Rick:

You said something starts at the beginning of the year, which is great
news, but you also mentioned something about a surface-mount line.

If you're still after that, you'll need our support.  Along with the
equipment you're going to need to pick out some CAD software, and you're
going to need to work out the particulars on the equipment you buy
regarding the waste rails you'll be mandating.

There's a couple of ways of dealing with production.  One is you get the
primary gerber data and you have to put it up in an array. Old-school is
you know all the things you need to make the array work with your
equipment, new-school is you pay for some expensive software that is either
bundled with your equipment or not which has to be initially set up.

In order to start the SMT line without very knowledgeable persnickety
people, you most likely need to have some form of software that
incorporates this type of knowledge, such as OpenBOM and Arena PLM.
There's software that controls a single machine, software that controls the
overall production floor, software that controls your inventory.  I believe
the industry tries to avoid having individuals that understand all of these
things because people come and go, which would bring your line down, so
they invest in software and you end up with operators that understand
specific sections of the process along with a poorly written interface
program.

Then you find yourself essentially buying people that (hopefully) have
proficiencies with various pieces of software.

I would do some shopping to make sure whatever you pick, you enjoy, because
you end up living with it for a good long time.

The other thing of interest is to always have a way to manually jump
outside the software and load a particular machine "by hand." You'll also
need someone to understand how to get stencils -- old school was you get a
piece of stainless steel laser cut with a taper to it that reveals all the
openings for solder paste, then you have a machine applying a couple
hundred pounds of force pushing a semi-liquid paste into those openings,
then you lift the stencil and you (hopefully) have the right amount of
solder paste on each of the pads. At this point you should be able to run
some samples, at which time you'll need a chemistry / inspection lab -- it
looks at the solder, the contamination levels, adhesion, and you'd also use
an x-ray machine to check that the dwell temperatures are appropriate by
looking through the board and the ICs to check the melted paste (kind of
like looking for off-color elements on a CT scan). You'll have to run the
machines for a while to get that dwell correct.

Sorry, I'm going on too long about the machines. I picture at least 3-4
competent people, and then on top of that you'll need some warm bodies
whose main job is to just watch the machines. You'll also need someone to
start writing the core process sheets, and then you'll need someone to
fluff them (make them understandable by whatever generation of people
you're buying, big task). You'll also need an engineer to lay out the flow
of everything, and you'll find that that won't be right the first time and
will have to change it accordingly.

Electronics are sort of a pain.  Once you think you've built a good thing,
you need optical inspection equipment and x-ray inspection equipment
because we humans are not consistent enough to find all the defects. Even
that doesn't mean you've built something that works which someone else is
willing to pay for.

On top of all that, you're trying to achieve a failure rate below 3% --
because there will be failures.

Don't forget, you'll need a few of the well-dressed business casual types
for the meetings, a board room to have the meetings in which has Zoom and
big screens and links so they can present problems visually, along with a
method for taking notes and writing CYA documents.

I would also set your shop up to run multiple shifts.  You won't be running
fully-staffed multiple shifts, but the people who prep everything will need
a period of time which overlaps the people who make everything by a couple
of hours.  That will make your results a lot better.

I'm sure I've missed about 1000 details you're going to have to learn.
This is definitely far from everything you're going to need to know, it's
just what flies off the top of my head.



I believe I have 2 designs done, one with 3 variants and one with one
variant, then I have a FCC schematic done with an unfinished layout.

I feel so far behind on this stuff.

Remember, these FCCs will (hopefully) allow us to do all 5 types of
aircraft -- plane, helicopter, boat, transitional helicopter to plane,
cheaper one-way kind of drone (with hardware to facilitate change at the
last minute and covert actions).  That was the targeting on the sensors
that I was trying to account for.

Regards,
Thomas Pownall

CADX Services, Inc.

Tel: 585-624-1491 X101
Fax: 585-582-1101
E-Mail: tpownall@cadxservices.com
Web: http://www.cadxservices.com

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