Hacker News Reader

Comment by seddona | Hacker News Reader

Hi Andrew founder of CircuitHub here. Happy to answer any questions. Hardware design has been in the news a lot lately as it's going through the same AI revolution as coding. We're happy to make it easy to turn those designs into physical products.

View on HN

I'd highly recommend you revisit your protection of customer's IP. Considering that you require source files (not just the industry standard gerbers), your legal terms are very unfavorable to customers. This makes me uncomfortable because it makes my IP much easier to leak. As written, I cannot justify the risks given your agreement.

Nothing in the legal terms explicitly prevents your employees from using my designs for other purposes. If you leak my IP and I find out 13 months later, your terms prevent me from seeking damages because you only cover 12 months from manufacturing.

I like that you have an NDA that I can opt in to, but you should be offering the NDA by default when I upload the files. I should not have to go looking for it in your documentation.

Edit: I realize that there is also limited protection and a lot of risk using a Chinese manufacturer. But requiring source files makes it much, much, easier to look at my design, recognize what it's for, and reproduce it, or at least copy the innovative parts of my design.

It’s several steps up from Chinese manufacturers already however where they will almost certainly use your design for something else if it suits them and you have no protections.

I agree up to a point. It's like the difference in giving someone binary or source code. Yes, someone can reverse engineer gerbers into a schematic, but that's a lot different than handing over the schematic, which includes more information about the design than the gerbers do. It's much easier to look at a schematic and say "oh, that's a circuit I want to use" than it is to look at gerber files and think that.

I have some level of confidence that JLC is going to protect my IP. They are big and if someone's IP leaked it could be devastating to their business. Their legal agreements are a lot more detailed and favorable than what's currently on circuithub.

Pretty much any new product gets a Chinese copy within a year. How are you so confident JLC is not the source of atleast some of these. Also there is no other alternative so they have that security.

That's fair. But gerber files are just a step up from reverse engineering a physical PCB. For a fairly simple, 2 layer PCB, the actual hardware will be easier to reverse engineer than gerbers alone.

So even if nobody ever sees my schematic or gerber files, they could still clone a lot of products if they just have someone spend some time with a multimeter on a device they buy.

Yeah, or at this point just get an LLM to verify it and explain the circuit.

You can upload Gerbers/ODB++ if you like. We also sign custom NDA's. We count many of the worlds largest corporations as customers so this is pretty standard.

Would you address other concerns voiced above? They are pretty serious points or allegations. Also, a PCB sourcing should not require a custom NDA when the selling point is convenience, legal protection, and speed vis-a-vis overseas sourcing.

Then there's either a usability issue or a bug. I uploaded gerbers but it wouldn't let me continue unless I uploaded schematics and board files.

And why should I have to sign an NDA? You aren't giving me any confidential data, I am giving it to you.

>> We also sign custom NDA's

> And why should I have to sign an NDA?

I think you misunderstood?

What did I misunderstand? Their documentation (https://docs.circuithub.com/importing-a-project/files-requir...) says:

---

For additional legal protection of your intellectual property please sign our NDA.

---

To make it worse, you can't even read what their NDA says without signing up with your email address on a third party site.

Yes. If you're that risk adverse that giving your email address in 2026 to a site is too much of a burden, you're going to be a problem customer and they don't want your business. They're in business to make money and it's a business transaction and if you can't cross that low threshold, you're more trouble than you're worth as a customer.

Isn't capitalism neat‽

Funny how you frame this like it's a problem for the customer. The business needs customers to survive, the customer does not need the business to survive. The customer is in the business of giving money to people who aren't going to abuse their data. If you can't cross that low threshold, you're more trouble than you're worth as a business, and you're not getting paid. Isn't capitalism neat?

I don't think you are a target customer. All the contract fab, manufacturing etc run on NDAs.

I'm confused, aren't they already shipping millions of boards to customers, and scaling up rapidly beyond that?

Sounds like their actual customers don't agree with you at all...

GP didn't say they didn't want to enter their email because it's a risk. My reading was that it was another hoop they had to jump through to do their diligence, reflecting on what the company thinks of their customers the same way the NDA requirement itself, and the IP clauses do. I'm not sure how the connection to money or capitalism comes in here.

