Electronics lane
Same-day PCB assembly and rework
You have a board, it does not work, and the fab house that built it is three weeks and eleven time zones away. That…
$200 to $400 per board
01
What you get
Joint characterization reports, $1,500 to $3,000. Torque against speed, thermal derating under real duty cycle, and backlash measured rather than claimed. Published numbers you can design against.
The E-01 development kit at $2,995, built around actuators that have been through the dyno, so the numbers in the documentation are numbers from that unit.
Endurance running, because the interesting failures are the ones that appear at hour four hundred, not hour one.
Test rigs designed and built here when you need a fixture that does not exist.
02
What it replaces
Commercial actuator test stands are capital equipment priced like capital equipment. For a robotics team that needs to characterize eight candidate joints once, buying the stand is roughly a hundred times the cost of the answer.
There is no established third-party actuator characterization service in the United States. Teams either build the rig themselves, which is a month of engineering time aimed at the wrong problem, or they trust the datasheet.
03
How it works
Send the actuator and the duty cycle you actually intend to run. You get a written report with the curves, the raw data, and a plain statement of what the unit will not do.
The counter is not open yet. Prices are posted in advance and held at opening.
04
Rates
Posted before opening, not after. Build a full order on the rate board.
Actuator characterization report$1,500-3,000
E-01 development kit$2,995
CNC machining, fixtures, enclosures$75-125 per hour
Agent testbed access$500-1,000 per day
05
Common questions
What is in an actuator characterization report?
Torque against speed, thermal derating measured under the duty cycle you specify, backlash, and the raw data behind all of it. The report states what the unit will not do as plainly as what it will.
Why not just use the manufacturer datasheet?
Datasheets typically quote peak torque at a duty cycle nobody runs in production and leave thermal derating undefined. The gap between datasheet and bench is where robotics schedules go wrong.
Do you test actuators you did not supply?
Yes. Send the unit and the intended duty cycle. Characterization is priced at $1,500 to $3,000 per report regardless of where the actuator came from.
06
Other lanes
Silicon lane
Wire bonding and failure analysis
Between a university cleanroom you need badge access to enter and an OSAT that will not quote under a few thousand…
$30 to $80 per chip, decap from $75
Verify lane
EMC pre-compliance and environmental test
Failing a certified EMC chamber is expensive twice: once for the chamber day and again for the schedule. A pre-scan…
$400 to $600 per scan
Repair lane
Lab instrument repair and calibration
A dead incubator is not a hard engineering problem. It is a scheduling problem. The OEM wants six hundred dollars and…
$395 flat rate