Seeed Fusion: The Best Bits of 2019

With only days left in the twenty-teens its time to turn over a new leaf and look back on an eventful year.

To say 2019 has been busy is an understatement. We set out to iron out those pesky bugs and pet-peeves of yours while bringing more services and great deals. Some of those monumental tasks have finally been ticked off and we hope you are reaping much of the benefits. Here are our best bits:

Service Updates and Improvements

If you haven’t noticed, the Seeed Fusion platform has been evolving a lot in the past year. And even now, we’re still flushing out updates. Now get tiered pricing for PCBA direct on the order form.

Tiered pricing for PCBA: Tiered pricing for PCBA so you can see at a glance the cost of common quantities and see how this affects the price per piece. 10 pieces, 50 or 100 pieces? No problem.

New PCB and PCBA production status updates: This one’s been in the works for a while now but now you can follow the status of your PCB as it trickles through production from drilling to plating to packing. For PCBA, find out when those parts are finally in and ready to go.

Order History and Cart PCBA Price Breakdown: Forgot how much the component costs were? Don’t worry, you can see the complete price breakdown for PCBA in your Order History and shopping cart just as it was when you added it.

Wire Transfer Payment Option: Whether you’ve gone over the credit limit or your uni or company requests TT, select the option directly at the checkout and just upload the bank confirmation to complete payment.

Suspended File Review Communication Platform: When you have an important order you don’t want it to be delayed because that e-mail went to the spam box. Now you can handle suspended file problems directly from your Order History (select orders only).

Free Assembly for 5 Pieces PCBA

In April, we did something a little crazy..

It came to our attention that many electronic enthusiasts and even professionals were hesitant when it came to outsourcing PCB assembly to a third party. One of the pills hardest to swallow was the price.

Why should you fork out a couple hundred dollars just to try a turnkey assembly service? What if it doesn’t work out?

So we let everyone try out our star service by slashing – well, pretty much everything. No set-up fees, no operation fee, heck no assembly fee either. Literally, just buy the materials and we’ll put them together for you.

While every user was limited to this mad offer just once, you guys were so enthusiastic about it that we got inundated with orders and unfortunately it meant we had to stop the event early and work on streamlining the PCBA process.

And.. we’re back

If you thought you’d lost your chance to try the PCB Assembly service at mad prices then fear not! We rebounded and came back stronger than before.

With an added safety, the Free Assembly offer is back and still available now. Just pay for materials and get PCB manufacture, parts procurement and assembly all-in-one service.

Upload your BOM and Gerber files to this special page to get started.

We know full well that soldering can be a right ol pain in the backside. But when you’ve run out of favors from your mates then the folks at Seeed have your back. And we’ve been constantly trying to find ways of making things cheaper and more accessible.

No Operation Fees

One of these ways was cutting Operation fees. Usually, operation fees can be a huge chunk of a PCBA order and depended mainly on the cost of components. But in terms of actual operations – it doesn’t really matter much if you buy a few or a few hundred of the same set of parts. So for orders over 100 pieces PCBA, we cut the operation fees entirely.

Check it out, it’s all built into the online quoting platform. Just change the PCBA quantity to over 100 pieces and watch the operation fees go kaput.

Expedite PCBA Service

While digging deep into the fibers of the Seeed Fusion PCBA service, we managed to connect some loose wires and come up with some great ideas. One of the most persistent problems with turnkey PCBA is the long lead time mainly due to the importing of parts.

While the Open Parts Libraries were essentially made for the purpose of shortening the lead time, there are still other local resources out there we can make use of. By picking all parts from local sources we can help shorten the lead time and provide an Expedited service.

Select the Expedited PCBA option just before adding the order to the cart for an extra speedy service. An operator will review your files to confirm if expediting is possible and then it’s full speed ahead. Get a quote now.

But that’s not all. If you’re paying extra for an expedited service then you expect the deadline to be met. In reality, the world of manufacturing, – especially for prototyping is rarely so kind. Footprint errors, missing data, incorrect MPNs and other blunders are the cause of hundreds of delays and trashed boards every year. Should you need to buy a part again – you could be waiting another 2 weeks.

This highlighted the necessity for another kind of data verification (not just the PCB manufacture review, it’s not in-depth enough).

PCB Assembly Design for Assembly (DFA) Review

“Hey, we’re Seeed, and we make a lot of our own products every year.” So why can’t we extend that expertise to Seeed Fusion? They’re not the same as PCB CAM engineers that just check if Gerber files fulfill a set of rules – they are fully qualified electrical engineers with shop floor experience and understand fully the product development cycle. So we thought perhaps they could lend their insight and resolve Seeed Fusion’s turnkey PCBA conundrums.

Everyone makes mistakes, but when it comes to meeting that critical deadline or maximizing yield you cannot afford to let mistakes sneak their way into the production stage. It is also disruptive to the entire production line too – so believe us when we say we don’t want delays as much as you.

So we put two and two together and came up with the Design for Assembly service. Have a Seeed engineer review and make sure everything in your BOM and Gerber files match, every little footprint, every dimension and then give their insight into other assembly complications or suggestions to improve yield.

And to show how important this service is in reducing complications, we’ve included it in the Expedited service for free, and for orders over $500, get $500 off the DFA review. Just make sure you select it at the checkout!

Seeed Fusion Kitting Service

We finally finished the online platform for the Seeed Fusion Kitting service. This brought together many features of Seeed Fusion’s one-stop-shop that were often done off the radar.

Ideal for ‘learn-to-solder’ kits, personalized development kits or crowd campaign fulfillment, the kitting service allows you to customize your own kit with your own printed materials, packaging and of course parts starting from just 5 pieces.

Check it out here.

You..

Last but not least, the best thing that could have ever happened to Seeed is you guys. Thank you for your enthusiasm and support in 2019 throughout the good and the bad, the tears and laughter. Some of the best highlights have to be meeting and working with you to bring ideas to life everywhere. We wish you all a smashing 2020 and we’re sure it will only bring more joy and prosperity.