<div dir="ltr"><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">Rick:</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">You said something starts at the beginning of the year, which is great news, but you also mentioned something about a surface-mount line.</div><br>If you&#39;re still after that, you&#39;ll need our support<span class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">.  </span><span class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"></span>Along with the equipment you&#39;re going to need to pick out some CAD software<span class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"></span>,<span class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"> </span>and you&#39;re going to need to work out the particulars on the equipment you buy regarding the waste rails you&#39;ll be mandating.<br><br>There&#39;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.<br><br>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&#39;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 <span class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"></span>l<span class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">ine </span>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.<br><br>Then you find yourself essentially buying people that (hopefully) have proficiencies with various pieces of software.<br><br>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.<br><br>The other thing of interest is to always have a way to manually jump outside the software and load a particular machine &quot;by hand.&quot; You&#39;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&#39;ll need a chemistry / inspection lab -- it looks at the solder, the contamination levels, adhesion, and you&#39;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&#39;ll have to run the machines for a while to get that dwell correct.<br><br>Sorry, I&#39;m going on too long about the machines. I picture at least 3-4 competent people, and then on top of that you&#39;ll need some warm bodies whose main job is to just watch the machines. You&#39;ll also need someone to start writing the core process sheets, and then you&#39;ll need someone to fluff them (make them understandable by whatever generation of people you&#39;re buying, big task). You&#39;ll also need an engineer to lay out the flow of everything, and you&#39;ll find that that won&#39;t be right the first time and will have to change it accordingly.<br><br>Electronics are sort of a pain.  Once you think you&#39;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&#39;t mean you&#39;ve built something that works which someone else is willing to pay for.<span class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"></span><br clear="all"></div><div><span class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><br></span></div><div><span class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">On top of all that, you&#39;re trying to achieve a failure rate below 3% -- because there will be failures.</span></div><div><span class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><br></span></div><div><span class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">Don&#39;t forget, you&#39;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.</span></div><div><span class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><br></span></div><div><span class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">I would also set your shop up to run multiple shifts.  You won&#39;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.</span></div><div><span class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><br></span></div><div><span class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">I&#39;m sure I&#39;ve missed about 1000 details you&#39;re going to have to learn.  This is definitely far from everything you&#39;re going to need to know, it&#39;s just what flies off the top of my head.</span></div><div><span class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><br></span></div><div><span class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><br></span></div><div><span class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><br></span></div><div><span class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">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.</span></div><div><span class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><br></span></div><div><span class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">I feel so far behind on this stuff.</span></div><div><span class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><br></span></div><div><span class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">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.</span></div><div><br></div><div><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><font face="courier new, monospace">Regards,</font></div><div><font face="courier new, monospace">Thomas Pownall</font></div><div><font face="courier new, monospace"><br></font></div><div><font face="courier new, monospace">CADX Services, Inc.</font></div><div><font face="courier new, monospace"><br></font></div><div><font face="courier new, monospace">Tel: 585-624-1491 X101</font></div><div><font face="courier new, monospace">Fax: 585-582-1101</font></div><div><font face="courier new, monospace">E-Mail: <a href="mailto:tpownall@cadxservices.com" target="_blank">tpownall@cadxservices.com</a></font></div><div><font face="courier new, monospace">Web: <a href="http://www.cadxservices.com" target="_blank">http://www.cadxservices.com</a></font></div><div><font face="courier new, monospace"><br></font></div><div><font face="courier new, monospace">***********************************************************</font></div><div><font face="courier new, monospace">**************** Confidentiality Statement ****************</font></div><div><font face="courier new, monospace">***********************************************************</font></div><div><font face="courier new, monospace"><br></font></div><div><font face="courier new, monospace">Privileged/Confidential Information may be contained in this</font></div><div><font face="courier new, monospace">message. 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