Catch up with Chris

What's been going on at the factory while we've been away? Chris catches up Melissa and all of you listeners on all of the new people, machines, and processes that have been introduced during our break. 

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Transcript

Chris: 0:08

welcome to the PickPlace podcast, a show where we talk about electronics manufacturing and everything related to getting the circuit board into the world. This is Chris Denny with Worthington.

Melissa: 0:17

And this is Melissa Hough with CircuitHub.

Chris: 0:19

Welcome back, Melissa.

Melissa: 0:20

Welcome back, Chris! And we're finally back on schedule,

Chris: 0:24

Yes. Thank you for getting us on schedule.

Melissa: 0:26

You're welcome. I'll do I'll do my best.

Chris: 0:29

Lord knows it would not happen alone. That is the exasperated sigh of a mother who's frustrated with her podcasting partner, not keeping up with his responsibility. Sorry, Melissa.

Melissa: 0:49

It's alright. It's all good.

Chris: 0:51

Well, I'm halfway through listening to our episode with Tom. That was great. I enjoyed that. He's a good interview. Actually. No, I think I did finish it. No, I did finish it because I remember his pet peeve.

Melissa: 1:01

Pet peeve. Yes,

Chris: 1:02

Pet peeve?

Melissa: 1:03

Mmhmm.

Chris: 1:05

His pet bee named peeve. It was good. That was, that was fun. He was a good, he was a good time. So if you haven't listened to that episode listen back to it. And, I think you'll enjoy it. Some good topics in there. what's the topic this week, Melissa?

Melissa: 1:19

Today's topic is catching up with Chris.

Chris: 1:22

Oh yeah. And this is only because while Melissa has been focused on one super highly important task for a long time, I've been working for marginally important tasks, but many of them over the course of time. So more to explain than just, you know, keeping tiny human alive.

Melissa: 1:43

Yes, baby. I had a baby. If you're just listening in, and... Now I'm back to work, doing this podcast.

Chris: 1:50

And she's so stinking cute. And she is the best behaved baby that has ever existed.

Melissa: 1:56

No.

Chris: 1:57

in on a three hour sales meeting the other day and didn't say a word the whole time. And she was awake. She wasn't even asleep.

Melissa: 2:03

Because of many paces. Back and forth.

Chris: 2:07

Mom was working hard to keep her that way. Very

Melissa: 2:10

she's pretty good. She's pretty good.

Chris: 2:12

Excellent job. So good mom, good baby is a quiet sales meeting and it was very productive.

Melissa: 2:18

Yeah, it was I was gonna get into that, but I guess I'll be going backwards to

Chris: 2:23

That's okay. Let's let's, let's do the, let's do this. Um, uh, what was that Christopher Nolan movie? Um, uh, oh, Tenet. Let's do it. Tenet style. Start from the, start from the end.

Melissa: 2:34

Yeah, so Well, we basically wanted to do this episode because , I wanted to familiarize myself with everything that has been going on

Chris: 2:43

And you're just getting back like this week or last week. Is that right?

Melissa: 2:46

yeah, this is I think the second week or third week. I don't know.

Chris: 2:52

Mom

Melissa: 2:52

Time eludes me. Yeah, oh my god. Less gray matter, definitely.

Chris: 2:58

So it's been a while. It's been a while. So, uh, all the way from April. Okay. All right. So yeah, a lot to catch up

Melissa: 3:04

Yeah, and I figured, figured the listeners might be interested listening to this as well. So we had our wholesales team, CircuitHub's sales team we have about, third of them are in London. So we actually had our wholesales team over in our factory this past week.

Chris: 3:21

Mm hmm.

Melissa: 3:22

yeah, it was, it was really great, I think, for

Chris: 3:25

really was

Melissa: 3:26

Some of them hadn't ever been to the factory, so that's just like a wonderful experience. Being able to actually understand firsthand all the problems going on,

Chris: 3:35

Problems? I'm sorry, I'm not sure I'm familiar with this word. Problem? What problems going on?

Melissa: 3:43

Oh goodness.

Chris: 3:44

No, but I agree. Um, just to like, well, from their perspective, just to understand how it's done,

Melissa: 3:50

Yeah.

Chris: 3:51

you know, first of all.

Melissa: 3:52

Not problems, just challenges.

Chris: 3:55

Yeah, like, no, I mean, I was joking, Melissa. Obviously, like, there's, there's problems, but it's like, good to like, go, oh, that's why that's a problem. I know you

Melissa: 4:05

yeah. That's why we can't do this. That's why we say no to this, or that's why that's actually difficult and we don't want to do this

Chris: 4:11

So now instead of, instead of me always telling them, no, we can't do that, they'll go back to their customers and say, are you crazy? No, we can't do that.

Melissa: 4:19

Yeah.

