Conveyers, An Episode You Didn't Know You Needed

Why would we dedicate an entire episode to conveyers, you ask? Because it just so happens to be Chris' favorite topic! Chris has an addiction to progress and conveyers are one of the best ways in a factory setting to achieve that (both literally and figuratively). We get an overview of the different types of conveyers typically used in a factory setting and get into the technical aspects of how to set conveyers up before venting about the end of daylight saving time.

Transfer inspection conveyer - https://vanstron.us/collections/transfer-inspection-conveyors/products/copy-of-ptb-460l-5m-20-long-pcb-transfer-inspection-conveyor

pickplacepodcast.com

Transcript

Chris: 0:08

Welcome to the PickPlace podcast. This is Chris Denny with Worthington.

Melissa: 0:13

That's not how we start our show,

Chris: 0:14

Sure it is. Oh, hey, no, I missed my whole thing. 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: 0:31

And this is Melissa Hough with CircuitHub. Wow. Rocked my whole world there for a second.

Chris: 0:38

Don't break my routine! Melissa.

Melissa: 0:42

It's okay. It's okay. So, welcome back, Chris.

Chris: 0:47

Welcome back, Melissa. Didn't mean to throw you off there.

Melissa: 0:52

Did.

Chris: 0:54

Sorry about that.

Melissa: 0:55

That's all right. Yeah. So, we're a bit short on time today.

Chris: 1:00

It's okay. We'll make it work. We'll make

Melissa: 1:02

we'll make it work. So, do we have anything to catch up on

Chris: 1:06

aside from I had a delightful, delightful vacation in Mexico City, one of, honestly, one of the most amazing cities in the world, I bet. I, not that I've been to many of them, mostly American cities, but man, what a city Mexico City was, just fantastic. I tell you, I went to a, I tell you, I went to a luchador. Or Lucha Libre

Melissa: 1:24

mhm, yeah,

Chris: 1:27

That's the best thing ever. Always the best thing ever. Absolutely. I learned all kinds of vulgar Spanish words. Oh yeah. I don't remember any of them but I remember everybody shouting them all around me. You have like six year old girls just like cursing out like these grown men in masks. It was fantastic. It was really something. I was like, Oh boy, this is quite a thing. But yeah, that's not why I went to Mexico city. I went to Mexico city for a Formula One race. And the funniest thing is my nephew goes my nephew came with us. He goes, we literally went from the lowest, the most like high class sporting thing there is in the world to the lowest class sporting thing. And I was like, Hey, that is not fair to Lucha Libre. And this was, we had a great time. But it's just like, they do the whole, it's just like WWE. They do the whole, they got their intro music and they do the fireworks and, you know, they just it was, they climb the ropes and get the crowd going. It was so much fun. I had so much fun. I had a michelada. You ever heard of a michelada?

Melissa: 2:33

I have, I've never had one

Chris: 2:35

So I, I don't know. I believe that every sort of like region does a micolada a little bit differently, but it's typically like a beer with clam juice, sometimes tomato juice. You put, you can put spices in it. There's a whole, like, I think everybody does it kind of a little bit differently, but in Mexico city, they put this like gooey, spicy rim around it. Almost like when you get a like a margarita and they put the salt around the rim, you know, they put this like gooey, spicy,

Melissa: 3:04

like Tajin

Chris: 3:06

I don't, I don't know what, I don't even know what tahini is. I'm, I am uncultured, Melissa. I couldn't do it. I, and I'm, I'm the adventurous one. Like I'm the one that tends to like go out on a limb and try all these weird things. And I'm like, this is great. I love it., I tried Melissa. I really tried to enjoy it. I really did. I didn't mind the clam juice in the beer. It was the, it was that, that sugary, spicy, weird rim. I just couldn't. Wasn't doing it, wasn't doing it for me. So I just drank the beer and enjoyed myself. But anyway, yeah, Mexico city, highly recommend, highly, highly, highly, highly recommend this city. It is amazing. A lot of my American friends were very concerned that I'd feel unsafe there. I never felt unsafe. Like I felt like, I felt like I was walking around like, you know, Greenwich village in Manhattan. Like it was just like beautiful neighborhoods, friendly people, dogs everywhere. So many pugs. There were so many pugs there. I like, definitely the most popular breed of dog in Mexico

Melissa: 4:10

Really, huh?

