Category: News

Solar Panels versus the Reflow Oven

Agile Electronics factory from the rear, showing the solar panels on the roof.

In the last few months we had solar panels installed on the new factory and also acquired a conveyor reflow oven, which helps to automate our process and reduce board faults that may occur from manual handling.

The solar panel people thought our requested quantity of solar panels (10kW) was excessive compared to our electricity usage. However, they hadn’t seen the conveyor reflow oven in action. While our non-manufacturing usage is typically well under 4kW except for when the kettle is used, manufacturing appears to peak at 18kW on each phase! Fortunately we use 100% green energy.

Conveyor Reflow Oven

Twelve Days of DFM Feedback from Agile Electronics

Agile now has a Youtube channel! We probably will still mostly use the blog for information. But for now, find our twelve days of feedback for the season. Entertaining and useful at the same time. Enjoy!

Robotic carollers

Now with fewer emissions!

Agile Electronics and its parent company Ad Hoc Software have long tried to make environmentally appropriate choices. We were early adopters of solar panels at our original premises, and have been paying for green electricity for years. This month, however, we have replaced the diesel AdHoc-mobile with a brand new Tesla Model 3 electric car.

The new Agile Electronics company car, a Tesla Model 3
The new Agile Electronics company car, a Tesla Model 3

Solder Printing is Operational!

As you may have seen in our last post, we now have a Dek solder printer. This automatically applies solder to the bare circuit board prior to feeding through to the pick and place machine to receive parts.

We are very pleased to say that this improves the consistency of board pasting, thereby reducing errors compared to the manual process.

To make best use of solder printers like ours, we strongly recommend requesting half-etched fiducials on your stencils (as well as having fiducials on your panel or board). This allows the board and stencil to automatically be lined up without solder paste interfering with optical recognition.

New Era for Agile

I’m pleased to announce that Agile Electronics is now in a position to employ its first non-founding staff member to assist with manufacturing. Currently this is on a casual basis, but we hope that the job will grow with the business. We welcome Gen!

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