I give up! Update to our assembly line

I give up! Update to our assembly line
Things have changed! I've decided to make some changes with my company and how we utilize our current assembly line
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MicroType Engineering strives to help businesses turn an idea into a physical product. Whether you are already established and seeking to branch out into a new product or working on an exciting new startup project, MTE can guide you along the way. MTE provides rapid prototyping, enabling you to quickly have a physical product in your hands to showcase and test. MTE offers a personalized approach, helping navigate the often confusing, and expensive path to manufacturing and selling a product.

[@MasonR13]

I am relatively new to the world of large scale SMT assembly but had the opportunity to get a 2 day SMT bootcamp course from An individual by the name of Phil Zarrow. The man is practically a legend in the world of electronic assembly and provided our organization with some very sound process optimization advice. He has a book titled Troubleshooting Electronic Assembly that contains a wealth of information on everything from screen printing to PNP equipment. I would highly recommend picking up a copy if you are ever looking for the SMT encyclopedia of process troubleshooting.

[@scottneels2628]

Man I really appreciate that! In so many ways. Glad you're looking after your health 1st.

[@ChiefBridgeFuser]

This is a great set of insights. It parallels what I've learned vicariously through a guy who does our boards on a Manncorp line. Lots and lots of tribal knowledge.

[@jimthannum7151]

This had to be an excruciating time for you, not just the issues with production, but the decisions you had to make for your own well being. I applaud you for the courage it took to make the decision you did, plus the courage it took to share such a personal experience online. I was fascinated by the clarity of your experience, and the lessons that it may be so helpful to others.

[@MicroTypeEngineering]

Thanks for the kind words! I'm so glad to hear that people can relate to the mental side of it.

[@FC-xr1yp]

Sad to hear that.

[@philpearce3248]

Yes I made it to the end and was glad that I did, your suggested future video's especially on a desk top Pic & Place sound very interesting. Best of luck for the future and getting a good nights sleep.

[@MicroTypeEngineering]

Glad you enjoyed it! Definitely moving up that series in the queue. I sleep like a baby these days :P

[@kitKat-by6kk]

i run a small protyping buisness - totally understand the pleasure of a "working physical thing" i.e a stuffed pcb coming out from the process, and the satifaction associated with that, compared to the slow slog of R & D. thanks for the honesty. I'l stick to manual PNP for now, for those 3-12 pcbs at a time, on a friends borrowed Ok inustries manual PNP. P.S. i find you can get that immediate dopamine hit/ satesfaction elsewhere from Carpentry, CNC milling, breadmaking!

[@tamas-ruszka]

It's sad when you have to give up something, at the same time it's always a good call if it's affecting you and just consuming mentally. The only, most important thing in life is your well being, you cannot buy health with money. (Yeah, I know, it's cheesy to say something so trivial, but it is still holding the thruth) And just realising that you need to change was a huge step already, a lot of people just unable to see and realise these issues until it's too late. If you look at the positive side, it was a huge experience gain, which obviously can be used in the future in many different areas. I would try to focus mainly on those things, just embracing all the gains and positive things and then move forward. (and you should definitely need a longer vacation now :D) Success is not about not failing, but to always keep trying.

[@damny0utoobe]

No man. that's not a cheesy thing to say at all. My dad basically did that in his career (let his body take the brunt for money) and now his body is failing him. It's really a difficult time for us. Health is the most important investment you can make.

[@MicroTypeEngineering]

Yes, it is so true. I certainly don't regret anything. Like you said, it's pretty nice when I get asked by a client if we design for DFM, and I can say, we ran a line for 2 years, so yeah we know how design boards that can be built!

[@Wilksey37]

Interesting video, I watched till the end, I'm guessing the machines have paid for themselves over the years? The only ongoing cost is the price of renting the large unit (unless you have bought it?) With places like PCBWay + JLC offering dirt cheap assembly, it's a no-brainer for a lot of people, but I find the value is working with a CM face to face, they understand how you design (and bad habits to look out for in the future :) ) and whilst it costs more than the cheap Chinese offerings I find they are prone to cocking things up, and yeah they have to rework them but it's not like I can pop in my car for a hour or 2 and get them reworked, it's days sometimes weeks before it's resolved. I think it is amazing that you have room and money for your own assembly line, even if you do only use it for prototypes.