Chris: 4:20

I've been to the factory. I know how difficult that is. Well, just, it's not that it's difficult, it's just that we're not equipped for it, right? So like one of the things we talk about quite a bit is, like conformal coding. We're just not equipped to handle conformal coding yet. We don't have all the right technology and everything. And so we partner, yeah, in house. So there's a super professional, uh, conformal coding contractor, just down the road from us. I mean, they're, what, maybe 30 minutes away, um, 45 minutes away maybe. And, that's all they do is conformal coding. Right. That's all they do. And, and so we found it easier to partner with them rather than do it in house. And now by bringing the sales team in, they got to see, you know, how difficult it is and, and why it made sense to outsource that for a while. I mean, eventually we do want to bring it in house, obviously. What was also nice about having them out is seeing everything sort of through their eyes, like, and just seeing, seeing their experience of it. So I didn't get to spend all my time with them while they were doing their tour. And for those of. The audience that aren't aware, like when we do tours of our factory, we do, we call it a self guided tour. And it's not that you're just walking around the factory reading and like reading a plaque that explains the area you're like there, there's a person there's, you know, each. person in the factory is explaining what they do and why they do it a certain way and what value they're adding to the product. And it's awesome as opposed to, I remember when I was, working at another contract manufacturer, the owners of the sales manager would, would take. Potential customers or other people through the factory. And you just sat there and kept working. It was kind of awkward and strange, you know, um, you didn't get to interact with the people walking through., and so initially at Worthington, that's how we did it too. Like I would do the tours and, and I'd feel super uncomfortable giving a tour and like, not like introducing anybody, you know, just. It was weird.

Melissa: 6:13

Yeah. That is really awkward.

Chris: 6:15

it is

Melissa: 6:15

You know, it's awkward for both parties too, cause you're just like watching someone do their work and they're pretending like you aren't there and...

Chris: 6:24

exactly. And then Neil and Rafal, the owners of Worthington are like, what do we, let's just have, just let them walk around and, the person knows how to explain it, just have them explain it. And then they'll, they'll show them to the next person that explained what they do next. Then just have them walk around the factories simple. So that's how we do it now. Um, but I would follow that. I follow the sales team for part of it. And just kind of, just listened. I would just kind of stand back because I had never really... Taking it myself. And I know by just being present, it's going to change how the factory tour is normally done. Cause maybe it'll speak differently knowing that I'm listening as opposed to it's like, all right, that's an unfortunate consequence, but it was great, like it was great to just like observe it and then, and then just to see the sales team like light up every time a connection was made, you know, it was like, Oh. That's why ABC, you know, or, Oh, you're so and so I've talked to you a hundred times and this is the real person, you know, it's so great to meet you kind of a thing that was super cool. All right. So. Great. And then we had a great meeting. We talked about all kinds of things, goals, what we're trying to achieve, not just like sales goals and like financial targets, but like capabilities and capacity and user experience and how to make the software better for customers and that kind of stuff. So it was, it was awesome. It was a really great meeting. We have one heck of a sales team. Don't be afraid of them. They're, they're good people.

Melissa: 7:55

Yeah, and I think it's, uh, something I want to say is that they're not really strictly a sales team.

Chris: 8:00

Yeah, that's a good point. Sorry. That's a good point.

Melissa: 8:02

Our sales team is really involved in, customer success and customer support and yeah, really advocating for the customers to help them get their products.

Chris: 8:13

Yep,

Melissa: 8:14

they're not, they're, they're not just trying to sell you something.

Chris: 8:17

No, as a matter of fact, the way that it works is they will, uh, obviously they are trying to sell. They're trying to find new customers and to get, to get them to use the platform. But once they use the platform, they're staying with them and they're, they're continuing to like, Hey, is everything working well? Are you satisfied? Do you have any problems or anything we can help you with? Like, uh, and then, you know, they become a point of contact when they do need resources from the factory to do additional things and, and, um. Yeah, it's, it's a great team. Really happy to have them.

Melissa: 8:46

Yeah. I guess, uh, speaking of teams and people, I kind of divided this, episode into a few different sections, that being, let's see, people, machines, and processes.

Chris: 9:00

hmm.

Melissa: 9:02

So I wanted to talk about people. I know you can't specifically talk about specific people, but I guess, can you speak to, has like, has the team grown a lot? I know when I go in there, there's just a lot of

Chris: 9:16

people. Yeah. Yeah. So sure. Yeah, we definitely have. We've been, I say a lot of hiring, a lot of hiring for us is like hiring three, four people, you know, um, but we have done that and, and kind of spread them all out into all different areas and cross train them on a lot of different things. It's been working out great. Hired a lot of young people and, there's always this This tendency towards like, Oh, kids these days, they don't know how to work hard and yada, yada, yada. It's like, uh, I don't, I don't buy that. Like they know how to work hard. Like you just, they just need coaching and they just like, they don't. If they're not working hard, they just don't understand yet, and you just show them and then they're like, Oh, I get it. All right. This is how I do it. And I don't know, it's, and they're just sponges. They just soak it all up and learn so quick. And there's strength there, you know, and we've had a lot of good success with hiring, out of high school and actually over, on CircuitHub's side, hiring some. You know, engineering level people. And, it's been good. We've grown quite a bit. I'm trying to remember, we had three shifts over at CircuitHub's factory for a while

Melissa: 10:22

Yeah, quite a while.

Chris: 10:23

Yep. Quite a while. So, but.

Melissa: 10:26

yeah, over, well over a year

Chris: 10:28

Yeah, okay. Well, Worthington has been trying to build a second shift, at least. It's a little trickier, just because of our scale is a little bit larger, , and the space is just, anyway, it's, it's just a, it's been a little bit trickier for us to, to pull it off quite right. But we have been pulling it off and, but we've been growing a second shift, which has been going well, sort of at, like, critical work centers, And, uh, I can speak more about that a little bit when we get into processes, but I'd rather follow our outline here. Cause the next thing in the outline is machines. So, um, yeah, we have, we're coming up now on our one year anniversary of having our new pick and place machines, which seems crazy to me. It seems like we just got them. And in podcast land, we sort of did just get them. I think we've only had like four or five episodes since we got.

Melissa: 11:13

No. Surely you've had more than that.