I second the use of NDA/privacy gaurantee as default. It shouldn't be opt-in with friction. Of course if I want to use a custom/overriding NDA then i'm happy to contact you to review.

Here's what the documentation says:

---

In order to receive a quote on CircuitHub, you will need to upload the original design files from your EDA tool, or an export that carries the same data. This allows us to provide instant quotes and automate the manufacturing process to lower lead times and cost. Currently, our platform works with Altium, KiCad and Fusion 360 files, and with ODB++ and IPC-2581 exports from any design tool, including Cadence Allegro and OrCAD.

We do not accept Gerber files on their own because they do not contain all of the design and assembly data required by our automated process. We do use your Gerber files when you upload them together with an ODB++ or IPC-2581 export, or with Fusion 360's EAGLE exports, which describe the parts.

---

Other vendors don't require this. They just need the gerbers, BOM, and CPL files. That's way different than source files or ODB++/IPC-2581 exports, which is basically the same thing as source.

IPC-2581 is the future.

Good riddance to the compatibly hellhole of 30 different flavors of Gerber/Gerberx/NCdrill

EDIT: haven't even mentioned everyone's different goofball CSV BOMs

other vendors even support native librepcb files and have it fully included in their automated build process. i understand that librepcb is not big enough (strangely) and thus not supported. however not accepting gerber? seems like a strange choice

I wish you well, domestic electronic production is something we need very badly.

I won't complain about the price, I understand it's going to be more expensive than China. But it's a tough one for me. I have a budget that I have to work with, and while I have some flexibility 3X prices (your site priced $9k compared to JLC's $2k, even after tariffs and shipping) make the project nonviable for me. I hope you can continue to improve pricing over time as you scale.

Also your parts selection interface needs a lot of work. I have a very simple board and I had to go through clunky search and select for parts, even when the digikey part number was in the description.

Thanks for the feedback on part selection interface, we are just wrapping up some big improvements here. On the pricing side, if you fit within the Proto Board spec we are very comparable with JLC on much shorter lead time. If you go outside that then for now we are quite a bit higher price. But bear with us, more capacity and thus lower prices all round coming soon.

The site quotes prices for ≥4 layer board production are on the order of 10x JLCPCB. I can pay for DHL overnight from JLC and still come in from uploading my design to holding it in my hand ~7 business days or less.

A domestic PCB manufacturing pipeline, has been a pipe dream for me an many other Hardware startup EEs for a long time. Until costs are more competitive, CN still gets the business. Hope you can bring costs for small batch prototype PCB manufacturing down further in the future, then you will have our business!

Thanks for the feedback. For 5 units of 2 or 4 layer turnkey assembled boards, so long as you fit in the Grid Proto spec it's a little bit more expensive (not 10x, more like 1.3x) and much faster - we have benchmarked this quite a bit. 7 days to the US with any consistency is not possible, we have a lot of data points on that, median is about 10 days. To other countries it might be faster?

> For 5 units of 2 or 4 layer turnkey assembled boards, so long as you fit in the Grid Proto spec it's a little bit more expensive (not 10x, more like 1.3x)

Does that include the cost of parts? One of the issues I had with sourcing prototype PCBA's in the US is parts are much more expensive (not 10x, but also not 1.3x).

Yep that includes parts.

If you are doing pool pcb manufacture - think about getting your design rules as a template in KiCAD (you could talk to KiCAD services corporation about how to do that) or Altium. This would help people designing to avoid getting to a finished pcb then discovering that you have a rule about no route through pads or whatever.

I'm very confused by the 1.3x number.

I just had a board (PCB only, no PCB Assembly) made at JLCPCB for $62.91. That's 10 bare boards and a stencil, including shipping and tarrifs. This is a fairly simple 4 layer board, 50mm x 50mm.

I uploaded the same project to your site and I'm getting a quote for $620.26. That's after marking everything as DNP, so it's also just a bare board. No stencil I guess.

To be fair, the JLC board took two-ish weeks to get here. But even with the fastest JLC option (2-3 days) and fast shipping (2-4 days), I don't see how $620.26 is competitive. Am I misunderstanding?

