FAQ’s

More about our accreditations

We work closely with specialist design consultants who have immense experience of enclosure design of every type. Many of the projects we undertake make good use of standard off the shelf enclosures. For low volume projects, these are considerably cheaper than bespoke mouldings. We will help select standard enclosures and design suitable machining for connectors, LEDs, and visual displays.

Field testing of our electronic designs is done by you. This is a vital part of the design process and is important for the best result. Small pre-production batches must be produced and thoroughly field tested. Field testing can throw up issues that were not foreseen and covered in the project specification. It is just part of the iterative nature of design. Fixing these design issues will be at additional cost if required.

We will assess the damaged units and recommend the appropriate remedial work. Unless specified otherwise in the project specification, failure of electronic units due to water ingress is not our liability. Electronics must be protected from adverse environments by suitable enclosures. Weather proofing electronics is a serious and demanding task. This aspect must be considered at the design stage, and we are happy to advise.

Projects are covered by our standard terms and conditions. This includes problems in the unlikely event of faulty components. We will examine units returned to us and report on our findings. We are not liable for failures caused by field conditions and customer misuse outside the agreed design specification.

Work is completed when you sign the project off. Whilst the bulk of development work is done at the front end of a project. Issues can arise after sign off which need resolving. We can cover this for you under a separate contract.

Projects work best for you when they’re managed in small and achievable stages. We ask you to make payments for each stage. This keeps them on track and ensures that problems are identified as early as possible. We do not move onto the next stage without your sign off on the preceding stage.

Every project stage must have an end point and your sign-off is a major milestone. Once a project is signed off, any further work will be under a new contract.

We would meet the cost over-run ourselves and achieve the specification agreed with you.

A project finishes when we produce a working sample that meets your project specification. After this sign-off. further support will be a seperate project unless agreed otherwise.

The electronic unit would be treated as a black box at this stage, and the inputs and outputs would be listed and defined. The specification can be lengthy and detailed if the project is well understood. Voltages, currents, waveforms, frequencies, tolerances, and operating temperature ranges must be specified amongst any number of requirements. We consider cost, size, environment, enclosures, connectors, communications, controls, power supplies, battery life, safety, manufacturability, test, servicing, repairs, and component availability for example. If you have limited electronic expertise, then you could start with a simple plain English description of what the electronics is required to do. This might lead on to a need a recommendation for a feasibility study. We can spend time doing research to assess whether your project is achievable. A feasibility study often results in a “proof of concept” working prototype of some sort.

Yes, we agree to maintain confidentiality for your project, and sign NDAs.  We can supply a standard form of NDA on request.

If you have a new angle, then the higher costs of low volume production associated with new products will be supported in the market place. Be aware of what is out there in the market already. Actual unit manufacturing costs may have to be 15% to 25% of the retail price to make the economics work. Higher costs may be profitable if you sell to clients directly. We can offer existing standard electronic modules available already that may suit your requirements. Production cost estimating is frequently a major part of the feasibility studies that we undertake.

It is normal for a project to take two or three spins before completion. We believe in producing more rather than less spins. Our hardware production costs are low, and each spin moves a project on substantially. Design is not a linear process. Quick and dirty first spins are an effective way to gain in depth understanding of the crux of a project. Electronic designs are very complex systems and it is not practical to “get it right first time”. Practice has proven that it is more effective to not to try to achieve a perfect first time design, and to bear in mind that this process improves the end product.