Made in the USA but difficulty sourcing parts(advice?)

I'm in the R&D phase on several products, hopefully reaching first production run in time for a spring release. Most of the products are being entirely fabricated in-house from raw materials. The problem is, my partner and I (and some employee/contractors we have) have decided that we want to run ENTIRELY Made in the USA, all products. We realize that it may eat a bit into profit margins, but that's less of a concern.

The problem I'm having is in finding a US made power source. I can't say what it's for yet, but the specs are:

universal AC input (100-240v) 18-24VDC output, 4-5A and relatively small (small enough to fit inside half a carton of cigarettes)

Every single source but one I've contacted has been China made, which is absolutely out, the odd one out was made in Thailand. Ultimately, we'll probably wind up building our own, or having them made once we get up to speed and can handle the volume purchases required to have them made. For now, I need a source for a year or so.

So this is part a request for sources, I'm sure some automation or other products y'all work on require small DC power sources, and part a request for advice.

I refuse to use Chinese components, but if you had trouble sourcing US made parts, would you feel comfortable using parts from another country and indicating that? 'Made in USA some parts from Germany' or something of the like? Or would you skip the Made in USA on that product, or what would you do?

Fit a power input socket to the gizmo and supply a foreign made power supply to go with it. There must be a printer psu or similar going dirt cheap due to economies of scale.

It will still be an American made gizmo and I very much doubt that any customers will have a hissy fit over the psu being foreign.

SOLA!

Though where they make their products? I know not.

Part of the problem is one of the design constraints is no wall-wart. The whole thing has to be the enclosure and a cord, so it needs to be built in, else I'd consider sticking a 'mystery meat' PS in the box

I'll call SOLA and see what they have and where it originated.

What are y'alls thoughts on the other part, how would you feel about non-Asian components, how would that be perceived?

Trip

Contact
OEM Power Supplies -

and tell them your requirements. There are a couple other distributors that are power supply specialists. That is probably the fastest way to get what you need.

ArkTinkerer

Trip59 said:

I'm in the R&D phase on several products....................


Every single source but one I've contacted has been China made, which is absolutely out, the odd one out was made in Thailand. Ultimately, we'll probably wind up building our own, or having them made once we get up to speed and can handle the volume purchases required to have them made. For now, I need a source for a year or so.

So this is part a request for sources, I'm sure some automation or other products y'all work on require small DC power sources, and part a request for advice.

I refuse to use Chinese components, but if you had trouble sourcing US made parts, would you feel comfortable using parts from another country and indicating that? 'Made in USA some parts from Germany' or something of the like? Or would you skip the Made in USA on that product, or what would you do?

Click to expand...

I admire your intent to BUY AMERICAN.... very noble....BUT...
How about keeping track your project using MADE in USA parts and another list of made elsewhere parts...Then when your all done and your adding up the totals and add in your assembly time etc...etc's and come to the final selling price... Give us a looksee at the diffferance??? (we dont realy need to know what it is your buying, or what the gizmo does when it's finished )

ARKTinkerer said:

Contact
OEM Power Supplies -

and tell them your requirements. There are a couple other distributors that are power supply specialists. That is probably the fastest way to get what you need.

Spoke with them this morning, all USA made, got a short list of 'off the shelf' that will work as well as info for having a circuit designed and built. MUCH appreciated!

ArkTinkerer

Click to expand...

Gary E said:

I admire your intent to BUY AMERICAN.... very noble....BUT...
How about keeping track your project using MADE in USA parts and another list of made elsewhere parts...Then when your all done and your adding up the totals and add in your assembly time etc...etc's and come to the final selling price... Give us a looksee at the diffferance??? (we dont realy need to know what it is your buying, or what the gizmo does when it's finished )

Click to expand...

I'm estimating, from the numbers I've seen so far, that this one product line will wind up eating into the profit margin about 20-25% or so on the low end product (several models, the higher end have larger margins)

Of course, I could go all Chinese parts and increase the profit margin, but I'd rather take the loss and be able to state Made in USA proudly. Essentially, I'd rather make less, but keep it all here. It may seem counter-intuitive and opposite of normal capitalist tendancies, but I'm placing the quality and origin over the bottom line. I may be naive, but I'm hoping that will help distinguish the product; while it may be better than most, it's far from unique, so something has to set it apart at first glance.