Update: And holy moly. I just noticed the $620 quote is for "any origin", and if I want "USA only" it's $1,697.00!

This aligns with the difference I saw when comparing the two as well.

Looks interesting. As a US manufacturer/designer I will be keeping an eye on this closely.

Currently, all assembly is done in house (in the US) but bare PCBs typically are still made in CN. We used to produce everything overseas and just do the QA/test in the US but during the chip shortage I ended up setting up the production line to attempt to eliminate any possible shortages/tariffs.

It is a difficult struggle manufacturing commercial products in the US (doubly so with an openhardware project) since the final cost is the major blocker but I decided it was worth it for many reasons. Big issue though is knowing that even if I pay someone 2x the going rate for an employee it still will not be a living wage. Not sure the fix there. I see you are planning to lean heavily on automation/AI for this, will be watching to see how it all progresses.

There are still some major blockers in the US. Commercial/Industrial real estate being a big one. Costs are not going down...even if employee count is minimized.

I wish nothing but the best for the project.

It’s incredible that you set up an in-house PCBA pipeline. I’m curious about what that looks like, and what you are building/manufacturing, if you don’t mind sharing!

I run some used Manncorp/Autotronik equipment. Pnp, oven, bunch of hand tools and such for rework (Metcal irons). If I didn't have this I would likely build a line using an openpnp based machine.

Making boards for the Smoothieware/Smoothieboard project. [1]

Mostly small SMT stuff on there. 0402, BGA, etc.

[1]https://github.com/Smoothieware/Smoothieboard2

> Big issue though is knowing that even if I pay someone 2x the going rate for an employee it still will not be a living wage.

Being mindful of wages is great, but eventually you have to accept that creating a job at a less than ideal wage is better than not creating any job at all. If the pay is not enough then you’ll get the signal through being unable to hire because workers are taking better paying jobs.

An unintuitive feature of the job market is that creating more low paying jobs actually puts upward pressure on wages. Ideally the low end of the job market should be saturated with job opportunities, which creates a situation where employers have to compete with each other to raise wages to find and retain employees, which means pay goes up for everyone.

So don’t let worries about not being able to pay as much as you’d like get in the way of paying anyone at all. The alternative (less jobs, more outsourcing) is worse in every way.

> Being mindful of wages is great, but eventually you have to accept that creating a job at a less than ideal wage is better than not creating any job at all.

For the employee, maybe. For the employer, it depends on how much time/money you have to put into training and what turnover is. Paying non-living wages leads to high(er) turnover because people will leave for anything better.

Right. That’s exactly what pushes wages up. Employers have to find the wage that retains employees while still being profitable.

Money is not unlimited though so “just pay everyone a living wage” isn’t a real solution. If you can’t afford to pay ideal “living wage” (which is an undefined target that keeps moving depending on who you ask) then your options are to either not create the job at all, or outsource the work.

So therefore, creating a job at any wage is better for your economy than not creating the job at all.

The problem is almost entirely that housing is too expensive.

"Living wage" is an awful term because it intrinsically holds employers responsible for real estate costs, which are strongly correlated with higher pay (read: as employees get paid more, housing costs rise to match it).

$20 an hour is not awful pay when you can rent for $600/mo. So the actual fix is to just build more housing, and it will bring back the viability of all these disappearing jobs.

Employers are free to use their political capital to push against bad behaviour by landlords and NIMBYs, but they traditionally rally behind politics that favors both of those groups.

They sure have a lot of that capital.

https://www.aboutamazon.com/impact/community/housing-equity

Employers used to just build housing for their employees. While in some cases it lead to questionably practices, it almost seems the lesser evil today.

I’ve read about this actually happening now in ski towns since otherwise their employees couldn’t afford to live within a 1 hour drive.

I will reply to this post to clarify (although I will be responding to several).

"Living wage" in my area is $40/hr. That is just to live, not thrive or gain.

Rent prices have gone insane [1], which in turn have drove up COGS. Since COGS have gone up the real estate investors have raised their prices on rents/housing to make up for the increase. The feedback loop has gone on too long...I am concerned the only option is collapse and for a lot of investors to lose money. This will feedback into the system even more...it will not benefit either the renter or the investor. As they say..."the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent".

