Hi All We recently were fortunate enough to receive an order of 1000 units from a preferred customer. Most of our previous orders were between 10 and 50 units so the request for prices on a 1000 pieces of the various components has taken our suppliers rather by surprise. Herein lies my biggest surprise (PCB/PWB). All prices are for individual pcbs in South African Rands on a QTY 1000 PCB-A Full length 311mm by 98mm 6 layer gold flash finish supplier1 R95.00 Tooling R5375.00 supplier 2 R239.00 Tooling R1665.00 supplier 3 R92.00 Tooling R3720.00 Supplier4 R99.00 Tooling R4340.00 Supplier5 R280.00 Tooling 4060.00 PCB-B 14 layer 5 thou track and gap with 20 thou via (198mm x 80mm) supplier1 R130.00 Tooling R24000.00 supplier 2 R425.00 Tooling R13000.00 supplier 3 R280.00 Tooling R5300.00 Supplier4 R57.00 Tooling R9300.00 The drawing on these pcbs state manufactured to IPC A 600 class 2 specifications. My query, why is there such a huge difference between the prices, sadly these pcbs cannot be manufactured locally therefore needs to be sent off shore. without having any previous experience on high volume purchasing what protects me from being ripped off. Is there too much of top and bottom end pricing what should the levelling pricing be!! Any inputs Billy Bharath "I'm not afraid of death. It's just that I don't want to be there when it happens." Cad Technologist PRISM e-mail [log in to unmask] Mobile 084-678-5348 Voice mail (27) 31-267-5510 (w) (27) 31- 578-5348 (h) Fax (27) 31- 267-5535 Snail mail P.O. Box 1434 Wandsbeck 3631 South Africa This mail and/or its attachments are covered by Disclaimer found at link below http://www.prism.co.za/main.asp?ID=710&rootitemid=1 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- DesignerCouncil Mail List provided as a free service by IPC using LISTSERV 1.8d To unsubscribe, send a message to [log in to unmask] with following text in the BODY (NOT the subject field): SIGNOFF DesignerCouncil. To temporarily stop/(restart) delivery of DesignerCouncil send: SET DesignerCouncil NOMAIL/(MAIL) Search previous postings at: www.ipc.org > On-Line Resources & Databases > E-mail Archives Please visit IPC web site http://www.ipc.org/contentpage.asp?Pageid=4.3.16 for additional information, or contact Keach Sasamori at [log in to unmask] or 847-615-7100 ext.2815 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------