Should You Buy an SMT Pick and Place Machine? Assembly Line Basics #1

A much requested video on my advice for companies/people deciding on whether or not buying a pick and place is a good investment for them. This is the first in a series called "Assembly Line Basics"

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[mikeselectricstuff]

As someone who's had an ancient but useable P&P for many years I totally agree with everything here.
Until you have actually run a P&P yourself you have no idea of how many issues you will run into. P&P is lots and lots of little issues to solve, any single one of which can ruin your day.

If you are buying a P&P primarily to assemble your own products, don't think you can make it pay its way by doing jobs for other people unless you can dedicate a full-time person to handle just this aspect- subcontract assembly is a TOTALLY different game from in-house production for multiple reasons.

As regards DIY, anyone can get an X/Y table going. That is not the problem. Feeders are the problem.

Do not expect to buy ANY P&P, from the oldest to newest and expect to be running boards in a few days. It is a big learning curve and will take many hours to get your process up & running.

[MichaelLPena]

Great overview. Your comment about solder paste task being 80% of all assembly problems is spot on. As someone who has 20+ years of electronics and assembly experience, if you get the paste right, you save yourself a lot of headaches and repair work.

[runestone]

Firstly, thanks for your excellent advice and opinions -- it's one of the best videos I've seen on this topic. One comment I would make about your 3rd category of manufacturer at 16:00 and their reasons for getting into P&P is also better control over manufacturing and delivery timelines. I fit squarely within that 3rd category. We've used a few established and reputable board loaders ("CM's") over the years and, while their quality is generally excellent, the wait times and variation in promised delivery dates is killing us. We have about six main products and all of those are specialist devices which require fairly short runs (200-1000 per line each year) but have high margins. For example, one of our products moves at a rate of only 200 units per year, but sells for over $4K per unit. I guess we're in an extra category, 3-B: low volume, high margins, and a need to save money, protect IP, control quality, but also require accurate lead-times and delivery schedules.

[KetogenicGuitars]

This is not meant to be offending comment. More like basic info for any youtuber. Your audio track would benefit greatly of using close miking(lapel mic or rode wireless) as you are producing otherwise professional content. I have special sensitivity for this kind of thing for my tinnitus gets exited by dominating room reverberation. Excess room reverberation created by Camera mic (when is too far from the audio source and room has hard walls) sounds basically like someone speaking from the bottom of an 8m concrete well. The reverb dominates and the delivered message is the second class citizen. I found it impossible to go on with video which has the most interesting topic. Dominating room echo can be very easily supressed to pro level by close miking i.e placing a lapel mic 20cm down the chest. At budget level it costs around 20$ to make pro-sounding speech track.

[ganeshshelke]

Informative video, looking forward for the complete series.

[GameProgrammer]

Thanks for the informative video. It makes sense for the novice, one man/woman army and dreamers.

However for any serious business plan, any new machinery comes with challenges and its learning curve. It also depends how much one is inclined to learn or has past experience of working on these. Also any business needs to invest in resources i.e. dedicated employees with specialties for the work, training and reliable machinery. For serious businesses i.e. they need to fulfill large contracts, down times, mean time between failure and other reliability metrics makes business sense for them to invest in rater expensive machinery when they calculate the losses vs savings by buying prosumer machines. These absurd expensive machinery are not immediately obvious to small hobbyist sort of business unless they sit down with pen, paper and do the calculations.

Well whatever works for a hobbyist and small companies they should invest in those.

[CollinBaillie]

2nd category: I _think_ this advice is really good, _if_ you're located in a place where finding a contract manufacturer nearby is relatively easy. If you live in a country, say a big country, where such contract manufacturers are nearly nonexistent, this would be very difficult. I _feel_ that here in Australia, that might mean a different assessment may be necessary.

[Excalibur]

Always enjoy your informative videos, thanks for sharing.

[fkiesel]

You are 100% right! Assembling boards efficiently ist much harder than it looks like.
As always, good software is as or even more important than the hardware.

[ChiefBridgeFuser]

One user case you didnt cover: we have a need for rapid prototype iteration. I can get pcb fab and stencil from china in 6 days for cheap. Assembling that thing by hand with 300-600 placements is hell. All the CN benchtop machines are a mess. The hobbiest OpenPnP machines are scary and low quality feeder'd.

Where are the other options?

[bobby]

When you started, how did you find customers?

[blessyponnachen]

Can you do more videos on how how pick and place works, reflow oven and component feeder in detail
As I'm a beginner in manufacturing of a device .
As I'm working in a medical device manufacturer
I want to learn in detail about how SMD components are feeded into the device & how it is assembled on the PCB n wot exactly happens in reflow &
What are the next steps or Phases involved after reflow process ?
Can you do detailed beginner video( 0 stage to final stage ) in this series or another series please ?

[ajrupani]

Very informative video. I learned a lot. Question for you, how big is your SMT line area 3K Sqft?

[mr.shredder]

great tutorial someday i am going to buy this and build hardware

[Dynamics]

Man! this is really informative video. I really love the information. I really like to get into the business

[SDX]

Could you please go into some detail on how mechanical / electrical feeders work. I mean what makes one feeder mechanical and the other electrical?

[khandoesthings]

hey, Very informative video, As someone who is wanting to get into this field as a CM, is this a profitable business to start? what are the hurdles if someone can point them out and can you get enough work to make the machines runs 24/7?

[chaseallen]

It would be really cool to have some training, from you or YouTube videos on the big boy machines. I have a very small startup am shooting to grow my business one day

[techtactics]

I want to do this in my country. Would it be possible to speak to you please? Looking to buy a used Juki pick and place machine

[williamhuang]

Hanzhen harmonic drive gear, strain wave reducer, robot joint, over 30 years experience