Even if you make the supply unit your selves, are you really going to be able to source all or at least mostly USA manufactured components for it? Seams a bit darft to go to such lengths if it ends up containing 99% foreign components.

adama said:

Even if you make the supply unit your selves, are you really going to be able to source all or at least mostly USA manufactured components for it? Seams a bit darft to go to such lengths if it ends up containing 99% foreign components.

Click to expand...

Don't know if I'd go so far as daft, a though perhaps a bit. There ARE plenty of US made semiconductors and components... just not as easy to find.

Trip

We're doing a similar thing making a short run of entirely Made in USA cell phone car chargers... That came about after I had to buy three in one week...

Sometimes you have to do what's right, because... well, screw China.

Are you having them made or making them? We took a step backwards the other night and have since started developing our own power circuit rather than sourcing one. It may be a bit more work, but we'll be able to choose every part and manage cost at the same time.

As it stands now, still in planning stages, two of us are partnering on the project with one employee and several contracts (expanding as needed). The two things my partner and I building on is that everything has to be US (though some European components may factor in if US sources are unavailable, no Asia though) and production will be limited to what we can turn out. In other-words, we're not looking to expand as big as we can, we're looking to put out the best product we can while maintaining full control. If we can sell 1000 but we can only make 500, then we sell 500. We've seen too many good names fall once things grew beyond the original crew and were outsourced.

All we need is 5vdc from 12 vdc, so we are doing everything ourselves, except having the boards made in Chicago... They'll have over/under current protection, reverse current protection, and short circuit protection. There are tons of schematics online to show you how to do things... with what's available online and my EE201 course from a few years ago, it took me about four hours to put together a workable schematic...

I'm just blowing out a case of 6061 for them... not going to really make any money, just peddling them to family and friends, etc. ...unless they catch on ;-)


A workable AC/DC adapter, especially one that fits in a small package might be harder to throw together...

What are you doing for cooling? I would assume that physical dimensions won't be as big a nightmare in your project as compared to putting those things in that package and having them run for any period of time...

Especially on ANY sort of budget... :-S Best of luck! If you get completely stumped give me a holler, my business partner is pretty savvy when he needs to be...




-Parker

I did some little devices like the 5v-12v unit.
I packaged them in cheap aluminum square tube. the power devices were held against the inside with pieces of leaf spring and the ends were potted with epoxy. This worked REALLY well. I would have potted the whole thing but I was worried about blocking the electrolytic cap's vents.

Parkerbender said:

All we need is 5vdc from 12 vdc, so we are doing everything ourselves, except having the boards made in Chicago... They'll have over/under current protection, reverse current protection, and short circuit protection. There are tons of schematics online to show you how to do things... with what's available online and my EE201 course from a few years ago, it took me about four hours to put together a workable schematic...

I'm just blowing out a case of 6061 for them... not going to really make any money, just peddling them to family and friends, etc. ...unless they catch on ;-)


A workable AC/DC adapter, especially one that fits in a small package might be harder to throw together...

What are you doing for cooling? I would assume that physical dimensions won't be as big a nightmare in your project as compared to putting those things in that package and having them run for any period of time...

Especially on ANY sort of budget... :-S Best of luck! If you get completely stumped give me a holler, my business partner is pretty savvy when he needs to be...

-Parker

Click to expand...

I'm working off some courses from way back, as well as having grown up around it; dad did it for decades, before and after the USAF trained him to do it (Viet-Nam) He's a long time out of the game, but the guy I have doing most of the work has a 30+ year history with some pretty serious schooling. He's been out of that segment for a few years but is getting back up to speed.

I've found a handful of schematics out there and we're trying to graft several modules together to accommodate all the requirements, then add our circuit and controls to that, so I see much testing.

That said, the sources everyone provided were fruitful to a point, the cost for off the shelf units, US made, is a bit high until we get to a point where we're having them done for us in large volume, and as I mentioned, we're not planning to get to that point.

