PCB

PCB PCB

For a little PCB prototyping business aim on serving some of the best-known and most respected tech brands on Earth, fast turnaround is much more than a marketing gimmick – it’s really a promise. PCB model assembly is by no way a simple activity, and small, timeconsuming hang ups can develop into lost orders and angry clients in an industry where 48-hour turn-arounds are the norm.

To be able to be able to reliably produce results on such short time frames, PCB assembly plants need to maximize just about any facet of their workflow for speed and consistency. In the centre of this demand is an inherent conflict between optimizing the assets and resources you already have or even adding additional resources and assets to your own environment.

Essentially, what fast-turnaround PCB fabrication assemblers wish to understand is if they should hire extra aid and make more use of their machines, or buy outdated, better machines which can let them create the most of their present staff.

Imperfectly Optimized PCB Planning Systems

Before leaping to the problem of if machine or manpower power really generates fast turn arounds, we need certainly to be certain the PCB preparation system itself has already been performing optimally. Since William Ho asserts, component placement may be the bottleneck of any PCB assembly line.

Essentially, that bottle neck is made up of 2 parts – component sequencing and feeder agreements. PCB producers need to choose the optimal arrangement of parts and then assign them into the proper feeders

There are nearly unlimited techniques PCB component sequencing and feeder structures can be carried. Choosing the most efficient solution is simply not achievable in a business context – maybe not, at least, with current technical technology, and certainly not over a two-day timeframe.

PCB assemblers to a tight deadline use genetic algorithms to find out near-optimal intending systems without becoming lost on the way to the”perfect” solution. While this isn’t a challenge that can be solved with the current technology, it’s important to not forget that no present PCB assembly procedure is absolutely efficient. This becomes an extremely complicating element for high-volume PCB prototype companies.

More Machines Means More Set Up Time

Understanding that any given PCB assembly process must be significantly less than absolutely efficient, so we could turn to time constraints on work flow procedures.

SMT machines aren’t plug and play devices. Even efficient machines require change-overs of least one hour – if you run eight to ten installments a week, that means that you’re losing an whole day in production time weekly.

Changeover times could become a gigantic drag on production, especially when dealing with tight turn arounds. Time, once lost, cannot be retrieved, and every moment of time saved boosts revenue.

Since SMT machines may encounter nearly infinite production chances on a single run, and tend to be tasked with making many runs each day, any change over period is downtime. A UIC shows in a simple pair of graphs based on SMT machine revenue generating period, every second counts – an hour of downtime for a line that generates $10 million annual costs $5000.

When there are always ways to enhance the overall efficiency of a PCB assembly line, there is no solution to account for about $5000 in unnecessary losses. Considering that some SMT machines usually takes upto 4 hours to install for one run of a prototype PCB, taking advantage of each work day is by far the superior option.

More over, installing additional production lines does not affect the productivity of each individual line. While it might seem to improve PCB assembly turnaround, adding more workers and lines might cost more than its worth if over all production volume will not also grow. Because of this, keeping workers late and even hiring an extra shift is definitely the better option.

Night Shifts Can Generate More Worth

Maximizing the amount of time that each machine may run is your ideal method to ensure efficacy on short-turnaround PCB meeting projects. Finding workers keen to put in overtime – or hiring an entire night shift – is one of the greatest approaches to ensure that you always meet deadlines and also minimize downtime.