Advice on setting up a low-mid volume SMT line for <$130k?

[SVFeingold]

Hey guys and gals,

I spoke with an engineer from K&S today. I can say he helped put my mind a bit more at ease.

Long story short he outlined one of their service packages, and told me they do offer full support/training on these machines.

The support package is $7,500 per machine per year, at least for the first year. Not sure if this goes down past the first year. It includes some training but they also offer a 4-day on-site training course for $2k.

The service package includes:

* Annual agreement for planned maintenance and calibration service
* Agreement begins January 12, 2017 and ends January 11, 2018
* Covers qty. 1 Topaz X and qty. 1 Emerald X
* 2 services per machine (1 major PM with head rebuild & 1 light PM)
* Machine calibration performed following each PM service
* Includes Assembléon PM parts kits
* Includes priority dispatch of engineer & parts if repairs are needed
* Includes a 5% discount on other after- market parts and services

What do you guys think? Is that a tolerable contract? If I could guarantee one machine would be fully operational and I would be trained on its use within a couple of weeks, that certainly puts my mind at ease in the event of "oh shit I have no idea what to do and the machine is acting funny and I now have a $40k boat anchor!"

The guys on SMTnet are helpful as well. One of them says he set up a complete line including a new (!!) Samsung SM482 for the same as my budget. Which is nuts and I feel like if I could get such a machine with feeders, an oven, printer, etc... for this budget that would be a total no-brainer decision. Apparently they are cheaper if you buy them directly but I'm not sure who to contact about that and what is involved with shipping/import duties/etc...
 

[mikeselectricstuff]

* Agreement begins January 12, 2017 and ends January 11, 2018

Is that an error or are they trying to short-change you on time ?

[SVFeingold]

I asked about that, awaiting a response. If that IS the case then I would have to wait until January to start a contract and in the meantime hope the machines work well enough and that training is still available.

[mikeselectricstuff]

Might be worth checking the service intervals are appropriate for your expected use - I'd expect most of it is down to run-time, rather than elapsed time - a machine running all day is going to need more attention than one used more lightly

[mikeselectricstuff]

I asked about that, awaiting a response. If that IS the case then I would have to wait until January to start a contract and in the meantime hope the machines work well enough and that training is still available.

If they really are that inflexible, run a mile. Probably just an error from copying/pasting a previous quote
2K for 4 days training sounds not unreasonable, especially if it's from someone who really knows the machine & you can grill them on maintainance etc.

[SVFeingold]

Ok I just received a response, they say the start-end dates were just an example and we can start the contract any time.

[mikeselectricstuff]

The guys on SMTnet are helpful as well. One of them says he set up a complete line including a new (!!) Samsung SM482 for the same as my budget. Which is nuts and I feel like if I could get such a machine with feeders, an oven, printer, etc... for this budget that would be a total no-brainer decision. Apparently they are cheaper if you buy them directly but I'm not sure who to contact about that and what is involved with shipping/import duties/etc...

I think Adafruit run Samsung machines - maybe ask them for a contact

[Kjelt]

2k for 4days is cheap. Esp. If it is for a small group.
Last year I had a course in a class of 32 persons it was 6,5k pp for 5 days

[SVFeingold]

That was my thought as well. It would really just be me but if I had the opportunity I would pull in a couple of engineer friends that could be called on to help if needed. May as well spread the knowledge.

[jmelson]

I'm sure you could learn things from their training, but these machines are just NOT that complicated.  After all, they do something that could be done by a human with a pair of tweezers.
I have the Philips manuals for my machine, and it was all quite easy to follow.  (I have 3 generations of manuals, and the first generation was a hideous translation from Japanese through Dutch to English.  The later manuals were a lot easier to follow.)  Make sure you get ALL the manuals with your machine, not just the operating manual but the maintenance manual and parts book, too.  The maintenance manual tells a lot of stuff on setup and handling operational difficulties.  The parts book tells you which feeders to use for what type of tape, which nozzles to use on what parts, etc.

