The Station

[Irilia]

90% of the product will be preassembled, only the through hole components will to be soldered, the  case to be assembled And the different connectors to be connected. It's destined to be assembled by a beginner.

Why even bother with 10%, then? Even as a beginner I hated “kits” where most of the work was already done. Building it is the entire point of a kit, so taking most of it away makes it pointless.

Not to mention that I 100% disagree with the mentality of “beginners shouldn’t deal with SMD”. Sure, soldering beginners shouldn’t necessarily be given 0402 resistors and 0.5mm pitch connectors and QFNs. But given that it is now completely impossible to do electronics as a hobby without dealing with SMD components — and the fact that SMD soldering isn’t as scary or difficult as a lot of people seem to think — it’s entirely reasonable to have beginners solder bigger SMD parts.

I used to work at a vocational training center. One of the courses offered was assembly, and so we had many first-year electronics apprentices learning to solder for the first time. They did both THT and SMD, first with 1206 and 0805 and SOICs (1.27mm pitch), but due to feedback from the companies who send their apprentices, we then had them do 0603 and 0402 as well as TSSOP (0.65mm pitch) and QFN. Most of the apprentices have no trouble doing them.

In fact, it was at the vocational training center that I designed a kit for the assembly course, a Bluetooth speaker. Because its goal is to expose the apprentices to a wide variety of assembly methods, it deliberately uses a bunch of different connector types, IC packages, etc, spread over more boards than actually needed. (In a “real” product, you’d have rationalized it to one or two connector types and put it on one or two boards only.) Normally, an entire class of apprentices builds them at the same time, so we’d lay out all the containers of parts for them to go gather themselves. But a few times, we had to send them the parts for a board as a kit, and that’s when you really see how long it takes to prepare the parts. But moreover, helping the apprentices with the project really shows how much effort it can take to track down a problem.

Also you have to remember User error is not covered by the warranty.

I never said it was covered by warranty. (Any mistakes you make are, though!) But user support is expected, and that can be enormously time consuming. Even if the outcome is “sorry, this was user error, you’ll have to buy new parts” you still need to spend the time to make that determination. Sure, if you only have them solder big connectors (which, by the way, can also be challenging in their own ways) you’re excluding a lot of intensive troubleshooting. But it’s not zero.

The goal is not to get a decorative product, it's to get a functional product, a big part of the through hole components is still soldered manually.

[tooki]

@tooki
If one had already the equipment and experience to do full SMD placement and soldering, he would not need The Station anymore.
I could hardly imagine someone having the patience to solder 100s of SMD components, needless to mention the effort packaging and labeling those for the kit

Then why even sell it as a kit, and not just as a finished, fully-assembled product? 

As I see it, one either wants a true kit (where you assemble everything) or a finished product. I see very little value and appeal to anything in between.

And if it is a kit, then I’d much rather solder 100 SMD resistors than 100 THT ones that require you to bend and trim leads. As I said: SMD isn’t just the future of electronics, it is the present. THT isn’t going to disappear entirely, but it’s been clear for years that, with the exception of parts needing extra mechanical strength, new parts are going to be overwhelmingly SMD. I don’t believe in having beginners avoid SMD, nor do I believe that the larger SMD stuff is actually any harder. It’s just different. As I said before: one doesn’t need to start the beginner with the tiniest of parts. There’s chunkier SMD stuff, too.

(Also: Kit soldering stations are a bit of a problem for beginners anyway, since you need to have a soldering station already in order to build the kit!)

[tooki]

90% of the product will be preassembled, only the through hole components will to be soldered, the  case to be assembled And the different connectors to be connected. It's destined to be assembled by a beginner.

Why even bother with 10%, then? Even as a beginner I hated “kits” where most of the work was already done. Building it is the entire point of a kit, so taking most of it away makes it pointless.

Not to mention that I 100% disagree with the mentality of “beginners shouldn’t deal with SMD”. Sure, soldering beginners shouldn’t necessarily be given 0402 resistors and 0.5mm pitch connectors and QFNs. But given that it is now completely impossible to do electronics as a hobby without dealing with SMD components — and the fact that SMD soldering isn’t as scary or difficult as a lot of people seem to think — it’s entirely reasonable to have beginners solder bigger SMD parts.
…

The goal is not to get a decorative product, it's to get a functional product, a big part of the through hole components is still soldered manually.

