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I have a product that I'm trying to bring to market. For prototype I pulled a camera PCB from an old webcam. It so happens that because my volume of production is low it is actually three times cheaper to buy brand new webcams and pull the PCB and camera off it.

Could I get into trouble for doing this? I will be doing this for market testing and pre production examples (about 100) and if successful I'll get them manufactured myself.

Mridul
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    I really hope - you mean for prototypes, not for serial production? – Eugene Sh. Apr 20 '21 at 18:07
  • It is for the stage between prototyping and production. trying to see if people buy it and get their feedback. But I mean to keep the profits – Mridul Apr 20 '21 at 18:09
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    Selling a product from scavenged parts is most likely a bad idea. You should be providing some kind of warranty and/or quality assurance. But how can you do that if you use components that you have no idea about their quality/time of life and such? – Eugene Sh. Apr 20 '21 at 18:10
  • Probably more a question for the legal people but it does leave you without a leg to stand on if there are problems. You usually have some sort of recourse to the part manufacturer if you buy a component and it doesn't work but just imagine going to the webcam company and complaining that their product doesn't work when you rip it apart and put it into another circuit. – vir Apr 20 '21 at 18:11
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    Get in touch with the webcam maker If they will send you 100 pcbs or 100 webcams for oem use – tobalt Apr 20 '21 at 18:11
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    Good point; white-boxing could be an attractive option although that could be exactly what they're doing already! – vir Apr 20 '21 at 18:13
  • @tobalt would big companies entertain such small requests? I'm doing this on the side so I don't have a professional background here. I can try nevertheless – Mridul Apr 20 '21 at 18:22
  • @EugeneSh.I'll be offering replacements and let customers know that it is a beta product. My aim is not to trick consumers here – Mridul Apr 20 '21 at 18:26
  • There's "scavenging" in which you reclaim parts from junk, and there's modifying and reselling a new device. You seem to be modifying and reselling rather than reclaiming junk parts. – JRE Apr 20 '21 at 18:45
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    I doubt you can "get into trouble" legally for just that aspect of your production, provided you're using new units (not legal advice, btw). But it will be hard to price your units appropriately without knowing the cost in production quantity. – Spehro Pefhany Apr 21 '21 at 05:39
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    A cheaper option may be to just get a suitable camera module from Aliexpress or some similar site. There are plenty to choose from in the $0.5 - $5 price range. – KristoferA Apr 21 '21 at 06:33

3 Answers3

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For a prototype or the first beta units, it's a fine idea. Your time disassembling the units will eat in to your profitability.

Bad idea for production. Many cheap consumer products have a short lifespan, so you'll end up redesigning your product when you can't get the product. Plus, cheap products use the lowest quality electrolytic capacitors which fail at an early age (within a couple years), especially capacitors in switching supplies.

qrk
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Other things to keep in mind - aside from the age of the component, which may prove difficult to assess, and the degree and frequency of spec violations in the original circuit that affect wear; extraction and reinsertion will also stress the component. Components are rated for a soldering or reflow heat curve, but I doubt that most manufacturer ratings allow for that curve to be applied multiple times.

All of this to say: you're potentially making more problems than you solve, and so other than limited use in prototyping, this has more risk than I'd be willing to carry.

Reinderien
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when you design a product to be manufactured, you are not only creating a PCB with some parts on it which achieves some kind of function. You also create:

  1. a BOM with supplier part numbers, for procurement purposes.
  2. from the BOM you get costings which help you determine your business proposition
  3. some kind of method to test the product of QC purposes
  4. in some cases, approvals processes to allow you to legally access markets, which are based on the BOM etc

This is not really possible if you use non standard sources. So for anything more than proof-of-concept or early prototypes I think this is a case of a "short cut that takes twice as long". Eventually you will need to properly source your components and when you do so you might end up doing a bunch of redesign, which will hurt.

danmcb
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