Jon

[SVFeingold]

I had that thought but was afraid to say it... I design motion systems at work and I'm not a stranger to the methods, tools, parts, and suppliers in that world. Even so many esoteric machines can have a nice dose of their "secret sauce" that helps them run so well. Still a bearing is a bearing most of the time.

That is a good point about the manuals. If Philips manuals in the new millennium are anything like their old TEM manuals then they ought to be pretty comprehensive. I will inquire about this. Apparently this machine was owned by BAE systems and well maintained. I imagine that was a clean and well kept environment but who knows.

[jmelson]

Oh, and in reply to the guys who say you are crazy, although I might partially agree with them, your financials don't seem to make any sense.

But, I run a one man company, making mostly motion control boards for hobby and small shop machine tools.  I also do manufacturing for devices related to my "day job".
So, I got a used Philips CSM84 for $3600, which I think included shipping from Boston to St. Louis.  I got about 50 assorted feeders with it.  My CSM84 has 3 nozzles, but no vision, no nozzle exchange.
I did get a small vibratory feeder and the mechanical alignment station.  With these options, it has capacity for about 70 8mm feeders.  I built a frame that will hold waffle trays in the back.
I took off one of the chuck jaw sets so I can use one nozzle with the mechanical alignment station.  That works for larger chips like FPGAs, or anything too large for the other chuck jaws.
I made up a larger nozzle for this on the lathe.  So, I have one nozzle set up for 0603 - 1210 or so parts, one set for SO16 and similar, and one for the big parts.

I got the machine in 2007, so have been running it for almost 10 years, now.  I was making boards within 2 weeks of the machine arriving.  The first board, I composed the placement file manually from the CAD/CAM placement file, and once I had a good understanding of that file, I wrote a program to do it.  I think the biggest problem I had with the machine was getting the serial port hooked up to a PC and working!  I don't know why it was so difficult, but I remember fussing with it for quite some time.  The machine was not perfectly calibrated, and I had to deal with that over time, especially when I took on a board with 0603 parts.  I had to get serious about making a jig to check feeder alignment.

I did have some crazy problems like once I got an error in the middle of a board "memory full".  No such error in the manuals!  I eventually figured out it was the MIS info that it collects on every board type made.  You have to clear that out periodically, or it fills up the memory.  Not too happy to get an error message that is NOT in the book!

So, I'm not usually making boards for anybody else, just my own products.  Having my own machine allows me to make fairly short runs, and not have thousands of $ of inventory sitting around.  When I stared out, a run of 12 boards was normal.  Now, I do more like 40 -60 boards at a time.  I think the contract assemblers would charge a LOT extra for such small batches.

Jon
Jon

[SVFeingold]

I'm happy to explain my financials if they don't make sense.

To start, Macrofab wants to charge $60k for these boards for assembly alone. And that will be the case on every. single. batch. China is "cheaper" if your time is free and you have the expertise to do it. Many people allude to this magical CM that can take the files and pump out 1k boards for $1 each without any back and forth. Please find them for me!

[mairo]

Regarding the power, the space I'm planning to lease has 240 3-phase (high-leg Delta) so that will do fine for most of these machines. There are a few reflow ovens that run on 240. If 480 is really truly necessary I can pick up a transformer for a few thousand. I think a 100-200A 240 circuit will be enough to run all of the equipment. ...

On the power topic, I am not sure if it has been covered, but for an industrial size line (the type of machines you are talking about) you might be looking for a few tens of thousands of dollars in power bill alone per year - maybe research in to that as well. The oven will be the main consumer here.

Another areas to look also are air compressors (your PnP and stencil printer most probably will need this) and component storage in particular temperature and humidity.

[mikeselectricstuff]

Another areas to look also are air compressors (your PnP and stencil printer most probably will need this) and component storage in particular temperature and humidity.

