Quoting Vitaliy <piclist@maksimov.org>:

> PICdude wrote:
>
>> FWIW, I'm working on doing my own auto/semi-auto assembly, so more
>> interested in the details of these processes currently.
>
> Sounds cool. What is the motivation behind this project?
>

Necessity.  We do 25-100 of many products at a time, and even for some  
products that we do thousands of per year, it's better to run smaller  
batches (250-500) so we don't have to float the cost of all those  
components at once.  Our products are very similar components-wise  
(layout, config, and firmware very) so setup time (reel changes etc)  
would be minimal.  Conservative calcs show that in-house will not cost  
much more.  Quality and appearance will be better too.  Add that I  
haven't been able to find a local SMD solderer, so I'm doing most of  
the SMD stuff lately, and getting backaches from being hunched over a  
desk for hours on end.  CEM's have long lead times just to get a  
quote, and I expect no more backaches from .  So it's pretty much a  
no-brainer.

I got a decent conveyor oven already, but just need to find the right  
PnP machine at a price I can afford.  In the meanwhile, I am seriously  
considering building my own PnP.  Time is an issue, but I do have some  
of the sharper kids from my robotics club ready and eager to help with  
this though.

Cheers,
-Neil.



> High volume assemblies are best outsourced to China. One-off protos are not
> worth the setup time. However, it would be nice to have a way to build
> 10-100 boards without paying an arm and a leg.
>
> Vitaliy
>




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