I run a very small company that is largely bootstrapped. I fix all my own machines, do my own setup, move my own equipment. Personally, I work on every step from design through packaging (janitor>CEO). There is not enough money to pay a living wage for others...so I end up doing everything myself. 70hr weeks are not uncommon. (I also cook my own meals, fix my own car and bake my own bread...otherwise I would not make it)

If you have not been a renter for the last 10 years you may not have noticed. Building more is not helping since the only things being built are done so they can set them to the new "normal" price. It is to the point where they consider an "affordable home" as $400k (in my area they literally named this development as "Miracle on Britton"). Meanwhile the average renter makes <$40k/year.

I have not been outsourcing more due to this. Just working harder myself...but even so I barely get by. 5 years ago I gave up the hope of ever buying in this area [2], currently I am just working to stay here long enough to take care of family. If I did not have that I would be long gone.

Doing what I can to bring back manufacturing to the area, but I am a small fish working mostly in Opensource Hardware. If the project starts making money again very likely it will be cloned to the point where there will be no way to make profit (already happened once).

[1] https://www.zillow.com/rental-manager/market-trends/coeur-d-... [2] https://www.zillow.com/home-values/136166/coeur-dalene-id/

So then why open source it? People are cheap, and if I can get a knock off version of your thing for a tenth of the price, why would I support you? The prisoner's dilemma encourages me to defect. I've got my own bills to pay, mouths to feed. Me being shortsighted and an asshole doesn't help you pay your bills and feed your mouths. I pay the Adafruit premium when I can because they've done so much good, but I can't help but also know that I could save money and go elsewhere.

One nice aspect of automation is that we are able to pay people well due to the leverage. I'm proud of the fact we've been able to create a lot of good well paying high tech jobs in an area that really didn't have many.

> Big issue though is knowing that even if I pay someone 2x the going rate for an employee it still will not be a living wage. Not sure the fix there.

The fix is you will just have to buy American and pay higher prices for higher "living wages". There's no way around it besides taxes or tariffs on foreign goods to equalize the wage/price difference (which does have some down sides).

I buy American and western-made products as much as possible, and I pay higher prices (assuming high quality) for those higher wages. If you want low cost, you can't by definition support "living wages".

There's no "oh if only the CEO makes less" way around it either. Labor is simply more expensive in the west and will remain so and you can vote with your wallet, as I do, or you can pay people less than living wages.

How many people are willing to pay more for America/Western-made products? How many are able to correctly know which companies are honest, and which are finding loopholes (e.g. bringing in underpaid temporary workers from abroad, finding the bare minimum for a product to be qualified as "Made in X", writing "Designed in America").

And how many people will be willing to pay a premium when the locally made products are worse quality than foreign products? It's happening right now with Chinese consumer goods (e.g. robotic vacuum cleaners), EVs, etc. Eventually there's a high possibility you won't be able to buy anything in the product category you want.

> How many people are willing to pay more for America/Western-made products?

No clue, but there are millions. Just depends on the product.

Here are two examples. One made in France, the other in America:

[1] https://www.debuyer-usa.com

[2] https://smithey.com

One of those pans is made in France (western) the other is made here in the US. The quality of the US pans are a bit better which is part of why they command the higher prices. But you can also buy a pan from Wal-Mart for 1/10 or 1/5th the cost. But that's up to you. You can support higher wages or you don't have to if you don't want to.

> And how many people will be willing to pay a premium when the locally made products are worse quality than foreign products?

Why are you assuming the American and locally made products are worse than foreign products? Sometimes they are, sometimes they aren't.

> Eventually there's a high possibility you won't be able to buy anything in the product category you want.

Well for a lot of these we can just do without, but those are the kinds of things you have to figure out if you want "living wages". Wages are higher in the west so we will automate things to keep some prices low/lower and we'll just pay higher costs to support the living wages. Or we won't and then we won't have living wages. You can do things like try to raise the minimum wage or w/e but then you're just making American/western products less competitive with the cheaper foreign products. Then you'll have to implement tariffs and agree with Trump there in order to offset the wage differences.

