Assembling circuit boards in mass production is a whole different ball game. Tanner from Tritium Electronics was gracious with his time and let the Opulo crew take a visit and see how he operates his SMT line!
Tritium is a contract assembler and they are always happy to help people who need more than a handful of boards built. You can check out Tanner and his company here: www.tritiumelectronics.com
You can get a LumenPnP here!: opulo.io/
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Things shown from MRRF!:
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www.autodrop3d.com/
vorondesign.com/
lightburnsoftware.com/
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Thanks Stephen! It was a blast showing you and your team around Tritium!
thank you for showing such an amazing setup with us - you have some amazing machines!
Thank you for being willing to share and answer questions! Super interesting being able ot see inside a production like yours :)
Thanks for you time and the tour!
Nice to see a young startup growing in the midwest. Sent your link to my work email for next proto run quote.
@Mr. Ewing - what is your main business, if this is started just to help that? 🤔🤓
We now use selective wave soldering, where there is actually a moving head going with a tiny solder wave to the locations where the solder is needed. Has the advantage that you don't need all these expensive, board-specific masking trays designed and manufactured. It's not as fast and efficient when you run very large jobs of the same boards, but for a line where you run small batches and prototypes it's a pretty nice extension to have.
Yes we have a selective soldering machine too, it’s just too slow for most of our requirements so it isn’t used frequently
I love how passionate you are about the technology. The MG-1R is impressive but it's a 10-12 year old machine with pneumatic feeders and is a bit out of date to be referencing as state of the art (nothing to be ashamed of though). If you are ever in AZ get in touch and I'll get you into a few shops running current generation Yamaha (yes, the MG-1R is actually a Yamaha machine, sold in the Americas and Europe as Assembleon). I've been selling them for over 30 years.
As a SMT operator its quite funny to watch, because things that u seeing is so natural and obvious to me. I'm pretty sure that if u watched some of SMT assembly machines, your project would be much more simpler for u to build. Greetings from Poland
Astounding!!😊I'm working as a SMT Operator for 5 years in Romania. 😊
my jaw dropped at the chip sequencer, so cool!
This is so awesome man I've been following your series for about a year now. I got into fpv drones about 2 years ago and thought it was weird how everything in the fpv hobby is made in China? It got me interested in how hard something like setting up exactly what you did is. Big props man I wish I had a 10th of the knowledge you do but I'm just beginning my journey into PCB design so I probably won't need a pick n place for a long long time but when I do I know exactly where to find the perfect one. The thing I really loved about this series is how open with everything you are and I hope you keep on doing exactly what you've been doing, I'm enjoying the journey. Great inspiration 🤙🤟👌
Heck yeah! I'm sure these details seem obvious to people that use these every day but man do I love getting to hear real details about how these machines work in ways I didn't expect.
Just imagine how many workshops might start with a lumen pnp and the nmove on to industrial sizes.. but I'd still keep the lumen around fro the prototypes.
Very similar to how we started. I wish there had been something like LumenPnP when we were starting out!
@@tannerewing9361 literally my plan right now here in UK. I make guitar effects pedals on a tiny, tiny scale and I've just ordered a Lumen because it's a no-brainer for the level I am operating at. Issues of time and QC and the whole China rabbit-hole for production was something I really didn't want to go down. And huge thanks for this video collaboration, it's really cool to see the high-end equipment up close. I think sometimes there's a bit too much secrecy about equipment. I've always felt that exposing that sort-of detail actually builds trust and shifts competitive focus to client relationships over who-has-what-gear.
Why did he "nope" so hard on the Chipquick paste? :D Did you get a good other recommendation from him perhaps? ;)
^ This
#alpha team
We use AIM REL61 exclusively, it prints much more consistently and has a smaller ball size than chipquick. It has excellent stencil release qualities, and great solder wetting properties
we use chipquick only for rework because of the low temp, but it is just not meant for main line production.
Curious too. I've used Chipquick for years without issues but I'm still assembling by hand.
Dang, MRRF was not on my radar this year. I would have gone just to meet you guys. Neat to see these shops still cranking it out in the US.
That optical PCB checker at the end of the line could be a interesting open source hardware project. Just put a camera on the end of a 3d printer then use some sort of optical detection for board validation.
this is one of the best videos you have done this year - so interesting and great narration and explanations - thank you so much!
I was a service engineer on the Accuflex, I still work with one now
So cool! Very thankful for the work you have put in to this machine! Its people like you that make the community and makerspace culture make progress! Keep it going Stephen!
Nice to see your passion, i worked on high production pick and place machines in the 90s, building LMB satellite boards for Amstrad on the up and coming sky bsb, brings back memories
Fantastic showcase. Love your videos.
