RE: robot for circuit boards

["Visser, Gerard" <gvisser@indiana.edu>]

Hall D Electronics:

Hi Elke,
  This is tough question, really. My opinion has always been, you can get assembly done by professional commercial assembly vendors, so it does not pay to have such capability in house. There are of course some exceptions that could be taken to this point of view. 1- very fast turnaround for prototypes is possible if you have the equipment and expertise in house. [But, you can also get very fast turnaround commercially, if you have $.] 2- some boards may need such special handling that you don't trust them to a commercial vendor. I think this was the motivation, in relation especially to the capacitors of Cockroft-Walton base, which are certainly subject to leakage current problems if handled roughly or soldered or cleaned with the wrong process. [But, there are many special boards in the commercial & military world too, and vendors who are used to such stuff.] 3- if a lot of repetitive rework is needed, e.g., replace some chips on a whole lot of assembled boards. [But again, you can find a company to do this too, if needed.]
  Probably for "normal" rework robotics is probably not necessary, just manual use of hot air soldering tools. But <1mm pitch BGA's for instance, that may just not work. I'm hoping to avoid such parts if possible.
  For the assembly (including visual inspection and rework to meet that) of 200 of the ADC100 modules (400 printed circuit boards), we have on the budget ~190k. _If_ we have this robotics machine available, and a full-time expert to run it (certainly not me!), it is conceivable that the assembly work can be done for less money. At least this would be my guess; say 17k for the machine maintenance that year, 10k for supplies, 50k for half a year of this expert's time, some money for the lab space to do this in.
  I don't know, therefore, quite what to recommend. I think we could certainly live without it, but if someone makes it a project to leverage the investment in the machine it could in the end save the project a significant amount of money. Until we know that, I think the electronics assembly costing should be based on commercial vendors.
  Thanks,
 
  Gerard

________________________________

From: owner-halld-electronics@jlab.org on behalf of Elke-Caroline Aschenauer
Sent: Wed 5/30/2007 6:16 PM
To: Elke-Caroline Aschenauer
Cc: halld-electronics@jlab.org
Subject: robot for circuit boards



Hall D Electronics:


Dear Mitch, Fernando, Paul, Chris and Gerard,

okay, I learned today that some time ago we bought a "robot" to assemble
circuit boards, we are still paying the maintenance costs (17k$/year).
Paul are you using it at the moment for anything.
If not is the need from Gerard or is there either need at JLAB or at
Mitch's place.

I'm sure Paul can give any detail needed on the robot. I'm writing as I'm
a bit concerned about having a 100k$ machine sitting there and paying in
addition 17k$/year for maintenance.

So please tell me if one of you could use the robot.

cheers elke

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