Maybe also oven for baking boards & componants to remove moisture

[jmelson]

$60 for EACH board, in a batch of 1000?  With YOU supplying the boards and parts?  YIKES!  No wonder I'm so happy doing my own boards!  Sheesh!

I had no IDEA that was the going rate.

Jon

[The Soulman]

$60 for EACH board, in a batch of 1000?  With YOU supplying the boards and parts?  YIKES!  No wonder I'm so happy doing my own boards!  Sheesh!

I had no IDEA that was the going rate.

Jon

Do you know how large these boards are and how many components they have??

Neither do I.

[mikeselectricstuff]

$60 for EACH board, in a batch of 1000?  With YOU supplying the boards and parts?  YIKES!  No wonder I'm so happy doing my own boards!  Sheesh!

I had no IDEA that was the going rate.

Jon

Do you know how large these boards are and how many components they have??

Neither do I.

a per-placement cost would probably be more useful

[jmelson]

I believe the OP said they were fairly small boards with about 130 parts/board.  But, I could be remembering some other thread.

Jon

[jmelson]

Regarding the feeders that is very surprising. Is this the case even with the newer Yamaha/Philips feeders? Surely there is a solution to this problem that lies between spending $2k/ea on new smart feeders and getting constant mispicks on old feeders. Which feeders does your machine use?

OK, the older Philips CSM and Yamaha YM had purely mechanical feeders for 8 and 12mm tapes.  The air piston that drives the nozzle down also trips a lever on the feeder to advance it.  When the piston trips the lever, it retracts a blade that covers the pocket in the part tape.  When the nozzle has lifted, the blade advances with the tape, keeping the next pocket covered, so the part doesn't bounce out of the pocket.
Tripping the lever backs the ratchet up one step, releasing the lever causes the ratchet to advance the sprocket and pull the cover tape.

On 16mm and wider tapes, the lever activates an air valve on the feeder.  On my old CSM, the air-powered feeders need to have tubes pushed into quick-connect fittings on the air manifold.  Kind of a pain, so newer machines have the air manifold fitting in one of the locating pins on the bottom of the feeder.

All the Philps/Yamaha feeders are totally mechanical, no electrical/electronic parts in them.  I think that is true with the Gem series, as well.

They use sort-of toothed wheels that looks similar to gears to pull the cover tapes.  They can slip a little so as to pull just the right amount of tape.  Sometimes the cover tape works over to the side of the pulling wheels and causes a bind.  Sometimes variation in paper tape thickness or strength of the cover tape glue can cause some sticking of the feeder.  It seems 0805 0.1uF caps are the worst, I have run through many reels of them, and they are always intermittently sticky.

Jon

[janekm]

$60 for EACH board, in a batch of 1000?  With YOU supplying the boards and parts?  YIKES!  No wonder I'm so happy doing my own boards!  Sheesh!

I had no IDEA that was the going rate.

Jon

It's definitely not the going rate... Macrofab are specialised on doing short runs so the cost for a run of 1000 is going to be much more than what would be typical. Even in the US I'd wager.

[janekm]

I'm happy to explain my financials if they don't make sense.

To start, Macrofab wants to charge $60k for these boards for assembly alone. And that will be the case on every. single. batch. China is "cheaper" if your time is free and you have the expertise to do it. Many people allude to this magical CM that can take the files and pump out 1k boards for $1 each without any back and forth. Please find them for me!

No, you're certainly right about there being no magical CM. I do help some clients of mine organise manufacture of boards I designed for them (or more complete products) in China and it's far from a "hand over the files, get a bunch of boards" affair. It helps that I'm living in Shenzhen so I can pop over if there's any questions about testing / parts placement etc 

No back and forth is possible (and can be done at $1 per low complexity board) but it will typically result in boards that don't work since you weren't asked about the orientation of that one component that is not clear on your assembly drawing 

$60k per batch does sound high to me though... I'm sure if you asked around you'd get much more reasonable quotes, even from US-based companies (perhaps some that will push your order to China for you and have someone on the ground).

