Automatic LED Lighting Circuit Board Produced in the USA
Transistor night light PCB was made domestically to save money on tariffs and shipping.
For some time, I'd been considering making an automatic lighting fixture, where an LED comes on when it's dark. To finally accomplish this, my "Transistor Night Light" PCB measures light levels with a light-dependent resistor (LDR), activating an LED via a transistor when it's sufficiently dark. This supplies light only when it is needed, allowing its CR2032 battery (held by the PCB itself) to power it for weeks, maybe even months.
It's a neat design, but unless you've been living under a rock for the last few months, you know that there are new U.S. tariffs on goods made internationally, especially from China. This affects – among other things – quick-turn PCB manufacturing, making prototyping more expensive, even for us mere makers.
But maybe prototyping doesn't have to be more expensive. Spurred on by tariff and shipping costs, I turned to domestic supplier OSH Park for this job. They produced three high-quality PCBs at a rather staggering 85% cost savings (?) versus my potential order using a Chinese supplier.
Of course, there are some important caveats to this massive cost savings. First, my OSH Park order was for three PCBs versus the quoted 20 from China. Second, it took longer to receive the PCBs from the fab than (ironically) it would have from halfway around the world. More details are outlined in my full writeup, but the TL;DR version is: shop around and consider the monetary and other costs before you make a PCB purchase.
When all is said and done, I received a trio of very nice PCBs from OSH Park, roughly three weeks after my order. Of course, now that I have one working I am considering selling them as solder kits... 20 pieces and quicker delivery doesn't sound so bad. As with most engineering and business decisions, it's all about tradeoffs!