Introducing Parts Consignment for PCB Manufacturing

At MacroFab, we understand that for certain types of projects you will need to have more control over your materials and how they’re consumed. You may want to use a proprietary part that’s unavailable on the market, or perhaps you already have a large inventory of exotic or expensive parts that you would like to use for your next manufacturing run.

We are pleased to announce a new feature that gives you more flexibility in choosing the parts that you want to use for your PCBs.

Material Parts Consignment in the MacroFab Platform

With our latest platform update, you can now consign your parts to us as part of the BOM management process. When selecting the parts that you want to populate on your board, you can choose between three options:

• MacroFab will source House Parts or Distributor Parts on your behalf;
• You will consign parts to MacroFab for this order by shipping them yourself;
• You will consume parts from your inventory held on-site using our Inventory Management Service.

Choosing the source for your materials

If you consign a part with a known part number, we’ll detect the number of pins and the mounting type and calculate labor pricing. If, on the other hand, you search for a part number that is not available on the market, you will be presented with the option to consign the part. We then ask that you give us only the most basic information that we need to figure out how to calculate labor costs for the consigned part.

Consigning parts with custom MPNs

Defining attributes for consigned parts

Getting Your Parts to Us

After placing your order and defining the details of the shipment you will be sending to MacroFab, you can simply drop your parts in the mail. When we receive them, we’ll perform an audit to check the quantities, tag them, and store them in our secure inventory facility until your PCBs are ready for manufacture. Once the assembly of your PCBs is complete, any parts that were not used during the manufacturing process will be returned to you along with your completed PCBs.

Tell us what you think about this new feature. Shoot us a tweet @macrofab. If you have any questions, feature requests, or feedback, don’t hesitate to let us know by emailing us at support@macrofab.com.