[@MicroTypeEngineering]

Yeah, exactly what you said. Really just the cost of the space currently. The whole face to face aspect was one of the key things we had going for us. That and allowing the designs that we did, to be directly built by us.

[@MiguelRodriguez5]

"IDK if you learn anything..." interesting video of what it is to be in this industry... I enjoy myself (and frustrate) with the small boards (and very simple) I make... hearing professionals talks about it's experience are always welcome!

[@luccarodrigues781]

Great video! We don't usually see a lot of videos out there about the nitty gritty details of running a manufacturing/assembly line, so a series on that would be really awesome. It's a bummer this didn't work out for you, but I'm glad to hear you're sticking to design work which is what you enjoy most. Best of luck man!

[@MicroTypeEngineering]

Yes! Seems like people are really interested in that. Going to definitely move up that series on my backlog. Appreciate the words

[@gizmibob]

Hi, Thank you so much for this video ! I takes a lot of courage to end a project that is not going as expected, it is rare that we see testimony about that. Thankkkss !

[@MicroTypeEngineering]

Glad you enjoyed!

[@vladstrulev]

Thank you for pouting your soul and sharing all those little details with us. I really appreciate it as I'm going through about the same scenario except I decided to build the line for R&D and my projects only as I tend to use lots of similar parts in all my projects so I don't have to go through all those things, you described, as buying lots of parts/feeders for them/etc. Thank you for sharing. Appreciated. Don't give up.

[@sonovoxx]

Great heartfelt video. Much appreciated.

[@oxullo]

Thank you very much for sharing, interesting and insightful. And, as others say, huge time and efforts costs aside, I believe experience has a great personal value. Wish you best luck! And thanks also for the other videos, I love them all!

[@jfsaraceno9265]

Thank you for you honesty and sharing transparently. I'm sure this will help lots of others getting into or struggling in any business.

[@MicroTypeEngineering]

I hope so too!

[@faridfarrokhnia1890]

Great video bro, can't wait to see the pro way doing assembly line series.

[@sharpling]

Takes a lot of practice being a caring person without allowing it to affect your sleep. Most business owners are going through this step one way or another. Especially when doing something you love. Look at day traders meditating between reading books about mental health. When outside their comfort zone they scale down, find a base line and continue from there. At a later stage there’s always new situations offering better terms and less stress. Enjoy your videos, thank you for sharing your knowledge.

[@MicroTypeEngineering]

Thanks for the kind words 😊

[@danedwards_ee]

@11:00 Like I mentioned on the discord, I had a job reworking 60 boards where the fab in China had assembled 11 addressabe led's 180 degrees out of position.. I doubt they had much profit left after they paid the bill I sent them.

[@MicroTypeEngineering]

Hah! Exactly! One little mistake like that in the pick and place program, and it's game over

[@justovision]

Thank you for the honest and entertaining video. I think a few years down the road this experience will prove valuable in many ways. Not the least of which is having good stories.

[@MicroTypeEngineering]

Absolutely!

[@day-tec]

Have been following your progress for some time now and it’s very sad news. I see our companies following very similar routes to the point that it’s scary. We just purchased our first line about 3 weeks ago and should be up and running in the the next week. I would love to hear about all the nitty gritty problems you experienced to help us with what’s coming. I agree the Industry is externally secretive and so hard to find solid support and direction. We have initially pulled the trigger on the line for our own boards and obviously considering CM work, Not so sure now.

[@MicroTypeEngineering]

Woah, that's wild that you see the similarities. What brand equipment did you guys go with? Definitely going to be publishing more on this topic, seems like a lot of people are interested in it.

[@day-tec]

@@MicroTypeEngineering we picked up some Juki KE2000 machines and SMT oven at an auction.

[@reg2590]

Thank you for an heartfelt video. I have been following (and learning from) all your design videos. I always think that opportunity comes from adversity. Your logic is well balanced so best wishes from me. P.S. Please keep the videos coming :-))

[@MicroTypeEngineering]

You are so welcome! I appreciate the words!

