Cost effective pick and place in UK?

[alanambrose]

Hi, anyone know of some cost effective pick and place services in the UK for low numbers of boards (dozens) but with large quantities of identical components on each PCB?

TIA, Alan

[mrpackethead]

You wont find cost effective in high wage economies like the UK.  Whats the reaosn for having to do it in the UK.

[mikeselectricstuff]

Depends what you mean by cost effective.
If you also want it quickly it's going to be expensive. For small batches it's dominated by setup costs, and also the fact that most subcontractors can only use large stencils, and haven't discovered Far-East stencil suppliers.
 So you're typically looking at £160-200 per side for stencils and £100-300 setup/programming before you get the first board out.
Per-placement cost ranges between 3-10p
I currently use two UK places :
PSL  http://www.printsys.co.uk/ They have lots of capacity and a dedicated line for fast turnrounds, and can do up to 1.6m long boards

http://www.fringeelectronics.co.uk/  Smaller outfit, usually a bit cheaper than PSL but not so quick and timescales can be somewhat variable.  They also charge stupid money to do sourcing and their usual PCB supplier tends to be expensive so I usually supply all parts and PCBs.

There's also  http://www.hcduk.com/ who can specialise in small jobs and can turn stuff round very quickly and do a good job but very expensive IME (>10p per placement + £200/side stencils)

I've heard good reports for Quick Teck http://www.quick-teck.co.uk , who are a UK office dealing with Far-East manufacturer(s) with online quoting for small jobs. I compared their costs to a few recent jobs from PSL and costs were similar.

PLEASE let me know if you come across anywhere interesting.
 

[mikeselectricstuff]

If you're regularly needing to do small runs in the UK, this might be a good option :
http://electricstuff.co.uk/forum/index.php?PHPSESSID=am1kmrijcm4imomu1vrlv7ajd0&topic=340.0

[alanambrose]

Thanks Mike for the leads and ballpark costings - will report back. Actually the RV1s is interesting too - might just pay for itself ...

Alan

[Howardlong]

After being messed around with by various companies both onshore and offshore, I have been loyal to HCD (hcduk.com) for abount seven years now. As an example my placement costs are around 5p/part for double sided population, 250 parts/board, 90 line items, but that is for 1ku orders. I provide my own parts (“free issue”) but they provide the boards and do the panelisation as they see fit from the layouts that I provide.

I had a crap experience with quick-teck, they were cheap though, ISTR ITRO $3/board for 100 boards with about 120 parts and 50 line items. They insisted on supplying the parts themselves under some nonsense about customs delays, promised they’d use the exact parts I’d spec’d, and proceeded to substitute crap parts that I had to rework myself. Going offshore for low volume just isn’t worth the aggravation in my opinion. To make offshore work you need to have someone you inherently trust working for you, and managing and understanding the local customs and managing the business relationship, and that has a cost.

Just be aware that it’s a jungle out there, cowboys are at large. I had to learn the hard way.

[philpem]

Glad to hear I'm not the only one who had problems with Quickteck.

They managed to completely bugger up a paste stencil and a batch of PCBs. Stencil was altered with no notice, they removed a bunch of paste areas for heatsink pads!

For bonus points they ran the boards HASL instead of immersion gold, so the excess solder had to be pulled off before soldering the parts! (finepitch QFP)

Result after much arguing? "Here's a coupon for 5% off your next order, valid for a month".

 

[Ice-Tea]

...valid for a month".

Cherry on top, that..

[Howardlong]

My offer was $50 off he next order, but their thoughtlessness cost me over a grand in parts plus my time, plus customers being pissed off due to additional delays fixing their mistakes.

[mrpackethead]

Even for pads that are heat sinks, you often have to 'window' the stencil,  particually for QFNs'.. The problme is that if you dont', you'll end up with too much paste and it will dome under the main pad, lifting the part high enough that the pins on the edges wont' make contact..    If you get the ratio correctly, you'l have no voids, the part will align itself flat.   If you are trying to put QFN's on HASL, then good luck to you.  You'll need it.   In our little fab, i refuse to touch PCB's that are not ENIG, or OSP.  Theres just too much variablity. and even with big parts,  it just makes stenciling harder, and less reliable. 

We mainly do our own boards,  being a cm must be a compelte dog of a job.   You've got no control of really importnat design issues, that massively impact on yeild.