Huh? “Decorative”? What the heck are you talking about? I didn’t say anything about aesthetics. And obviously one wants a functional product at the end, who said otherwise?!

[ebastler]

I am not sure how much point there is in arguing further. We have presented the relevant caveats to the OP: desirability of an all-in-one product from the user's perspective; compliance requirements; production/sales/support effort. If Irilia wants to continue with the project nevertheless, so be it. If nothing else, it will be a good learning experience in many fields.

[Irilia]

@tooki
If one had already the equipment and experience to do full SMD placement and soldering, he would not need The Station anymore.
I could hardly imagine someone having the patience to solder 100s of SMD components, needless to mention the effort packaging and labeling those for the kit

Then why even sell it as a kit, and not just as a finished, fully-assembled product? 

As I see it, one either wants a true kit (where you assemble everything) or a finished product. I see very little value and appeal to anything in between.

And if it is a kit, then I’d much rather solder 100 SMD resistors than 100 THT ones that require you to bend and trim leads. As I said: SMD isn’t just the future of electronics, it is the present. THT isn’t going to disappear entirely, but it’s been clear for years that, with the exception of parts needing extra mechanical strength, new parts are going to be overwhelmingly SMD. I don’t believe in having beginners avoid SMD, nor do I believe that the larger SMD stuff is actually any harder. It’s just different. As I said before: one doesn’t need to start the beginner with the tiniest of parts. There’s chunkier SMD stuff, too.

(Also: Kit soldering stations are a bit of a problem for beginners anyway, since you need to have a soldering station already in order to build the kit!)

What. About using the station to do SMD soldering, you have 2€ SMD kit on AliExpress do you want me to be competitive against that ?.
A set with the tools to solder re Kit will be available as an option if you don't already have one.

[Irilia]

90% of the product will be preassembled, only the through hole components will to be soldered, the  case to be assembled And the different connectors to be connected. It's destined to be assembled by a beginner.

Why even bother with 10%, then? Even as a beginner I hated “kits” where most of the work was already done. Building it is the entire point of a kit, so taking most of it away makes it pointless.

Not to mention that I 100% disagree with the mentality of “beginners shouldn’t deal with SMD”. Sure, soldering beginners shouldn’t necessarily be given 0402 resistors and 0.5mm pitch connectors and QFNs. But given that it is now completely impossible to do electronics as a hobby without dealing with SMD components — and the fact that SMD soldering isn’t as scary or difficult as a lot of people seem to think — it’s entirely reasonable to have beginners solder bigger SMD parts.
…

The goal is not to get a decorative product, it's to get a functional product, a big part of the through hole components is still soldered manually.

Huh? “Decorative”? What the heck are you talking about? I didn’t say anything about aesthetics. And obviously one wants a functional product at the end, who said otherwise?!

Decorative (not functional)

[Irilia]

I am not sure how much point there is in arguing further. We have presented the relevant caveats to the OP: desirability of an all-in-one product from the user's perspective; compliance requirements; production/sales/support effort. If Irilia wants to continue with the project nevertheless, so be it. If nothing else, it will be a good learning experience in many fields.

You are definitely right, if I fail, I fail it's not like if I will lose a lot of money, because I will not Invest a lot of it (I will invest some quantity of time, but if you learn something you don't lose your time 😉

[tooki]

90% of the product will be preassembled, only the through hole components will to be soldered, the  case to be assembled And the different connectors to be connected. It's destined to be assembled by a beginner.

Why even bother with 10%, then? Even as a beginner I hated “kits” where most of the work was already done. Building it is the entire point of a kit, so taking most of it away makes it pointless.