My personal limit is 2x the Chinese prices but in reality the prices end up being 4-5x more.

The way around it is not having to pay people wages at all which I hope American manufacturers are trying to do as much as possible. They already have totally dark factories in China and if we want to bring manufacturing back we will have to do it as well.

If the wage difference is what is stopping you, then you aren't really trying to compete. There will always be a shithole country with dirt-cheap wages where companies can get stuff made with virtually-unlimited manual labor. Unless you are going to turn the US into a country with third-world living standards, you won't be able to compete with that, so don't even bother trying. Still want to compete on price rather than quality, speed, or services? Automate everything and make wages irrelevant.

China already figured this out, mind you. Their wages have been exploding as the country has developed, and due to their horrible one-child policy they are facing a giant population cliff. They have been pushing very hard to switch their factories from cheap labor to automation, and those dirt-cheap Chinese EVs our Western politicians are working so hard to block in order to keep the horribly outdated Western car manufacturers alive are the direct result of that.

Thanks! Best of luck with your project also!

I recently went through the exercise of asking one of the Chinese manufacturers how much it would cost to build me a board (a bit pirate adapter board for ESP3 that does all the voltage conversions to the GPIO pins so you don't burn something out). Board layout & BOM already exist on github. They do 5 boards minimum. Ok, so I figure I can sell the other 4 boards, probably not a big deal. Total's about $400. Then we get to the point where I'm about the pull the trigger and it goes to a page on tariffs and it looks like at least 45% + they want my SSN to give to CBP to collect the tariff. That's a hard "Nope" on sending my SSN to China. So I'm going to give this a look.

What company is asking for your SSN?

PCBWay, but I suspect all of the Chinese manufacturers have to do this now.

This is all very common practice. Has been for at least a decade. Some companies require this info for them to purchase from you as well.

This is one of the benefits of being a company. You use the tax ID instead of your social security number.

I've never had to provide an EIN or SSN when using DDP shipping, which is what you should be using unless you have a huge order.

I typically use DHL which has my EIN in my account. This has been true since at least 2016. They do not deliver unless you give the info and pay the fees.

Most of my international customers who order bulk require my EIN (and theirs) to be on every invoice.

Nothing new here... I suspect if there is any change it is due to the de minimus being removed. There was major fraud happening in this area...it is a shame it is gone though since I was hoping to be able to order small things without major costs.

> I suspect if there is any change it is due to the de minimus being removed.

Yep, I'm sure that's what's causing this. Prior to that you didn't need to worry if it was under like $700, IIRC.

I've ordered hundreds of things from JLC over the last decade. Both bare boards and assembled boards based on my own designs that I uploaded, BOMs i provided, and sometimes even special parts I had shipped to them. All ordered boards arrived to me just fine over their cheap shipping (name varied often, last i recall was "direct standard line") and over DHL, and precisely zero times was I asked for my SSN.

That's been my experience. I've never been asked for a SSN, and I wouldn't give one if I had been. Who types their SSN into foreign websites?

We've had a few batches of mostly assembled (minus through hole parts) prototype boards made with y'all recently, pretty stoked how quick it is. Plus no tarrifs vs the last PCBway order.

Curious, why are surface mount USB-C connectors not able to be done as part of the surface mount components (treated as a through hole I think)? Too fiddly?

Glad you had a good experience! Right now hybrid parts with SMT and through hole kick you out of the Grid Proto offer (can still order but more expensive) but we are working on fully automating them and they should be included soon.

Andrew, congrats on the launch! Great to see another scaled manufacturer and assembly line here in Massachusetts. I helped scale another startup with personalized for 3D prints for orthodontic braces (https://lf.co/blog/deloitte-fast500-2024), so feel to reach out to exchange tips since the generic mass manufacturing world is not well suited for this new world of “one size fits one” at a global scale.

Also, one question to pick your team’s brain: What’s your team’s AI PCB workflow and design tips to work with your production line? Any specific tips for ESP32-related integrations?

Thanks, that sounds like an interesting project! We are starting to see a few AI designed boards flow in and we're working on some guidelines, should be coming soon!