Chris: 11:17

I'm sure we've had more than that. But yeah. So all, all the anniversary means to me is that we don't have a warranty anymore. That's all

Melissa: 11:22

Oh, no.

Chris: 11:26

But, uh, but also like we're finally building confidence. You know, I think we've had pretty good confidence all summer. Really late spring and summer, but it takes a long time to get there. Like. It's hard to really express the complexity of these machines because it's so much more than just a machine. It's like all these processes outside of the machine. It's like the way you program them, the way you prep them, the way you load them, and how it touches on every aspect of your business. it's really hard to fully articulate just how involved these machines are and their software is in every aspect of our business like every aspect the database of devices and how we use that data and the database of Like panel dimensions and where else we pull that from and how we like it's everywhere It was just so complex and Yeah, it was overwhelming, but we're finally at the point where we've totally independently of myself or anybody else at the company, the SMT team came up with a great idea where they rotate out once a week on all of the various aspects of the SMT area. And what that means is they sort of like musical chairs it like, so like every week they just shift over one. So, you know, if Lisa is running the, my data machine week one. And Ivana is running the Fuji machine, that week and Chris is doing more setup that week. Well, then the next week they all just shift over one. Now Lisa's running the Fuji machine. Ivana's doing setup and Chris is running the My100. And then the next week they shift over one. And now Chris is doing the Fuji machine and Lisa is doing the setup and Ivana is running the MyData machine. So they, the cross training is like getting super, super strong and everybody's really comfortable with each machine, which has been a great experience. So they just. They, they just identified that need and just tackled it on their own. Yeah, it's awesome. We have such an amazing team. Like literally , it's unbelievable. I mean, we work very hard. Like I say, we like, but I mean, we, as in collectively the whole company work hard to make an amazing team, you know, um, see episode, what was it with David Mulherrin?

Melissa: 13:37

Mm.

Chris: 13:39

It was all about that. Um, but yeah, it's working out great. Programming is much faster now. Like the database is getting very large. We have some custom software we've written that have helped speed up our programming process, which is nice. So it's just firing on all cylinders. And so now the great thing is like we had when the day one, when those machines arrived, we had the accuracy, we had the speed. Everything that those machines would deliver for us was already there. It was the process that was a mess, because we didn't know what we were doing yet. And so now, the process is there. And we're getting the accuracy and the speed still, and it's just firing on all cylinders. And it's just, it's so exciting. And, uh, as, as listeners might've heard in a previous episode, we're looking to sell our, uh, my data equipment. Not that there's anything wrong with it. Like I said, we're using it every single day, but we just want to standardize on one platform. There's just a lot of different reasons why that's important. And, um, so if you're interested, give us a call. Uh, it might be sold already. But yeah, it's just, it's super exciting. So. Very happy to have that moving.

Melissa: 14:45

And I see you have, uh, we now have a doc.

Chris: 14:49

We have a dock. Yes. And I really hope this is a word that translates well into other languages.

Melissa: 14:58

Shipping. Shipping

Chris: 14:59

A shipping dock, a loading dock.

Melissa: 15:01

a doctor.

Chris: 15:02

Yeah, no, not a doctor. Uh, not, not like a port in a Marina.

Melissa: 15:07

Ah, yes.

Chris: 15:08

Yeah. A shipping dock. One, one that a,

Melissa: 15:10

a Worthington CircuitHub yacht,

Chris: 15:12

yeah, an 18 wheeler or a semi truck, a tractor trailer, a lorry would back into. I'm trying to think of all the different terms. Yeah. So we can unload like very large equipment. Now, the way that it used to work is we used to have to, um, we would hire a rigger. Uh, which, that's another word I hope translates well into other, other languages. Basically, uh, they were just professionals at moving big stuff. Like, this is all they do, is move big, heavy things. And so they would show up with, um, trailers that they could, Literally drive a forklift off of on, you know, the trailer would lower to the ground so they could drive a forklift off and then it would pick back up and then they would pick up the machine and pull it off the trailer with it. And then they would use the fork truck to bring it into the building. But now that we have access to the building's loading dock, well, I should point out we have the whole building

Melissa: 16:04

Mm,

Chris: 16:05

so we used to share our building with another, uh, tent, uh, Um, Tenent?

Melissa: 16:11

Tenant, yeah.

Chris: 16:12

Yeah. After talking about the Christopher Nolan movie, now I'm like, I got the word.

Melissa: 16:17

I'm the one that's supposed to be forgetting words, Chris, not you.

Chris: 16:21

Tenent, not Tenet. Yeah. Those, those do sound very similar with an American accent. Um, so now that they're gone, we have access to the entire building. We've expanded our whole space. So, we used to be in... I don't know, 6, 000 square feet, maybe 8, 000 square feet. And now we're like 24, if I had to guess something like that. It's, it's a lot of space. So we have a lot of room for expansion. Might not be 24. I'm 20. I don't know. I'm, I'm, I'm bad with like. Estimating these things. And it's bad enough. Like our listeners in Europe are like feet. What, what, who measures things with their feet? I don't know how many square meters that is. I'm sorry. Um, but yeah, so that's been exciting to have access to that space. So we've been able to spread out more and, and that, that spreading out has, has enabled a lot of things, which again, we'll get into in process a little bit. Um, we got a new stencil printer. Have you seen our new stencil printer, Melissa?

Melissa: 17:21

I haven't.

Chris: 17:22

Oh, it's

Melissa: 17:23

go see it.

