EEVblog #684 - Ness SMT Manufacturing & Assembly Factory Tour

NOTE: This is a new version in 1080 50p

The founder and CEO of Ness Corporation Naz Circosta takes us on a personal tour of the companies impressive worlds class surface mount and through hole manufacturing facility where they produce hundreds of different Ness security and automation products.
It's no every day the CEO of a major company has the technical knowledge to take you on such a tour of their own production facilities!
He shows the Yamaha SMD/SMT pick and place machines, solder stencil paste machine, flying probe testers, optical vision inspection equipment, custom test jigs, and plastic ultrasonic welding machines. And also talks about buying a $1M Objet 3D printer, and the advantages of genuine high quality Fresnel lenses vs cheap generic ones in PIR sensor performance.

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This must be one of the best videos on the channel.
The CEO seemed like a genuinely nice person that knows and loves his job, and talking about it without the typical corporate / marketing BS and secrecy.
Combine that with the right questions from Dave and *boom*, pure awesomeness.

[mekatrol]

I worked for NESS in the late 80s and Naz was a very caring gentlemen. He ran a family orientated business and truly cared for his staff, the quality of the product and the customer. Its where I first learned how to program assembly for Motorola(64HC11) and z80 (64180) architectures working as an electronic tech (thanks to a temporary journey into Malloch Digital Design and the series 200). I can attest to the fact when Naz uses statements like 'girls on the production line' he means it in the most endearing way. Great to see NESS still doing so well after all these years. A testament to great leadership and a belief in your team and product. Well done Naz.

[DriverXSE]

A year later, I just watched one of the best walkthroughs on youtube!
I want more of these long and technical walkthroughs, were you actually learn something, and not just get fed some PR.
On top of that, a CEO who knows in detail how and what they are making, Love it!

Time for a retour soon? :)

Thank you very much for this!

[joshcryer]

This is absolutely incredible. It's some Transcendence level stuff, and to think a lot of that equipment is "old" hardware. I wonder what a state of the art system looks like. Kudos for this company for letting Dave have a look. I've never seen a tour like this before, but always wanted to see one. If someone knows of other tours like this they know of I'd love to watch them!

edit: would be especially interested with a tour of someone like this CEO who's extremely knowledgeable about the systems and a videographer like Dave who knows the best questions, I know this is specific, but I honestly never saw a tour like this before.

[freddyfredrickson]

When I was 20 years old back in 1995 I was working at a small board manufacturer who made 800 - 1000 boards a month. Yes they were that small. We didn't use any automation. We printed our own boards, etched them, tin plated them and then placed each component by hand and soldered them one joint at a time. That was fun times... The closest thing to automation we had was a process (I think it was called solder dipping) where we placed all the components into a single sided board and then literally dipped the solder side into molten solder and soldered all the joints at the same time...

I kinda miss them days...

[santospoland]

Fascinating! Really appreciate Naz Circosta's hospitality. It's not everyday that we can see the magic. Wonderful!

[botoxpig]

You are back on track. Thanks for the good effort.
Do not get upset by negative comments. They could be most useful

[podunkis]

Really enjoyed this video. It would be great to see more plant tours similar to this one. Special thanks to the Naz for taking time to lead the tour.

[Tokentools-weldersAu]

I have been using Ness gear for 3 decades, reliable, bullet proof and built with Aussie pride, thanks for the video.

[GadgetAddict]

Best video ever. Would love to see more of this.

[togsj]

Naz for Prez! What a great tour and such a gracious CEO to take us through.  Thanks for this Dave.  Love all your videos but this one is a stand out for me.

[jamiebeckf]

Great video Dave!
And thanks so much to Ness for allowing you to make the video and upload it.
It great to see some companies still have pride in their engineering.

[tomjones]

Wow, very rare for a CEO to know his own stuff so in depth. Typically a CEO would NEVER agree to a walk around of the plant explaining every single process lol Good on him...that is why he is so successful. In this day and age it is refreshing to see some competence in business!

[Icefumy]

I work in the SMT, nice to see other brands of machines used.
Maybe the guy should also invest in solder paste inspection as well, might yield a better result on SMD soldering, since some of the SMD problems are caused by small paste errors in as well...

We do own a AOI system to check every pcb on paste and placement errors, might be interesting to get one of those flying probe testers as well..

[Poundy]

Thanks Naz for taking the time to show us an Aussie company doing great things here @Home and realising there's more to the cost of doing business than just finding the cheapest place to have boards built !   

[billysgeo]

I would suggest you try and make it into a series. You know, maybe once a month or two, go there and have a more in depth discussion with Ness, or someone else from his stuff about different aspects of manufacturing. Since everything there is done in-house, there is wide range of things to talk about! From design and prototype testing, to software and user interface etc... I can easily see it being some of the most popular videos in your vlog!

[bbreeuwer]

It's already a somewhat older video, but big big big thumbs up. Not only a must see for every engineer who is involved in this field, but also for the very good questions, documentation and mostly the extremely honest response from Ness.
I know a lot of companies who bury themselves in all kind of weird 'secrets', which may be voodoo for unknown people, but are just a big joke for the insiders.
The attitude of this company is pretty straightforward. They are not going to pretend they have weird 'special' equipment. No they just simple have the skills, know how and are smart. That's where you can make the difference, even in western countries.

To bad it's on the other side of the world for me.

[billysgeo]

That's an immensely interesting video!
He touched a very wide variety of interesting subjects!!!!
Hats off!!!

[trustthewater]

Absolutely amazing. I know there's bigger/more advanced places, but it's hard to believe such tech exists.
Thanks Dave! HUGE thanks to Ness for allowing you to film this.

[John-gmty]

This has been one of the most enjoyable and informative videos thus far Dave, the collective "we" would probably have never had such an opportunity see such a production line like this, Thank you SO much.