Not to mention that I 100% disagree with the mentality of “beginners shouldn’t deal with SMD”. Sure, soldering beginners shouldn’t necessarily be given 0402 resistors and 0.5mm pitch connectors and QFNs. But given that it is now completely impossible to do electronics as a hobby without dealing with SMD components — and the fact that SMD soldering isn’t as scary or difficult as a lot of people seem to think — it’s entirely reasonable to have beginners solder bigger SMD parts.
…

The goal is not to get a decorative product, it's to get a functional product, a big part of the through hole components is still soldered manually.

Huh? “Decorative”? What the heck are you talking about? I didn’t say anything about aesthetics. And obviously one wants a functional product at the end, who said otherwise?!

Decorative (not functional)

Repeating your nonsensical choice of word doesn’t make it any clearer than the first time.

Who ever said that the end product should not be functional? I sure didn’t. And any normal interpretation of my replies to you (which discuss things like providing support to users whose kits don’t work after assembly) would find that it’s all based around the assumption of a functional device being the end result. With a kit, building it is how you get there. Or you buy it finished. There just isn’t much point in kits where 90% of the work is done for you, because you’re not having the fun and/or learning of building most of it.

[ebastler]

You are definitely right, if I fail, I fail it's not like if I will lose a lot of money, because I will not Invest a lot of it (I will invest some quantity of time, but if you learn something you don't lose your time 😉

Just make sure you don't end up losing a lot of money due to liability issues late in the game -- warranty replacements, or worse, damages/legal costs/penalties. It is quite feasible to lose much more than the amount you invest upfront in prototypes and production.

[inse]

N/R

[coppercone2]

the pace PRC does this already, its main market was military mobile repair vans or something

the biggest problem with modular products is they don't follow advances. you would need to have alot of foresight to make a modular chassis that ages well.

soldering is a constantly evolving field where I am sure more gadgets will get made and become popular to do things.

and systems engineering to allow for upgrade is hard, because you end up with scenarios like "THEY MANAGED TO PUT 25 AMPS IN THAT?!?!" when you have room for 10 amps. It turns into mechanical engineering nightmare where your trying to get stuff to fit in a known from.

I'm not doing a gadget, so it's made to be durable, every instant Tips work more or less the same, it's not because you see a lot of new product with new design, that it means the technologies is New. But adapting the power supply for example is not too complicated if you consider letting some room when you design it. It's also possible to get some external part in a box below the table for example, but it's more like if I decide to use a big old transformer that I know can have some advantages some time. You can do what ever you want with the circuit and the box its open source.

take a look at the PRC2000, its not a gadget, its a $10000 soldering mainframe

https://paceworldwide.com/prc2000-th-through-hole-miniature-microminiature-electronic-repair-station

It does it all but its not really 'cutting edge' on all its tools.

Their good for aviation and military wiring that has alot of weird medium precision interfaces, shields and has extra big parts for durability. It does enough special stuff that its not gonna go away in utility.

But again, if you make high end highly integrated tools, only the government is really interested in that for tactical use. You put that in a van that drives up to a aircraft or tank to do some quick repairs lol


And linking a soldering iron to literary anything else in the lab means you need a backup iron unless you wanna take some time off, its like the most critical thing there. managers know a complex multi function tool is gonna go down and they want as little down time as possible, so they prefer independent tools. However putting all that crap in a mobile repair van or tactical repair center (tent in desert) is difficult enough that the PRC2000 is a viable product despite its complexity, though I would not be surprised if they glue on the accessories lol


how are you gonna sell some clunker compared to a TR80 USBC soldering pen that I can put in my coffee mug if I am just a generic hobbyist??


Study pace product line, they had all sorts of combo machines over the last 30 years. most of them are hard to enigneer and have weird custom parts (graphite vane pump, resistance transformers, etc).


Like for hot air stations, right now the "keys" are
1) integrate air pump into machine for a "pen" tool, no fan in handle
2) very fast warmup and cooldown time
3) precision control, remote sensing
4) quiet

basically all of those are thermodynamic engineering problems, that require physics level approach, nothing can be done for systems enigneering here to improve any of it. The physics end of the tools need improvement, no one cares about the back end, the electronics are already way better then the "physics devices" that do the work.

[Irilia]

I will update this form when I got some progress (or if something really don't go as expected)
A rumors say it's important for other people to learn from my experience 😉.