Chris: 17:24

It's really pretty. It actually is like aesthetically pretty. You know, like cars can be pretty, like you look at a Porsche

Melissa: 17:32

like the...

Chris: 17:33

yeah, the machine itself is just very pretty. You walk along and you see a Ferrari, you're going to like, Ooh, that's a pretty machine. Right. And this is literally just a pretty machine. It's nice to look at. Um, but it is so crazy accurate and it has, it has something called closed loop feedback, which we did have a whole episode on stencil printing. And I think I touched on it, but basically what it means is there's a machine right after the stencil printer that measures the results from the stencil stencil printing process. It measures the accuracy, how far shifted it is in the X and the Y dimensions, how much it is skewed, how much it rotated the stencil on the, on the board itself, and what it can do is it can report back to the stencil printer. And so every time it does a print. It says, Hey, this is how far off you were. And then the next print, it'll adjust it by. You know, an appropriate amount. It's, it's not one for one. There's like a fancy algorithm to know just how much to adjust, but it just makes, so your print results are like perfect every single time. It's amazing. So super happy to have that. The other thing is it can handle really thin boards. So our old stencil printer. When we got like 0. 4 millimeter, 0. 6 millimeter thick boards, we had to put them on dummy boards. We had to literally tape them to thick 1. 6 millimeter boards and then process them that way. Now we can handle them automatically. Just put them right in and it handles it, which is cool.

Melissa: 18:57

And, um, larger panels. Is

Chris: 18:59

And larger panels. Yep. We had one customer that kept telling us like, Hey, we'd love to do business with you guys, but our boards are this big. I told the sales guy, I said, I said, Connor, as soon as, as soon as we get this machine online, I'm going to let you know. That we can accept their orders and we let them know and we adjusted our software. And so now if your board didn't quote with CircuitHub before, because it was too large, it might quote now because we can handle larger boards now, which is exciting. And we might be able to handle larger, uh, so that stencil printer is now, Uh, not the limiting factor in the maximum board size we can handle. Now it is our pick and place machine because we actually bought the compact version of the pick and place machine. That's not the regular size version, but probably our next machine will buy the regular size version so that we can handle even larger boards. Um, maybe we'll see. Um, but then we can handle up to 710 millimeters, which is 26 inches, 28 inches, something like that. I think it's. I think it's 28 inches. That's a big board. That's a really big board. That's a coffee table. So that's been super exciting. Let's see. What's, what else is on our list, Melissa?

Melissa: 20:12

Got a magazine unloader.

Chris: 20:14

Yes. Okay. So, , a magazine unloader is, well, what's a magazine? Uh, I feel like we could, I, I actually do, I would love to have a whole episode on automated board handling and like what all these machines do, but basically. You load a vertical tower, a small like handheld vertical tower. It's like the size of like a, say like a microwave oven, about the size of microwave oven, maybe a little tall, like a tall microwave oven. If you, you took the footprint of a microwave oven and just made a little taller, that's about how big these magazines are. And then you fill them with your circuit boards as they come out of the reflow oven, if they're a double sided board. So when you, um, finish building the first side and you fill this, you fill this, you flip them over. And you put them into this magazine. Now you carry this entire magazine. I think it holds like 40 boards, something like that. And you, you bring it to the very front of your SMT line now. And what this does, what this machine does is it has a little pokey stick. I call it the pokey stick. And it, it, it's very technical. The little pokey stick, it pokes the circuit boards one at a time and pushes them onto the assembly line. So we, what we used to have to do is we had to put them on racks and then we would hand load our double sided boards onto our assembly line one at a time. And it was time consuming, you know, it was, you know, and considering, um, when you pay pretty high labor rates here in the United States, you know, it, that becomes a pretty significant expense. If your labor rates are lower overseas, oftentimes the labor rates are significantly less than the United States. It's not as critical to have this level of automation, but we invested in it. It was not cheap, but it'll probably pay for itself in like a couple of years, maybe less, so super exciting to have that. Yeah, we'll definitely have an episode dedicated to board handling. I actually think that might be more interesting than it sounds, Melissa. Okay.

Melissa: 22:03

Okay,

Chris: 22:06

All right. What else? What's next? What's next?

Melissa: 22:10

The Ursa

Chris: 22:12

Oh yes. Yeah. Okay. So. We may have talked about this in the past. We'll definitely have a full episode dedicated to this, but we bought a, , I'll call it a big boy selective soldering machine. This is, this is actually a machine designed for, a certain, German automotive, uh, manufacturer. And I'll give you a hint. The machine is called the 3 Series. It is super, super cool. So we have a new selective soldering machine coming online soon. What I'm excited about this machine, I'll get into more details about it in another episode, but what I'm excited about this machine is, um, it, it has a proper fluxing station, preheating station and soldering station. What does that mean for our customers? That means we can get incredibly good hole fill, even on really thick, high layer count PCBs. Like we can, we should have no trouble filling the holes on these PCBs now, which is a challenge with a lot of, um, lower end selective soldering machines. And frankly, almost impossible by hand. Like you have to, you can do it, you can do it by hand, but you have to have special equipment, preheating and stuff like this to, to do it right. So very exciting. We do not have that hooked up yet. Uh, I'm actually issuing a purchase order as soon as we're done with this recording to our electricians to get the power run to it. We're waiting for quotes back from our ventilation, supplier to get ventilation done. We have a plumber. We're still waiting for one quote back from a, uh, plumber to get the plumbing quotes to get the air and the nitrogen connected to it. It's a big machine. So, um, we got a lot of work to do still, but yep, that's coming online soon.