This is like Disneyland for nerds, they should sell tickets and offer guided tours to see this amazing production line. 😀
That is some scale production. Love these contents
Reminds me of the Adafruit factory footage videos. Except I don't think they have those carts for offline feeder setup... Oh and they have a fancy selective solder machine instead of a wave solder machine.
Sorry I missed you at MRRF! Maybe next year. Thanks for the instructional video!
I have an SMT line and once upon a time....that was the biggest challenge. Right now, the hardest part is just finding parts.
I was reminiscing thru the whole video 😊
I work on a E by siplace, 20000 components a day from 0201 to connectors. And we do prototyping 😄 A good beast
Chipquik rocks for small scale manufacturing, manual manufacturing, we got so much better results once we used that. I would be interested if there is anything better but probably each machine has a different optimal paste.
Your friend must be rich to finance that operation! I can't even begin to imagine how much that all must cost.
Всегда очень интересные видео!!! Продолжай снимать!!! Молодец!!!
Mega-feeder for LumenPnP next? 😆 Probably overkill, but a fun add-on project 😅 Awesome tour!
Love how the optical inspection machine runs Windows XP. Guess some things just never change
Hi! I was just spending my vacation in Italy, and I saw that mosaics were sold for a pretty high price. I thought you could easily make the same thing with some adjustments in your setup, it's just a matter of finding equal-sized little stones of different colours. If you had this as a side-project, it could raise an infinite amount of money.
That is an *AMAZING* idea! Even with semi-random stones, the up-looking camera could determine the outline of each stone and then down-looking camera could find a suitable place for it.
@@KeithOlson Great idea!
4:09 I'm just imagining a meme of Xzibit... "Yo, we're heard you like pick n place, so we made you a pick n place to pick parts for your pick n place"
Holy moly. I thought this was lost technology for the West. Glad to see it.
Thanks for the video! Does anyone know if the machines and processes (and automation level) shown in the video are pretty much industry standard - also with most Chinese manufactures nowadays (like JLCPCB or PCBway)?
The un-asked questions: How long, how much effort and cost $ to "set up" a job to run on this line? machines? How many dedicated, skilled people to do this? What minimum volume of PCBs is cost efficient? Likely answers: Even with the advanced simultaneous programming, set up, & vision systems there will be over 40 individual "person hours" to get this going, ~ $1000 (not counting sourcing any parts). 6-12 trained, experienced people. Hundreds, depending on size and parts count. Maybe only 20-30 large PCBs with >500 parts or > 2000 Raspberry Pi Nanos. Nice Facility! Thanks for the tour, video, and best wishes to all. For those who want one of these: start with about $ 1,000,000 and see if you have any $ left.
You'd be surprised actually, we build jobs for as little as ~$300. All depending on the complexity. A good rule of thumb for board cost is about $0.10 per SMT placement for production and ballpark around $5 per BOM item for setup. This all fluctuates a lot with volume but its not uncommon for jobs to come through our shop that are less than $1k bottom line.
@@tannerewing9361 Very Efficient! Thanks for your response. So 80 PCBs with 100 placements and 50 BOM items would cost ~ $ 890? Or 90 PCBs with 88 SMD LEDs, 13 BOM parts, would cost $965?
@@shazam6274 Your example of 80pcbs would be ($5 x 50 = $250 + 80 x 100 x $0.10 = $1050) again these are ballpark numbers but it gives a close approximation.
@@tannerewing9361 Thanks. That's about $13.25 per, which is a lot cheaper than most people would guess. Spread the Word! I'm a retired Analog Engineer so the high BOM count example is more typical of Analog circuits, which are a killer on set-ups and # of feeders.
@@shazam6274 The biggest cost increase is through hole parts, we ballpark those at about $0.70 per placement.
How do they even get this machinery in there? And it's all so job specific too, I wonder who manufactures these.
These chip sequencers sound very fascinating. How do I search for these? I found absolutely nothing on the web.
That tray feeder is a DYTF and not many were sold. The previous generation LCS was more common. The generic term is a matrix tray feeder / changer with shuttle. As QFPs and BGAs have evolved into micro BGAs, QFNs, and WLCSPs, the industry has moved away from these type of units because the shuttle can't transfer such small devices. Picking direct from the tray is more reliable and as the parts have gotten smaller and fine pitch leads have been replaced with balls or lands, many more ICs are available on tape & reel.
Stephen. What about the cleaning? I am sure they deal with the pcb cleaning too. How do they do that?
There are two ways actually, use a “no clean” process (non corrosive flux) or wash them in a machine basically equivalent to an industrial dish washer.