Adding to the litany of feedback: your BOM parser and manager is a source of pain. For a few BOM items it's fine, but for 50+ with 500+ placements there it's a heavy human lift with a lot of human error that is ripe for automation. Also, DNP interpretation are large hazard for silent failures. The spreadsheet is gospel.

Yeah it’s not great right now, big improvements coming, thanks for the feedback!

Business 101, page 1, line 1:

"Never put any friction between your customer and giving you money"

Dude, absolutely get rid of the requirement to make an account to get a quote. Understandable(ish) to need one to check-out, but hell "Check-out as guest" was probably one of the most profitable innovations in e-commerce ever.

A longer list of accounts is not worth more than a longer list of orders.

100%. Let people play and —most importantly— invest time and effort in the platform without friction.

Most of these work have real person to look and validate the cost. Doing that without account would be too little friction and overwhelm the team.

Right and they already said they have a massive backlog and are trying to increase by 500%.

Yeah mostly we just haven't got around to it as the burning fire is always increasing capacity vs demand. Defo agree we should not require login though!

Most of the ones (for cnc and sheet metal at least) I’ve used do an estimate while you poke around and select options and then you send it for a final validation and quote.

For PCB quotes yes, but this kind of thing can be gamed by competitors. I think this is why there isn't great price info for many brick and mortar and online shops now..

> but this kind of thing can be gamed by competitors

What's preventing a competitor from creating an account?

Which is more important? Blocking competitors from gaming your price quotes, or making the buying experience instantly better for every single customer and potential customer?

I was interested and hit the friction twice, after making an account, It wouldn't accept eagle files or just the raw gerbers. I know it's older but even sparkfun and adafruit designs are in this format.

I hesitated to even get a quote when it said I have to upload my schematic and pcb source. Their legal terms offer very little protection or reassurances that they will protect my IP. Giving them source files is was more risky than gerbers to me.

It's industry standard to accept gerbers and BOMs. Now that I've reviewed their legal agreements, using them is a hard no right now.

I got stuck at make an account and didn't progress farther. am i hearing right they don't accept industry standard gerber files?

For years, I've said that if there's a "call for quote" where I expect an "add to cart", I'm gone, instantly. I will buy somewhere else.

Now there's a login before I can even figure out if it's a quote or a cart.

Byeeee.

Since you have been building for years you must be aware of how tariffs affect the viability. how would a reduction to zero affect the project?

Not viability but tariffs do swing in our favour, it’s a tailwind for sure.

Hi. I'm a little confused about how many companies are under your umbrella. Is CircuitLabs the parent company for The Grid and all these other companies on this page? https://www.circuithub.com/case-studies

Exciting! Will quote an upcoming spin with y'all. I've worked with Lightspeed in Haverhill, MA for SMT assembly in the past and loved picking up boards in person. I grew up in "flyover country" and having access to local board houses never cease to amaze me :)

Hey,

Are you interested in partnerships? I'm running pcbjam.com (web port of KiCad with collab, sharing, git, AI etc.) and I'm looking for a partner to do what EasyEDA is to JLC. Where can I find you?

Are you considering any in-house fab capabilities? Are you considering accepting consigned fabbed boards?

Have you given any thought to hypothetically '3D printing' functional electronics, or is that still in sci-fi territory?

GERBER is the standard. Why won't you accept it?

What's the refinement process been like over the last five years? Many small problems or a few larger ones?

Are you manufacturing in the UK as well? Saw on your site you are hiring mechanical engineers here.

Thanks for taking feedback here.

My feedback: until the moment I click the "order" button, do not require me to log in. If "Checkout As Guest" can possibly be sufficient, at least for the "Grid Proto" tier, then do that.

You have a digital payment instrument for the order regardless of login. That should be sufficient for whatever legal obligations exist, real or imagined, so have the courage to make that policy despite the pushback.

I'd love to see you successful, so wanted to comment:

The app feels very vibe-coded, and gives impression it's not well tested and polished for a new user/project.

I appreciate PCBs aren't the usual the consumer-level type of user, but I felt confused by a lot compared to JLCPCB. Hope that helps.

How automated is your process. If it is the vast majority of it then why can’t you price match China. Are there other factors besides labor that causes the higher prices?

How much of a concern are environmental regulations?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com