Melissa: 23:57

Let's see. Oh, I added this one because I'm not even sure if this is new, but I saw it in the factory yesterday and I was like This is new to me, so, which is the x ray part counting machine.

Chris: 24:09

yes, yes. Uh, that for sure we have to have a dedicated episode on that. That is,

Melissa: 24:16

cool machine,

Chris: 24:17

it's a super cool machine. I don't wanna, I don't wanna, there's like, there's a lot to it. Basically, it uses, it uses x rays to count parts. And, It's

Melissa: 24:29

just, what?

Chris: 24:31

It's so cool. It's so cool. We'll have, well, let's have a dedicated episode on that. We'll table that one for later, but basically what that means for our customers, super, super, super accurate part counts on your inventory. When, when we're holding inventory for you, what else we got?

Melissa: 24:46

I think that's all the machines. Now let's talk about some processes.

Chris: 24:50

I feel like there's,

Melissa: 24:52

Are there a new ooh, that's all you have on the list. Mm,

Chris: 24:55

okay, I'm checking my list. I'm going to pull it up. I feel like there's some, oh yes, okay. I just added one. This is probably because I just added one more thing, uh, just before we started recording, we have a new, conveyor. Again, we're talking automated board handling for catching boards out of our reflow oven.

Melissa: 25:11

Mm hmm.

Chris: 25:12

This, this thing I, okay. So I had talk about pet peeves, Melissa. When, before I came to Worthington, I I've mentioned it. Uh, on the getting to know Chris and Melissa episode. Um, I had been into and out of, uh, dozens, if not well over a hundred, , different electronics manufacturing facilities in my career before coming to Warrington Assembly and, um, one thing I kept seeing over and over and over and over, and I mean, wholly 50%, maybe, honestly, maybe even as high as 80 percent of the businesses I went into did not have anything at the end of the reflow oven to catch the boards. We may have talked about this before because it always blows my mind. People would just stand there. They'd be like, hey Jim, here come the boards, you know, and they would stand there and catch the boards. The, okay, A, the boards are hot, okay, so it hurts to catch these boards. You don't want to, like, B, If nobody's there, you know where they go? The floor. They go on the floor is where they go. Okay? Uh, we call it the drop test. Uh, or they would just like set up a table and they would like build a ramp out of cardboard. I'm not kidding. I'm not kidding about this by the way. I've seen this. It would be one thing if I saw it once, I saw it multiple times. I probably saw it at least five or more times. They would literally just set up a table and they would use packing tape to tape a ramp out of the reflow oven to catch the boards. I'm like, you've got to be kidding me. Uh, so one of the very first things. I did when I came to Wardenton Assembly is we didn't have a proper reflow oven, we bought a proper reflow oven, and around the exact same time that we bought this reflow oven, we bought a, uh, used conveyor to catch the boards. And now this is like a big, it looks like a, um, It looks like the conveyor that you use at a grocery store, like a big, flat, wide, black belt that just, you know, catches boards coming out of the reflow oven. And it just never stops. It just progressively turns so that it catches the boards. But the problem with that, as you can imagine, is there's an end to that conveyor. And once it reaches the end, an alarm goes off and it says, Hey! You know, I, I, I've stopped and so you got to come grab the boards. I can't catch anything more. This new one will actually have sensors on it that will only turn on when it detects a board that is about to exit the reflow oven.

Melissa: 27:48

Ah,

Chris: 27:49

and then once it has exited the reflow oven, it will turn off. So it'll actually cue up. The, the boards as they come out and, and it should save a lot of walking around and emergency having to catch boards and stuff like that. It gives you way more time to get down there and grab the boards and rack them up or put them in a magazine. Very excited about that. So as you can tell, we definitely have to have an episode. If I haven't said it already, have I said it already, Melissa? On automated board handling. Just kidding. I know I've said it. All right. Uh, process. Um,

Melissa: 28:24

We talked a little bit about this. With regards to Well, no, you did. We talked a little bit about this already. With regards to, um, the Ascentino team. Go, go,

Chris: 28:36

Yep. That's an example. So that's an example of a process we've changed where, um, you know, we, we rotate each team member. Um, we also do cool things like we, we focus on doing our changeovers, like an F1 pit stop. Uh, where

Melissa: 28:52

go, go, go!

Chris: 28:52

don't know, like legitimately, we will, when we can tell it's the end of the, the last panel is about to come out, somebody will make a bunch of noise. Whoever's the person operating the machine, like, okay, ready for the changeover, like they'll make themselves heard and. Everybody kind of drops what they're doing and comes over. We change out the nozzle nests. We change out , the feeder carts. We change out the program. We empty the waste bins. Uh, we empty the dump bins for the, uh, the reject parts. There's a lot of different things. And then when you have four or five people, all attack it at once, you can do your changeovers in like five minutes. So that's a process we've changed over, which is pretty cool. It, it, it doesn't always, Like we're not always able to pull it off as well as we'd like to, because not everybody's always there when we need them to. But generally speaking, we do try to work together as a team and it's really sweet. Okay. So other process, Oh, having more space. I touched on this a little bit earlier. Just having more space just makes things more efficient in general. You have to make sure that you're more efficient enough. To outweigh the expense of the extra space,

Melissa: 29:53

Yep, yep.

