Startups that manufacture electronics are faced with a limited set of choices when it comes to getting their hardware assembled. Each of the methods below have an array of possible approaches, some good some less so. I will try to cover what I’ve seen in my quest, hoping this will be a good overview of what’s out there. If I miss details or interesting methods please let me know and I will keep this list updated. This is part one, where I look at options of assembly without getting into a real commercial pick and place.
Doing it manually. Everybody started here, including Adafruit, Sparkfun and others. It’s great and fun at first and you learn a lot about surface mount technology (SMT) and also gain respect for how hard quality assembly really is. And we’ve seen countless ways people do this around the world. Some spread paste with a toothpick or dispense with a DIY syringe, then place parts with tweezers. This works for about 5 minutes before you go crazy, especially if you go smaller than 0603. Others laser cut mylar stencils to speed up the paste deposition. I etch my own stencils from soda can aluminum, this is fast and works great. For placement I’ve seen people make some fancy ball bearing jigs to help them move their hand, a bit better.
This is very cool and I almost did this myself but I think it’s overkill and a bit slow and … more expensive than it needs to be for what it does, but I can appreciate the effort of its creator. One advantage of this fixture is the ability to better hover over larger PCBs while placing. FWIW the maker even went as far as mounting a camera to help placing the parts, a nice touch, but looking at his video of it in progress the angle of the camera looks weird and looking away on a monitor when you work with your hands is what cuts the speed. Here’s another one of the same kind for reference. I do the same as these, only probably faster, with my aquarium pump pick and place (hold your laugh for a moment there) which cost me about $20 in parts, took about 30 minutes to make, and has full stereo vision – my eyes, can’t beat that for the price. I like to brag about this method not because I’m using it, but because it’s probably the best 100% manual method I’ve seen. Why you ask? I can do up to 7-800 CPH (measured!) with it on less complex boards. The only downside is obviously having to sit there all the time, with some neck and back strain, and the part alignment is less than ideal, but paste reflow really helps. I’ve assembled many thousands of PCBs this way, it works nicely and gets stuff done, but it’s not great. I wish I spent all that time developing new projects. So what is better than this?
