
1 s0-8
1 s0-18
Thanks so much - I really have no clue.
Todd