Chris: 29:53

which is tricky. And I'm not sure that we've achieved that yet, but at least we have room to expand and increase our capacity, increase our head count without like being on top of each other anymore. But it just like, it makes it so that you can have like, instead of. A workbench that is sort of cross-disciplinary where this workbench has to be used for A, B and c operations. You can have three workbenches for operation A, operation B, and operation C, and they can be dedicated to that. And you don't have to tear down and reset up that workbench to do a different operation. Um, you can, uh, you can do things like, for example, when we got our new Fuji machines, we, we couldn't fit them in the building without taking out old pick and place machines. So, Like it was a really painful transition because we lost all this capacity practically overnight while we learned how to use the new equipment. Whereas now we're going to get more Fuji equipment. We're not going to take out our old equipment first. We're going to, we have the space to bring in the new equipment, get up to speed with it, make sure everything's going well, and then make the switchover and bring out the old equipment, you know? Um, yeah, that was Melissa. That was painful. Oh, it really was. That was a very stressful time in my life. I'll be honest. As far as like, uh, work is concerned and not personal life. That was definitely the most stressful period of my career, that transition, which is why I understand why people don't want to change platforms.

Melissa: 31:21

you did good, Chris.

Chris: 31:22

Why? Thank you. Uh, let's hope the customers agree. Um, let's see what else you got here, Melissa.

Melissa: 31:31

I guess looking at So what were the bottlenecks back in, you know, April versus

Chris: 31:38

Sure.

Melissa: 31:39

I guess the machines have probably played a huge role in, um, how they've changed.

Chris: 31:45

Yeah. So bottleneck was almost always SMT back in You know, before the Fuji machines and still in April while we were still getting up to speed with them, um, those pick and place machines, you know, they just, you know, it's, here's what it is. Whenever you have a work center that requires a lot of training and has finite resources, like a pick and place machine. You tend to find a bottleneck, right? Because only certain people know how to operate it because it takes months and months. And honestly, if I'm being honest, years before you become really comfortable with it. And you have limited resources. There's only so many machines. There's only so many feeders. There's only so many nozzles, right? You tend to find a bottleneck versus let's say an operation like deep handling boards or, you know, bubble wrapping boards to ship. Um, The training in those work centers, I wouldn't say it's trivial. It's not overnight. You're not going to train somebody immediately, but it's not going to take years to train somebody. Um, and all you really need is a workbench and some inexpensive tools, like a V scoring machine is going to be a couple thousand bucks. Um, you know, or a pair of pliers, if it's mouse bites, you know, like it's not, it's not super expensive. So you can expand your capacity in those work centers. You cannot expand your capacity easily. In, a pick and place machine work center, or the other one that we used to hit us quite a bit is our selective soldering work centers. So by building out a second shift, that's focused on those work centers of selective soldering and, um, pick and place, we have dramatically expanded the overall capacity of the entire factory because the rest of the operations can grow more easily than. Um, than those work centers can. I'm generalizing too much. Cause like inspection, for example, it is very difficult to grow. What helps there is the fact that, these machines are way more accurate than our old machines. I think those old machines were just not accurate because they were old. I'm sure they were very accurate brand new, but they're just like. The boards just come out perfect every single time. Like, we built this order recently for, um, uh, a customer and it was, I wanna say it was like, I, I don't think it was 10,000 boards. It was the high thousands. I wanna, it could've been like six, seven, maybe 8,000 boards. It was the high thousands. And I wanna say it was like 50 or 60 placements per board, maybe more. I think we had, we had seven defects on the entire run. not even confident it was all pick and place. I think maybe some of it might've even been like somebody sticking their thumb on a board before they put it in the oven. Um, yeah, it was, I mean that these machines are super accurate. So when you have super accurate machines. And you have 3D AOI, which offloads a tremendous amount of manual inspection work, it, it makes that inspection process less of a bottleneck. It can still become a bottleneck because frankly, it is harder to teach a person to become a high quality inspector, you know. person who really understands what a finished product is, it's harder to train that person to do that than it is to train them on a pick and place machine. It just is. It just is. So that can quickly become a bottleneck, but we're working hard to get ahead of it. Um, what else we got, Melissa?

Melissa: 35:18

I added this in here, just cause I guess I wasn't sure. How are things on like the park shortage nowadays?

Chris: 35:27

I think it's better. I think it's better. I don't think we're out of the woods yet. Um, I know we're still having, like, we're still, you know, talking to customers and saying, Hey, look, we found this at a broker. This is the only place we're able to find it. Are you okay with us buying from this broker? Here's the details on it. We would never just buy from a broker without disclosing it to a customer. We always, always, always like if we're buying parts and not telling you where we're buying them from, it's because we're buying them from authorized distributors, DigiKey, Newark, Avnet, Aero, uh, Mouser, right. Um, but if we have to get them from. A non authorized reseller. We, we will disclose that immediately. I think we're doing less of that. I think it's still happening, but I think we're doing less of it, but because I don't get involved in that super much, I don't know that, um, I'm in the best position to answer that question. It's also, I think our customers are sourcing their own materials more often than they used to. Um, which we, we can

Melissa: 36:28

a whole nother topic.

Chris: 36:30

that's a can of worms I can't even get

Melissa: 36:32

Oh, man.

Chris: 36:33

We definitely should have, I think it would be great to have a customer on the show, to talk about their experience for us to reflect our own experience about what it's

Melissa: 36:44

Yeah, it's kind of have their perspective

Chris: 36:46

I think that would be really, really nice. Yeah, I agree. So, um, yeah, maybe we'll line that up for a future episode, but it feels better. But I'm pretty sure it's not totally better yet. I don't think it's pre pandemic levels of part availability. So, um, but yeah, that's, that's mostly what's, what's new. Oh, and I got a puppy. She's

Melissa: 37:10

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oh my god. She's so tiny too.