[@station240]

Oddly I've only heard stories on more demand for local PCB assembly, due to the many problems with China/logistics. But I can see the downsides of running a PNP etc, which it seems no one else talks about. It actually doesn't make sense financially to build a new PNP line at the moment, as the shipping is the same cost as the machines! Bulky and heavy equipment is expensive to ship, so $600 machine, $600 postage, $9000 machine, $9000 postage.

[@amaldev000]

Assembly is hard grunt work. It's definitely something I don't enjoy. Once had pre-production run of 100 boards or so just to find out at the end of PnP that supplier send in a wrong crystal with 1-2 pin arrangement than 3-4 arrangement. Colossal waste of time waiting to get the correct part and manually reworking 100 boards. It's outsource-the-assembly part all the way for me these days. That amount of stress is just not worth it.

[@MicroTypeEngineering]

Exactly! So many stories just like yours!

[@GaryCrowellSr]

Did I ever mention to you the time at Micron where the Mid shift started assembly on a new SIMM design? *Nobody* did a first article inspection and eight hours later they wound up with thousands of SIMMS with all the DRAM 180 out. There's your nightmare.

[@MicroTypeEngineering]

Lol! You didn't. That's definitely the nightmare

[@mrechbreger]

How was the software of the Assembleon? Reminds me about an issue I had with a OnSemi TSSOP with my mechatronika machine, the owners of that company (Mechatronika in Poland) are absolute shit - told them so many times we cannot assemble our products flawlessly with their machine. What did they do - nothing. So we wrote the software for their machine by ourself and got thing running.. and everytime something doesn't work with the software we can fix it ourself at least. We have good software for the loading process (also done ourself).

[@MicroTypeEngineering]

@mr it's OK for an early-mid 2000s machine. Never had any major issues that we couldn't solve. Funny you mention Mechatronika. AFAIK, most (all) of manncorp's machines are just Mechatronika's with their branding on them.

[@mrechbreger]

@@MicroTypeEngineering maybe there are some similarities about the outlook, Mechatronika only supports a single pick and place head and their feeders are block feeders. I reverse engineered their rs232/uart protocol and it's only a very simple machine. There are even lots of EMI issues with that machine feeders in some cases advance by themselves (not often but it happens). The PCB holder itself bends the PCB (of our MX80) it adds force from the side. The pick and place head can easily crash if you touch it possibly due to improper bypass caps. There's no affine transformation done, just simple highschool math for matching the pick and place file with the PCB. 1mm boards are soso with that machine. And the machine itself is rated at 4k CPH but can barely do 1700 CPH if it takes components from all over the machine. There's no multiselect, eg. if one feeder jams up you have to fix it - and cannot just skip it and place it afterwards the software is very unflexible. Those who get along with Mechatronika boards can only do very simple boards and are happy with it, but if you are more into the 0402 and small components the machine is absolutely overpriced garbage. After solving the software issues by writing our own software which suited our needs we still were stuck with jamming feeders (and we sent all of them to Mechatronika for a service, Mechatronika fanboys said there's no problem (as mentioned I am sure they only do simple projects and use papertapes only) however a few customers confirmed that the machine cannot handle plastic tapes properly). The owners of Mechatronika are somewhat 64/68 years old they don't care anymore.

[@BrandonDrury]

Great video!

[@MicroTypeEngineering]

Thanks!

[@qdlaty87]

Oh god, all those dreams about faulty machines which you just can't stop, and all those messed up boards when customers are around. xD But anyway it sounds like you just lacked more people to run the lines. :D Good vid anyway. :)

[@TomLeg]

Would it be silly to publish a list of the components you have available, to create prototypes for other people?

[@Andrew-rc3vh]

The cameraman has been drinking. Invest in a tripod.

[@xxxanonymousexxx]

+1 on the video series idea

[@browaruspierogus2182]

Basic mistake is thinking that few people including engineers can run mass production assembly or very serious line of large production. You need workers like in China or Mexico and back everything up with manual inspection - not relying on faulty robotics

[@sudheerkumar5966]

Very very sir

[@stevenbliss989]

You are keeping the equipment? Is that not a huge amount of $ sitting there doing nothing most of the time? Why not rent it out (on you premises) to any one who wants it, ....overflow line for a local CM maybe?

[@MicroTypeEngineering]

For now we are. We still use it often for prototypes and small batches for clients.