I believe the decision has been made to do it all in-house, though it's not in stone if I find a supplier...

cooling will depend on the test results once we have working prototypes. At this point, we're looking at using an aluminum enclosure base plate as a heat sink, and potentially potting over that to protect our design (and other practical reasons) Should the test results yield higher temps than that will allow, an alternate plan includes a small fan, though I'm hoping that won't be necessary as that introduces environmental factors and another point of failure.

Miguels244 said:

I did some little devices like the 5v-12v unit.
I packaged them in cheap aluminum square tube. the power devices were held against the inside with pieces of leaf spring and the ends were potted with epoxy. This worked REALLY well. I would have potted the whole thing but I was worried about blocking the electrolytic cap's vents.

Click to expand...

We're hopeful we can get down to that size in time, using 1x4 though half a carton of kings is the primary target. The potting, as with yours, will depend on final configuration, as well as test results. We've had part of a prototype running for a week now and it's barely over body temp, so the outlook is positive.



Kind of an ironic note, but I received an e-mail from China today. They must have pulled my address from an industry website somewhere. The prices they were offering me almost made me blow my coffee on the screen. They're selling for less than I can buy parts for. Well, as grandpa used to say 'fk them and the horse they rode in on' I want nothing to do with them other than to sell the same products, US made, and laugh.

There will always be folks buying lathes and tooling from HF, but at the same time, there's a market segment that has no trouble dropping the $$ for real, quality, equipment. Same in the industry I'm targeting and I'm not looking for money from the folks who shop by price tag.

how about UL testing? big advantage of buying a wall wart is that the UL issue is taken care of. I shopped 500ma wall warts last year and found them for as little as one dollar in China, better ones 1.65. a different project, 200 ma, with the universal plug for like 4 bucks but those are only bought 200 at a time!

Trip59 said:

There ARE plenty of US made semiconductors and components... just not as easy to find.

Trip

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not the type of mundane little parts you'll be using in a power supply.

according to the letter of the law there is no way any electronic device can carry the "made in USA" label anymore. "assembled in USA" is as close as you can get.

as Zagnut says, all your going to be doing is assembling asian components. In my previous post I mentioned that had had some experience with these items and this sourcing issue came up as it often does. Anyways, that 1.65 wall wart could easily become a 30 dollar wall wart made up of the same components but with a domestic enclosure, and pcb and assembly. On the other hand, the Chinese have these worked out pretty well, just about every electric product made uses these things, the quantities are enourmous, they are good at customization and the reliability does not seem to be an issue. The one we used had a charger circuit built into it and we tested it carefully and it was pretty good in all respects. All for a buck 65!

ZAGNUT said:

not the type of mundane little parts you'll be using in a power supply.

according to the letter of the law there is no way any electronic device can carry the "made in USA" label anymore. "assembled in USA" is as close as you can get.

Click to expand...

Going to do my damndest to try... I have a handful of companies listed as US manufacturers of those mundane little parts... we'll see how it goes.

surplusjohn said:

as Zagnut says, all your going to be doing is assembling asian components. In my previous post I mentioned that had had some experience with these items and this sourcing issue came up as it often does. Anyways, that 1.65 wall wart could easily become a 30 dollar wall wart made up of the same components but with a domestic enclosure, and pcb and assembly. On the other hand, the Chinese have these worked out pretty well, just about every electric product made uses these things, the quantities are enourmous, they are good at customization and the reliability does not seem to be an issue. The one we used had a charger circuit built into it and we tested it carefully and it was pretty good in all respects. All for a buck 65!

Click to expand...

Well, I think I mentioned it earlier, but if I fail to find US suppliers for the components, we discussed it and second up would be German or European imports, third would be from Japan. If China is the only option, I won't make the damn things, there has to be a way to cut them out of the loop.

Wall warts won't work or would be prohibitively expensive based on a number of criteria, universal AC input being one, the large size being the other.

one approach you might take is to list a wanted on Alibaba for a internal power supply with X % US content. 99% of alibaba is Chinese but US companies do advertize and respond to wanteds. Alibaba.com = Thomas Registry for the 21st century [unfortunately] Too bad TR wasnt ahead of the curve like they could of been. In 97 my G-F's brother was running a program for TR to establish a web based directory and was let go and the project canned because new owners of TR felt that the web based directory would canabalize the paper directory, DUH!