wafer.space Community - Packaging Company Considerations

I saw a post on CrowdSupply about the different packaging considerations that were evaluated. The design I'm targeting requires 100+ pins, so I can't go with the wire-bonded package. Does anyone have resources on companies that I could get in touch with to get some early quotes? I've taped out through my university, which has had lots of resources, but this is the first one solo, so I don't have much direction on where to look. I'm trying to get a rough price estimate before the design is sent off. Any help is greatly appriciated!

What qty ?

19:31

It's a different thing to package 10 samples vs all 1000 dies.

19:34

This was for QFN64 but some prices I got were : Low qty (~10) : 400 EUR setup + 150 EUR per piece Larger qty (>=100) : 4kEUR setup + 15 eur per piece. That's a ballpartk of course. Might be a bit higher with more pins.

50-100 to start, but the ability to repackage later is ideal. It sounds like the upfront setup might be better. (edited)

That’s pretty steep for low qty. After just two or three prototype runs, it’d be more economical to get your own wire bonder and do DIY COB. (edited)

Did you find a source for not horribly expensive wire bonders ?

Going by what others got theirs for

@Tholin I'd be interested in that if you have some more resources.

Another datapoint - Two years ago I asked Integra for a quote for 250 QFN-64 packaging, they quoted me $6k.

@urish Wow, that's nearly the cost of the tapeout itself! I knew custom packaging was going to be expensive, but this is much higher than I thought.

What I learnt is that this industry is optimized for mass production, not for prototyping

19:04

We hope that projects like wafer.space and Tiny Tapeout will make it worthwhile for companies to fill the gap for affordable low-volume packaging solutions

1

Makes sense. It seems like you bite the bullet with extremly low volume (10-30) which is typical for MPW runs, but it's ok since it's such a low volume. Sounds like 1000 chips doesn't really have a place right now so I do hope this will disrupt the market!

@Trevor Peyton - My evaluation was that packaging 10 to 100 dies costs more than the 1,000 parts using COB.

@Tim 'mithro' Ansell That's what I'm finding out. I am going to make some changes and try to fit my design into the proposed wirebond COB!

@Trevor Peyton - FYI the costing around COB is around 1-2 cent per wire bond and like 20-30 cent per die + costs of PCB

04:04

@Trevor Peyton - I'd be open trying to figure out a higher I/O count (>100 pins) option in the future, but that probably is going to be above the $1.50 USD per part currently being offered.

@Tim 'mithro' Ansell Heard. More pins is great but I can understand the cost tradeoff. $1.50 per part is pretty unbeatable.

Like a high pin count $3 USD option could probably work.

~$3,000 for 1000 chips is still incredible, especially when compared to some of the prices thrown out above.

@Trevor Peyton - The hope is eventually it'll just be a standard option as part of PCBA at places like PCBWay / Seeed / JLC PCB / your favorite PCBA house.

@Tim 'mithro' Ansell That would be amazing, I hope we can get there!