Chris: 37:15

So if listeners aren't already familiar with my wife and I have had pugs since we got married and we had to put our put put down our 17 year old pug in April, May, somewhere around there. And we had already had another one. But, uh, we could tell we, you know, uh, that we would like to have two so that they could entertain each other and get some energy out, you know, and not have a lonely dog, dogs don't like to be lonely. And, uh, you know, my wife and I are busy people. So we got a second one. Oh my God, she's so cute. We got her, she was two and a quarter pounds. She was tiny. She was so tiny. I give you permission to include

Melissa: 37:52

Oh, I will. Oh my gosh. She's like this. She was the size of a foot

Chris: 37:58

Not even like the size of a hand. So tiny. Now she's maybe the size of a foot. Yeah. And, uh, our feet have found her one too many times. Poor thing.

Melissa: 38:08

Yeah,

Chris: 38:09

A little squeaks.

Melissa: 38:10

I know, I brought my baby in when you brought your puppy in. It's like, oh my god, my baby's huge! Like,

Chris: 38:17

Humans are, humans are slightly larger than pugs, let's be honest. Yeah. Yeah. And, and uh, when she was born, she was probably, I, I would, if I was to guess, I would assume newborn pugs are, are half a pound or less like, Really tiny, really, really tiny. Cause the mother gave birth to seven. So yeah, I mean, if they're, if they're even a pound, she's not carrying around seven pounds in her belly. She can't, that's crazy. Pugs are only

Melissa: 38:45

much do pugs weigh?

Chris: 38:46

15, 16, a female pug, maybe 16 pounds, you know, like.

Melissa: 38:50

weight.

Chris: 38:51

Yeah, there's no way they could be a full pound. So, um, she must've been super tiny versus a baby is anywhere from what? Five to like 10 pounds, you know, a human baby, uh, poor mother's that 10 pounds. That's a lot of poundage for the baby. Yeah. Let's not get into

Melissa: 39:10

Yeah, that's uh,

Chris: 39:11

Um, but yeah, it's, uh, exciting stuff that that's a personal thing, but she's so cute and I can't wait to finish recording so I can go play with her.

Melissa: 39:20

Aw,

Chris: 39:23

I'm sure you're saying the same.

Melissa: 39:25

Oh, about my baby. Yes, yes. I think she's hopefully asleep right now, so.

Chris: 39:30

Oh, good. Okay. Let's let her sleep. Let's not wake her up. I

Melissa: 39:34

So we

Chris: 39:34

I hope you're wearing headphones.

Melissa: 39:35

so we should've been whispering for the whole podcast. No.

Chris: 39:38

This, this is the ASMR episode of, uh, PickPlace podcast.

Melissa: 39:42

Oh god.

Chris: 39:45

All right. Beautiful. Anything else, Melissa?

Melissa: 39:47

um, yes before we stop recording. We of course have to do our favorite part.

Chris: 39:52

Oh, of course. I, I, before we did the pet, pet peeve, I wanted to know if there was anything else, like actually, you know, like boring to talk about before we got to the exciting

Melissa: 40:01

No, just like just I'm ready for the excitement.

Chris: 40:04

All right, this is the cherry on top of the sundae. Let's go.

Melissa: 40:07

Um, and yeah, so I guess I I'll be providing the pet peeve this week I've been waiting a while

Chris: 40:13

Nice.

Melissa: 40:13

For this one. Um, it's very random. Probably most of our pet peeves are. Um, yeah. Um, but, uh, with a baby, as you might expect, I've been doing a lot of laundry,

Chris: 40:28

Mmm. My goodness. I can only imagine.

Melissa: 40:30

so my pet peeve is in this video. Why? Okay, I don't know if this is just only the washing machines that I've interacted with in my life,

Chris: 40:41

Mm hmm.

Melissa: 40:42

but have you ever had this when it says

Chris: 40:44

I love appliance pet peeves.

Melissa: 40:46

one minute left, but then it's literally like 15 minutes longer, and then you're just standing, you're standing there, you're like, okay, one minute, I'll wait here, you know, and I'll just wait for it to finish, and then you're just standing there, and you're standing there, and you're like, oh my god. This is definitely not one minute.

Chris: 41:04

This is way more than a minute. Like you're looking at your watch. Yeah,

Melissa: 41:09

and then just all the time you've wasted just waiting for your washing.

Chris: 41:14

That's like watching the status bar on a computer at 99%. You're like, really? Are you really at 99%?

Melissa: 41:21

yeah. Have you had that happen

Chris: 41:23

Yes, of course I have. Yes. I, on a washing machine specifically. Yes, I have. Yes. Because I will be like, Oh, I'm right here. I'll throw it in the dryer as soon as it's

Melissa: 41:31

Yeah, yeah.

Chris: 41:32

great.

Melissa: 41:33

You're like, wow, what perfect timing.

Chris: 41:35

I know because otherwise it's going to sit and I'm going to forget about it. Yeah, exactly.

Melissa: 41:40

But why? Can someone tell me why that it does that? Why isn't it accurate?

Chris: 41:45

Well, I really hope that world, somebody, an engineer from Whirlpool or somebody is listening to this and calls us up and lets us know what kind of, what kind of washing, what brand washing machine do you have?

Melissa: 41:56

I think it's a whirlpool.

Chris: 41:58

Yeah, they're real popular in the States. Have you ever heard of Speed Queen?

Melissa: 42:02

No.

