But will keep that in mind in case it might make financial and practical sense in a future project...
It almost always does for their 689 'basic' componenets. Those are the parts they don't charge extra for. They charge $3 per component for 'extended' parts. I find it to be about the same cost to order 10 boards with assembly as buying the parts and soldering myself. It depends on the parts. Some have a minium qty. of more than 10, so you pay for parts that you never see.
You mean the basic cheap component are FREE, both the part and soldering of it ?!
What times do we live in ? How do they make MONEY if everything is free or dirt cheap ?!
So I guess one could get JLC to solder the free/basic stuff, and then you would by and solder yourself only the parts that JLC charges too much money for. Well, assuming JLC gives you the flexibility to cherry pick components ....
Anyway, will definitely look into into more detail for my next project
There is a $7 SMT assembly set up fee and $1.50 for the stencil, but there is often a special offer or a coupon to reduce or remove that.
They charge $0.0015 per solder connection - which is almost nothing.
Basic parts like 0805 resistors, 1N4148s are a few cents each. 78L05 is a dime and the basic part Tantalum capacitors are about 20 cents.
Any time you use an 'extended' part there is a one time $3.00 fee. You also have to buy a minium quantity of the part because the pick and place machine eats that many even if you only use five.
For this board, it was about the same cost to use the SMT assembly service compared to buying the parts from RS. I made a couple of design changes to use as many basic parts as possible. Bottom board is how they came from JLC - Top is a completed one. It cost about $74 for ten, including the PCB, 20% UK VAT and FedEx IP shipping. (Would have been $20 less if I had not used FedEx.)