OK, I'm showing signs of my age now. In my earliest days, we made carriers
for the wave solder machines that served two purposes: 1. let us keep the
chains at the same width all day and night (it took over 20 minutes for the
chain to travel the length of the machine, so this saved lots of set-up
time); 2. held multiple quantities at once. Later  we began to design in
either perfs, scoring, or routing between panels. Then to the wave & wash
machines, then either to be snapped apart by hand, or at one point we used a
small machine that gave a bit of mechanical advantage to snap panels apart.
That was later abandoned because of the high incidence of damage to
populated boards. At 7 - 10,000 boards each day, it was a bit labor
intensive to do so by hand.

I can't think of a production facility that still saws boards, and
mechanical shears would require large unpopulated sections for the tooling.
Just doesn't make sense.
Sounds like it would be a neat idea for low-to-mid volume assembly though-
perhaps router-cutting stuffed boards - is that what you are referring to?.
Are there any articles around that show how this process might actually work
effectively? I would love to get up to speed. My experience in manufacturing
goes back to the '70's and could use some updating.

Chris

On Tue, 12 Feb 2002 11:21:04 -0800, you wrote:

>Forgive my asking, but why would anyone ever want to cut stuffed boards?
So you can stuff and then flow-solder a whole panel at a time - a very
common practice in industry.
>C
>
>>If you are cutting boards that are stuffed      >beware

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