Chris: 42:03

Okay, Speed Queen's where it's at. So when you go to a laundromat, almost all of those are

Melissa: 42:08

Yeah. Okay.

Chris: 42:10

And they make, um, like a, like an at home version of these things. And that's, that's what my wife and I picked up is the Speed Queen. They are significantly more expensive Then like an LG or a Samsung or a Whirlpool, like triple, but we got ours. We found ours on Facebook marketplace. So we spent a lot less than that, but they are amazing. Yeah.

Melissa: 42:37

Why? Are

Chris: 42:38

know what I'm going to do?

Melissa: 42:38

do they wash the wash the clothes better or are they speedier?

Chris: 42:42

So I will say they, they are speedier for one. They, they, uh, this particular washing machine gets the, the, um. The clothes like super, super, super dry. So you're using less energy to dry them. Um, you can also define the fill. So one of the things that's happened, which I think is great. I think it's important that it happened is, um, perhaps it's regulation. I don't know, but washing machines auto calculate how much water to use for the load now, right? And. And they're conservative with that because they're trying to conserve water. And, you know, here I am in Massachusetts and like the mountains and I have like a 400 foot deep artesian well, like I don't have water problems, but you know, in cities they got water problems and in Los Angeles they got water problems. You know, you live in Phoenix, you got water problems. So I think it's, it's good that, that, you know, we're, we're conserving water in general. Um, but. This particular style, you can, you can define how much you can put, you know, one little sock in your thing and you can say, fill that washing machine to the brim and it will. So the nice thing about that is sometimes you do need to override it. Like you happen to know these are like, okay, so, um, many people in the audience know that I like to brew beer. And when I, When I use the rags from brewing, they get really dirty. Like, it's, it's a messy process to brew beer and these rags get really, really dirty. If I had a small amount of water in, in, you know, a conservative amount of water in the washing machine, there's simply like, I feel like there's simply not enough water to saturate You know, like I'm going to saturate that water immediately with how much dirt is in these rags versus if I can give it a little bit more fill, it will do a better job of, um, getting these rags clean for me. So that's, that's another example. Plus they're just built like a tank. They're so heavy. They're so heavy. I recommend movers if you get them. They're so heavy. I was like, this was a bad idea, moving this myself with my wife.

Melissa: 44:52

Oh, wow. Is it in your basement?

Chris: 44:53

No, thankfully we have it on our first floor, so it's just a couple steps. We pull it in our garage, up a couple steps, and it's in a, it's in a, uh, we have a downstairs half bath, and it's in the half bath downstairs, so I didn't have to, like, wheel it downstairs or upstairs or anything like that, but, um, yeah. It's, uh, they're heavy, and they're, they're, They're like all stainless steel. There's no plastic anywhere to be found on them. They're heavy duty machines. Yeah, it's like they're, it's, it's overkill, but they, they last like forever. Like you can get 20, 30 years out of these things. So,

Melissa: 45:26

Well, yeah, they're designed to be used, like, 24 7

Chris: 45:30

they're designed to be used 24 seven by people who don't care about the, about treating them well, you know, like you get your whirlpool you have at home. You're not going to slam the door. You go to a laundromat. You're just like, just shove it closed. I don't care if it's full, just shove it closed, you know? And yeah, so they're designed to take abuse. That's the other thing. So if you find them on Facebook marketplace or Craigslist or something like this, or whatever is your local, you know, marketplace du jour, um, I highly recommend the Speed Queen. Yeah. But now Melissa, this is going to drive me crazy. I'm going to be like looking at the countdown timer on our speed queen and it's going to say like 29 minutes to go. And it's like, okay, I'm going to set my watch for like 27 minutes, you know, to set an alarm for 27. I'm going to walk over and I'm going to watch this thing. I'm going to, I'll do some follow up. Okay. I'll let you know

Melissa: 46:17

how long it

Chris: 46:17

does the, I will let you know if it, if it ends at a minute or if it goes on for like an extra five, I will let you know, follow

Melissa: 46:25

That's what all of our listeners should do. We'll just take a

Chris: 46:27

I agree.

Melissa: 46:28

Based on what brand of washing machine you have and how long it actually takes for

Chris: 46:34

We're the new Consumer Reports of, uh, of the world. I love it. I love it. That's a good pet peeve, Melissa. That's a good one.

Melissa: 46:44

Thanks, I feel

Chris: 46:45

I've got a few queued up I've got to get off my chest, so maybe in upcoming episodes.

Melissa: 46:50

then I'll

Chris: 46:51

We got a bunch of

Melissa: 46:51

keep you on schedule so you can get get rid of your pet peeves

Chris: 46:55

Please do. Please do. I need to be kept on schedule, otherwise I will get distracted with all these other projects I wanna accomplish. So, um, great. Thanks Melissa. As always, please email us contact@pickplacepodcast.com or XUS at Circuit Hub

Melissa: 47:13

Oh, God. Oh, no.

Chris: 47:16

or at w Assembly. I don't know what the verb is. Send us a message on X, send us a message on X, at CircuitHub or at WAssembly. It's bad. It's Twitter. Okay. Tweet at us.

Melissa: 47:40

Yeah. Okay.

Chris: 47:41

And as always, we like to just remind everybody, if you have a friend that you think would enjoy this show, please let them know. We'd love to have.

Melissa: 47:48

Thanks for listening to the PickPlace podcast. If you like what you heard, consider following us in your favorite podcast app, and please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts from. Thanks, Chris.

Chris: 48:00

Thanks, Melissa.