I don't know much about PnP but I don't think anyone can really suggest anything without an idea of a budget...
I'm wanting to investigate what it will cost me to buy a small PNP line for in-house small volume jobs. I'm constantly sending 20 and 30 boards away for manufacture all the time, and the time might just have come to buy a manufacturing line.
I'd like to be able to do 5000ish parts per hour, thats not so many, reliably, down to 0402 and .4mm pitch QFN's etc. i'll be looking for a stencil printer, placer and oven.
I'd consider good 2nd hand gear, or new.
Any Suggestions.
QuoteJust out of curiosity, if you are only making 20-30 boards at a time, why do you need 5000pph capacity? When you say "constantly", do you mean every couple of days? And are these large boards with a lot of parts (like dozens of separate BOM line items)?
yes, multiple times per week. would be making 200-300 boards per week at the moment. BOM count varies of course, one of my more common items has 56 line times ( across both sides ), others are 30, 72, 14QuoteRunning a line is a giant pain in the ass. We still run a manual stencil printer and manual reflow, but I have a few 4C's for P&P'ing. Most of my boards are small, two sided and have 10-20 unique BOM items. I get them panelized in 10's and I can easily paste, place and reflow 100 sheets of 10 in a day, which is 1,000 boards.
Yes it is. But its more of a pita,having to work around Subbies. I want more control!QuoteIt's a bit of a pain in the ass to set everything up for a run, so if you are just thinking of 20 at a time, I'd perhaps reconsider.
On the Juki we use now, ( at the sub contractor ) that can set the jobs up in sub 1 hour. Thats not so bad, i have thought.
>I'm running around 500 boards a month and I'd estimate I am at the very bottom end of what makes sense for in-house assembly with automated >machinery.QuoteBut if you want to give it a shot, look at the 4C's. But what sort of budget are you looking at, and where are you located? If you are thinking of buying new, you're probably looking at the $200-300k range for a new entry level line from a brand name supplier.
I'm looking at New, but $200k seems a lot, there are options that seem feasible around the $50k mark.
I dont think an assembly line really makes sense, if you cannot have it running 16+ hours a day. You just need to find the right manufacturer. If you are sending out 200-300 boards per week, this is a stocking issue, not manufacturing. Are you really sending orders for the manufacturer's ten times a week? Cannot you just stock some 5000 of them and have the manufacturing ready for a three months, instead of doing the pick and place on a daily basis?
You should really consider an alternative before you make a slave from yourself.
Yes it is. But its more of a pita,having to work around Subbies. I want more control!
On the Juki we use now, ( at the sub contractor ) that can set the jobs up in sub 1 hour. Thats not so bad, i have thought.
I'm looking at New, but $200k seems a lot, there are options that seem feasible around the $50k mark.
.....They are now "DDM Novastar" and I'm sure the machine is a lot more now, even though it's still very entry level. The main brands like Juki/Assembleon/MyData/Universal I think start more like the $200k range for the machines, IIRC.
.....They are now "DDM Novastar" and I'm sure the machine is a lot more now, even though it's still very entry level. The main brands like Juki/Assembleon/MyData/Universal I think start more like the $200k range for the machines, IIRC.
DDM Novastar has some compelling low-volume options. They specialize in low-volume prototype. They can probably make .4mm QFN placement in the ball park of $50k. I have spoken with them and they are high on my list of options. "MyData" class of PNP is far beyond what I ever want in-house.
.....They are now "DDM Novastar" and I'm sure the machine is a lot more now, even though it's still very entry level. The main brands like Juki/Assembleon/MyData/Universal I think start more like the $200k range for the machines, IIRC.
DDM Novastar has some compelling low-volume options. They specialize in low-volume prototype. They can probably make .4mm QFN placement in the ball park of $50k. I have spoken with them and they are high on my list of options. "MyData" class of PNP is far beyond what I ever want in-house.
The big thing I didn't like about the DDM/Novastar was that it was slow as hell for placing larger chips and I didn't like their centering. They used centering fingers for small passives and a kind of "nudge box" for QFP's and such. Maybe it works well, but I haven't seen any of the big guys doing that and I'm always suspicious of methods that deviate from tried-and-true norms.
On the price though... $50k for a machine that can do 0.4mm is one thing. But IIRC the guy is looking at $50k for the whole line, so you have to include an automatic screen printer and reflow oven, plus at least a couple of conveyors and (really, if you're linking it all up in a line) a couple of board elevators at each end, otherwise you wind up with someone running back and forth loading boards in and out. There's also feeder cost... I've seen brands that have feeders that range from $200 to $3,000 (not even talking vibratory feeders). On my old Dynapert, the tape advance mechanism, tape cutting and cover removal was all handled on the machine itself... so the feeder was basically a bent piece of sheet metal with an air plunger to advance a cog and index to the next part. On my Fuji IP, the feeders were "smart" and had motors, air, a data connection and parts counters built into them. They also cost well over $1k each, IIRC.
To me, buying used is the best deal going, especially if you get feeders (and you usually do). But P&P's are complex electromechanical beasts and there's always a reason someone is selling theirs... my limited experience is the majority of those being sold have some kind of issue. I like the idea of buying used from the OEM. At a minimum, I'd only buy something that had factory support available, if it was for a production environment.
The big thing I didn't like about the DDM/Novastar was that it was slow as hell for placing larger chips and I didn't like their centering. They used centering fingers for small passives and a kind of "nudge box" for QFP's and such. Maybe it works well, but I haven't seen any of the big guys doing that and I'm always suspicious of methods that deviate from tried-and-true norms.
I dont think an assembly line really makes sense, if you cannot have it running 16+ hours a day. You just need to find the right manufacturer. If you are sending out 200-300 boards per week, this is a stocking issue, not manufacturing. Are you really sending orders for the manufacturer's ten times a week? Cannot you just stock some 5000 of them and have the manufacturing ready for a three months, instead of doing the pick and place on a daily basis?
You should really consider an alternative before you make a slave from yourself.
We looked at Essemtec's machine at APEX and it was interesting, with high speed jetting of solder paste in the PnP machine. It eliminates the need for stencils and stencil printer, which gives some nice flexibility. I don't remember the cost, but I don't believe it was in your ball park. We were looking for a faster line in the 200-300K range. I think this was a little lower than we needed speed wise at 6000 cph. That goes down a little with paste jetting.
I have a paste dispenser and it was the reason I ended up with a real printer. The dispenser as noted by others is really only a last resort tool and nearly useless for fine pitch.
I have a few PCB's that are double sided but only have 5-6 0805 passives on side 2. For these the dispenser is great. Faster than setting up the printer and precision is not needed.
I used to work for a company where they had their own PnP and oven. One of the issues they has was that gold plated PCBs worked much better than tin plated ones. All in all it was a bitch to setup.
IIRC it took half a day to change from one product to another. For low volume stuff it may be an idea to have 2 or 3 low cost low volume lines so you can keep 1 or 2 lines running while the other one is converted for a different product.