[janekm]

I know it sounds odd janekm. I certainly don't want to sound arrogant, as the guys on SMTnet pointed out there will be quite a large education involved. I am OK with that. To bare my soul a bit it's basically a lifelong dream of mine to own a warehouse where I can live and work that is full of prototyping/manufacturing equipment and machines. This is a tiny step towards that. Call it a labor of love if you like.

Despite that I need to make sure I can deliver for this client. If I can do that, it doesn't matter if I only take a single $1k contract per month after that. I'll be happy with it.

Sounds like you have the perfect attitude to make this work  Especially since you already have mechatronics experience and so should know what to expect.

TBH I mostly posted my comment for the benefit of others who might come across this thread and might think the advice applies to them...

[SVFeingold]

Hey everyone, I'll answer some questions and then some updates.

In regards to power, indeed there is no charge for power. I'm looking at a 500sq. ft. unit for $900 - power included. Even the 50A of power that this setup will draw. I will have to pay for running the service from the panel but that should only be ~$1k. So if I run the oven for 150 days a year, I'm getting around $5k of power for "free." But hey, they've been well warned and that's the deal so I won't complain.

The boards are about 7"x5" each, oddly shaped, kind of like that zig-zag tetris piece. There is no particularly challenging placement on the board. There is one single 0.5mm pitch 8-WSON buck converter, everything else is TQFP, SOIC, and smallest passives are 0603. About 5 SMT connectors. Why the placement cost was so crazy from Macrofab, I don't know. That was $60k assembly cost, not including the component cost. Price didn't change regardless of whether they purchased the parts or I supplied them. That's pretty nuts. That's for a delivery date of October 30th!

As for cost per placement, I'm getting $10.66 per board for 5k from Macrofab. And this is still missing 2 large parts, a through-hole PSU brick that needs to be wave or hand-soldered, and a ~20x50mm PCB assembly that comes in JEDEC trays. That comes out to just around $0.10 per placement. That's quite high. I'll point out that PCB.NG was no better. They've currently spent over a month trying to get a run of 100 different boards from Advanced Circuits. Those boards are 4"x2" and have 2 through-hole rotary switches, and that's it. Over a month. For 100 boards. AC says they have a part in stock, turns out they don't. Delay a week while they mill about. Say they're getting some in soon from a distributor, then they say the distributor lied and there is no stock. Mill around for another week. It took me all of 2 days to connect with my agent in China and get an invoice for 10k switches direct from the manufacturer. That is where I add the value here and why they are willing to go this route.

In fairness, the client will be paying nearly double this for their first assembly run with me. The difference being that subsequent assembly runs will be drastically cheaper. If I can run 1000 boards for $3 each within a week, I'm happy with that. That's $0.03 per placement, I think that's extremely reasonable, since I only have to pay myself and the landlord. AND they will be able to get moderate (100-500) quantities within a week if they want. Even if 2 weeks they don't need to pay me crazy expedite fees, nor deal with the long process of re-sourcing a BOM to suit the supply chain in China.

The pure parts cost on this board is low, maybe $20 total. There are two parts, a PSU and a specialized IC, that make up half the cost. The PSU I am sourcing direct from the distributor in China, the IC from Digikey but the price is actually higher overseas. The overall price difference between DigiKey and China is negligible. Passives are so cheap they're basically free. A reel of 10,000 resistors is $20 on Digikey. Not worth thinking about at these volumes. They are taking the risk and the initial expense so that they can focus on what they're good at, growing their business, and I can handle the nitty gritty PCBA details. Assuming their business survives otherwise I think this is a fantastic arrangement for both of us.

Of course, we will see how true this is once they sign the contract . I hope that explains my reasoning better. If you don't have employees to pay, don't need to be competitive on a large scale in the PCBA business, get power for free, and want to have fancy machines for fun, it's easier to justify.