Did you notice how fast that up camera was taking the pictures? It didn't even stop the motion.
chad global shutter
Actually it’s a scan line camera so it doesn’t stop
@@tannerewing9361 Interesting, thanks for that extra bit of information. I was not aware they use scan line cameras, but it totally makes sense in that application.
Cool.
You need a Siplace
SMD vs SMT; let's discuss 😂
What is the Difference Between SMD and SMT? The difference between SMD and SMT is that SMD (surface mount device) refers to an electronic component mounted on a PCB. In contrast, SMT (surface mount technology) relates to the method used to place electronic components on a printed circuit board. Thanks, Google 😂
There is no need to argue, at lest at professional level ;)
I want to speak to this guy. Is it possible via LinkedIn?
I think that I know what your next long term development project is going to be...
M e g a l u m e n
That's my job
If anyone needs PCB assembly service, contact me.
You're a great guy and I love your success. But off topic: why do US Americans need so many flags everywhere? On the streets, on the walls, everywhere. Do you ever trip and suddenly forget which country you are in, then in panic look around and are relieved... Still the US! PHEEWWW
lol "Mass production" with a couple of lines xD
gotta crawl before you run.
Too much paste.
hey man, I've been aware of your channel for a bit. I would have expected you to be at 100k by now since I haven't come across one of your videos in a while, and I'm surprised that you aren't. I have now subscribed because these later videos of yours are pretty great, but I would like to tell you why I didn't before so that if maybe you're getting the same feedback from other people you can better gauge what to look for next. your attitude/demeanor is off-putting. when people say that it's usually about arrogant or otherwise negative personalities, but I say it because you go too far in the opposite direction. maybe it's really who you are and you're always this enthusiastic, but I find it very hard to believe that someone can keep that level of energy all day every day of their lives. it feels fake, and it feels like you're doing it for the camera. it feels overblown, kinda like those videos for kids where everyone is always loud with a big smile on their face for the purpose of getting kids amped up. if you're prototyping stuff and waiting for prints of a few hours and spend a bunch more hours coding.. after that it's near impossible to have the kind of energy you display, and this coming from someone who does it for fun too. it doesn't feel real. I'm sorry if that's just who you are - a guy with off the charts energy - but I think you can maybe see why it would make it harder to relate to you. nobody's life is perfect and you seem to just want to just remove that very human component from your videos. if you're frustrated with something after hours of testing, maybe don't put up a fake smile for the camera when you'd be grinning otherwise. the next thing is your upload frequency. I don't much care for it personally, but 2 things are true. the algorithm would help you out more with more frequent uploads is the first, and the second is that not all of your videos will catch the eye of all your audience, and so if you put out more stuff there's a higher likelihood that you'll hit the spot for people looking for different things. for instance this video was considerably less interesting to me than the ones of the feeder because I just love the hardware development/prototyping side of your channel - making machines is generally my greater interest. the opposite will be true for other people, they will prefer this kind of video. so with a video a month, you'd get 1 views from me because I would maybe not watch another one of these, and 1 view from the other guy who wouldn't watch another hardware development video but would watch this one. if you put out 4 videos, 2 of each topic, you'd make up for that. I guess what I'm saying is monthly videos mainly only work out for people who do the same type of thing every video, and their audience is always expecting it. lastly, cinematics. they have become all the rage on youtube, and that's for a reason. when your mechanisms work, maybe have a slow motion clip of it doing it's thing with some dope music on the background. for inspiration on what I'm saying you can look at Matt's "off the ranch" channel, his "abandoned mansion" series. that's more montages but it's the same idea and you can mix them up. when you get stuff to work it always feels inconsequential, it feels like it already happened, we don't feel like you do because we didn't put in the work. so you gotta highlight it. in terms of videography you can also look at "this old tony"s videos - he works with machinery and welding and he is insanely good at capturing what's happening in a focused way that makes it feel like you are there. lastly, we don't care about your face that much. maybe it sounds harsh, but people really don't like seeing a guy speak to a camera for 2 minutes straight generally. we come to youtube because it satisfies our short attention spans (or our want for content that doesn't require long periods of concentration), so stimulation is necessary and it's hard to listen to what you're saying if you've been talking for 2 minutes without showing any of the stuff you're talking about in detail. if you're talking about a specific component and what you had to do to get it working, maybe get the camera off your face and point at it working close-up. this type of content mostly appeals to men, and men are very visual creatures who really like machines - watching someone's face move for extended periods of time not only doesn't stimulate us, be we start thinking about what else we could be doing instead or while we listen to you. podcasts and radio are a great example of that. hope this helped, sure took me a long time to write it cuz I'm on my phone. have a nice one.
What would be your expected profit margin in assembly? @tannerEwing