Tag: prototyping

Unwelcome Trend in Partial Reels

We’ve been pleased to see PCB surface mount assembly customers moving away from supplying cut tape, partly in thanks to our popular article on why cut tape is a bad idea. However, we’ve noticed a trend in recent months, where partial reels suffer a similar problem to cut tape.

A few recent supplies of reeled parts have come on multiple reels, with some reels containing only a single component! There is no point in trying to load a reel with fewer than five components on it onto a pick and place machine (unless the component is large and expensive). Each time a reel is loaded into a feeder and put into position, there is a chance of losing a component or two, despite the care taken by the operator. This is why some assemblers insist on receiving many more parts than required for the boards. (I’ve seen 100 quoted on one assembler’s website.)

While having multiple partial reels is less annoying and costly for assembly than multiple pieces of cut tape, and will lose fewer parts, it will still lead to more parts potentially being lost or unable to be used. It will also mean multiple feeder loadings per component, which will add a few minutes per reel change to the job.

I don’t know what it costs the component wholesaler to put a single component on a reel, given that customers pay a standard fee for reeling, regardless of how many reels are delivered, but I expect that the economics aren’t really there for cheap components. While I sympathise with the goal of avoiding the waste of components, there is waste in the form of extra reels and leader tape, plus time either of workers and/or machines to create the extra reels, not to mention the additional cost downstream during assembly for customers, with components not being used. I hope this trend goes away soon. Meanwhile, I can only advise customers to choose between having fewer boards fully assembled, buying more parts, or using a supplier who doesn’t split ordered components across multiple partial reels.

Feedback

Nice to have a grateful customer

John
A six-pack of beer

Agile co-founder and chief engineer John provides heaps of feedback to customers on how to improve their designs before manufacture. Sometimes this (pictured) happens!

More Gear

Since the last update, we have acquired a dehumidifier, which is handy for humidity-sensitive materials and parts. We also have a new 3D printer that provides much better quality prints than our old one, which had a tendency to curve or distort in places. While it is mainly used for creating customised matrix trays and fulfilling a few other in-house requirements, we also provide a 3D printing-based prototyping service for our customers. Need a quality 3D print? We might be able to help.

Bambu Lab X1-Carbon 3D printer at Agile Electronics, Camberwell, Victoria, Australia.

Through-hole versus Surface Mount

Many older electronic designs use through-hole components, which are usually manually placed onto circuit boards before they can be soldered. While some components are best kept as through-hole, such as connectors, most can be replaced with surface mount equivalents. Let’s look at why this might be a good idea.

When we work with through-hole components, the following happens for larger jobs:

  1. Manually place the through-hole components
  2. Use our wave solderer to solder all the through-hole components on the board
  3. Clean the boards

The wave solderer itself has an associated set-up and clean-up cost as well. (Note: some manufacturers use “selective soldering” for this task, which has a few advantages over wave soldering.) For small jobs it is usually cheaper and easier to manually solder the through-hole components. However, labour is not very cheap compared to machines.

On the other hand, for surface-mount components provided on a reel, we load the reel into a feeder element, mount the element in the feeder trolley and program the feeder. Then the pick and place machine does the rest. Once again, there is a set-up cost associated with each type of component, but if you are wanting hundreds of boards or more, surface mount components are the way to go.

Components on a reel, loaded onto a feeder element
Component feeders in a feeder trolley

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!

Is there anything worse than cut tape? Sadly, yes.

Previously I wrote about how providing your components on cut tape slows the SMT assembly process for the assembler, because they need to mount your tape on a reel before putting the reel on the feeder.

There is one thing worse than cut tape, and that is loose components! You might think it is a saving to just buy a bag of the components you need, but if you are using a professional assembler, it is often cheaper to buy in bulk on a reel, or to make use of the very reasonable reeling service from suppliers like Digikey or Mouser, where your small number of components are mounted on a reel, ready for assembly.

So, what do we do when we receive loose components? Some are taken out of their plastic bags and put into a belt or tube feeder. For others, we need to design and print a special matrix tray, and then manually place the components into the matrix tray. For really short cut tape, we stick the tape into the matrix tray area with removable double-sided tape. For each tray or short cut tape, the pick and place machine needs to be programmed to indicate the dimensions of the tray and the type of component contained in it. As you can imagine all this preprocessing takes quite a bit of time. So, do think twice about how you provide components to your friendly assembler!

matrix1
Custom matrix trays set up in the Europlacer pick and place machine. Also a short piece of cut tape with only two components, stuck into the matrix tray area.

 

Getting your design ready for manufacture

We sometimes get asked how to prepare a design for manufacture on a pick and place machine. There are things to be aware of that are not needed for your prototype, including fiducials, which are marks on the board that help the machine’s vision system place the components accurately. Also the way that components are provided makes a lot of difference to how long it takes to set up the run.

An excellent introduction to design for manufacture is provided by Dave Jones. We strongly recommend watching it before sending your design to be made. Having said that, we can handle 0402 sized components, but are happy to use other sizes if required.

Welcome to Agile Electronics

Hello world!  Agile Electronics has been providing electronic assembly services since 2010. We’re located in the Melbourne metropolitan area. We have a Europlacer XPii-IIT pick and place machine; a Dek solder printer; and convection and vapour phase ovens.  We can provide surface mount assembly services for any size job, including prototypes.

pick_and_place