And yes, 500sq. ft. is tiny, this will be a cramped room. Here is my idealized room plan after getting the machine footprints and measuring the room. I believe I can get everything seen here for ~$120k, including a service contract and training. The PnP will have to come out quite a bit from the wall to allow room for access to the rear feeders, which may well break the conveyor chain. That will be annoying but I'll live with hand loading boards into the oven. Alternately I could place the magazine loader after the PnP and once it's full spend a few minutes feeding the reflow oven. But at least that gives me some time to leave the machine alone (we'll see how that pans out...). With a realistic CPH of 6-7k and 9 PCBs per panel I should get a panel every 10 minutes.

[SVFeingold]

Had to break up that huge post. Janekm you're right, Macrofab is probably not optimized for these runs. It's about the same cost per board they quoted for 1k.

Now then on to the updates. I visited the Kulicke & Soffa service center today and spoke with a couple of their techs and a sales guy. They helped me out tremendously in understanding what to look for since info is so scarce online. They even gave me the operator's manuals and service manuals for all of the machines I was considering.

As for the feeders, this is how it was explained to me:

Yamaha and Assembleon machines were basically the same machines until Assembleon launched the iFlex line. The pneumatic feeders are indeed cross compatible between Assembleon and Yamaha, up to a point. The point being where both Yamaha and Assembleon developed their own electronic feeders, and here there is a fork in the road. These are NOT cross compatible, nor are they forwards/backwards compatible. You can't use electric feeders in a machine made for pneumatic and vice versa. I got to examine both feeders up close to get an idea of how they work and the differences. The electronic feeders seem pretty badass, and they each have 2x Maxon motors in them. No wonder they're so expensive!

As for the Assembleon machines, some of the GEM series machines had the option to use the ITF/electronic feeders. As did the Assembleon MG series machines that came after. The MC series machines which came after that use the electronic feeders as standard. The TTF (twin tape) feeders are pretty cool too, they can support two separate BOM items which was my main concern and the feed pitch is adjustable for each reel, at least on the electronic feeders.

On top of that, RFID feeder recognition is an option on the more recent pneumatic feeders (with the blue/green handles) and standard on the electronic feeders, but if the machine does not have that feature built into the feeder bank then you're hosed. It sounds like a very neat feature for ease of setup.

As for K&S I did get a good impression from them. The fact they are a 30 minute drive away is something I don't think I can overlook, so I have committed to an Assembleon machine. Which one is the question, I have gotten quotes for the Gem Topaz Xii, Opal Xii, Emerald Xii, MG-8, and MC-1. The MC-1 quote was $66.5k. The MG-8s are somewhere around $40-50k which the techs told me was a little bit high. One of those lots however comes with 600 (!!!) feeders. Even if 500 are trash that leaves me with plenty, and the cost to get a feeder repaired/calibrated at K&S is $95 each. If you're getting the feeders for a song then $95 is extremely reasonable for a manufacturer repaired/calibrated feeder in my opinion.

I can get an Opal Xii, MG-8, and the 600 feeders for $80k (single lot). Unfortunately I don't have room for two machines. I believe the MG-8 is the most flexible option as it can place 25mm tall components, long connectors, 0201 without breaking a sweat, and has force-control heads for through hole and small press-fit placement. It can also place up to 45x100mm components. The only downside is it's a little slower at 7.3k IPC9850 but that not a problem for me. I'll take the flexibility over 2x the speed any day. Beats the hell out of spending 14 hours manually assembly 20 boards. 

The feeder maintenance they do in house at the service facility and they do have quite an array of spare parts. The techs seemed very knowledgeable about the machines. Good guys based on my encounter. Will Assembleon be around in 5 years, will they have good market penetration, etc... I don't really care. As long as they're around for a few and can support my machine I'll be happy.

All in all I feel like the 2 weeks I've spent googling everything possible about these machines is starting to pay off and I'm getting close to a package that will serve me well. Now just need to get that contract!