Chris: 4:11

for sure. Pugs. I saw so many of them. There was a dog park not far from where we were. There was like this big, beautiful park with fountains and everything. And a skate park, and I was watching the skaters, and there was a dog park behind it. And it was just, it was fantastic. But yeah, we had a, we had a wonderful time. What an amazing city. I can't recommend it enough.

Melissa: 4:29

Yeah. I'd love to go

Chris: 4:30

Oh my gosh, so amazing. And I'm so glad that Formula One goes there because I don't think I ever would have thought of visiting if it weren't for the race. And then I was like, well, let's do this. And then I'm like, wow, what an amazing city. It was like, I'm not sure what I enjoyed more, the city or the race, but either way, it was great. Yeah, didn't we say we don't have much time today?

Melissa: 4:47

Yeah.

Chris: 4:48

I waxed poetic for five minutes about what an amazing

Melissa: 4:50

about your trip.

Chris: 4:51

is. Yeah. And the other thing is, it's very like, obviously it's a huge international city. It's very cosmopolitan, but. We were like some of the only English speaking people there, for sure. Like, even at the race we were completely outnumbered. I think it mostly draws, you know, people from Mexico. I don't think it's drawing a lot of crowds from a lot of, like, European or elsewhere. And so, it was funny, I was standing by the restrooms. Waiting for my wife to come out and this guy walks up to me and he's like, so where are you from? You know, in a heavy, heavy Spanish accent. And I was like, ah, you know, the United States. I told him everything. And, and I go, what, what gave me away? They're like, obviously, like, I realize I stand out. Like I'm in, I'm in Mexico and I, I don't look like a Mexican. I get it. Right. But what, what really gave it away? He goes, Oh, you're wearing shorts. Like what? Shorts? That's what gave it away? I'm wearing shorts? He goes, Oh yeah. He goes, Mexico city's way too cold. Nobody wears shorts here. And I'm looking around, you know, there's a hundred thousand people at this race. And I don't see anybody else wearing shorts. I, you know, it's like 75 degrees out. I'm thinking, Oh, you know,

Melissa: 6:01

that's not cold, friend.

Chris: 6:03

that is, that is yeah, for me, that is hot, you know, growing up in the Northeast, but to, to the Mexicans, they're like, no, this is cold, man, we're, we're wearing jackets and jeans. I'm like, you, you're crazy. I, but so then I didn't want to stand out like a sore thumb. So I wore jeans the rest of the week,

Melissa: 6:22

And then your leg's just boiled, boiled up.

Chris: 6:24

Yeah, exactly. I'll tell you though, I was fascinated by that cultural difference, like, because, because here in the Northeast we find, oh yeah, you're in the 60s, Americans are wearing shorts, you know, down there, it's like, not until the 80s that and then our poor European friends with Celsius, they're like, I don't even know what temperature that is. Anyway, it was great though. Loved it. Loved it. Loved it. Highly recommend. You know what else I highly recommend?

Melissa: 6:46

Conveyors.

Chris: 6:48

I highly recommend conveyors. Yes. Would you like to know why?

Melissa: 6:53

Of course I would. I would love to know why.

Chris: 6:56

Melissa has in our outline here. Why a whole episode on conveyors? Because it is my favorite thing in the world. it is the catnip of what I get to do. For some reason, I love it so much. I have I'm learning about myself. I have an addiction. I mean, perhaps a clinical addiction to progress, right?

Melissa: 7:21

I thought you were going to say conveyors.

Chris: 7:22

conveyors is part of it, but I have like a, there's two things I've learned about myself lately. I have a clinical addiction to progress. I have to be making progress in my life. Things have to be moving forward and I have to be, I have to see improvement. I have to see accomplishment in my life. Otherwise, I get very depressed and I can't handle it. So this is why I'm not very good at, like, doing the same thing over and over. Like, a lot of people in manufacturing They love, and a lot of our team here, they love to just be like, given an opportunity to just keep doing the same task over and over. And they really enjoy it. And that is just not how I'm wired. I am not wired that way. I can't handle doing the same thing over and over. I have to constantly be making progress and constantly be improving things. And I think it It is quite literally an addiction because when somebody has an addiction to something and they don't get it, they get like unhappy and depressed, right? And that's how I feel when I'm not making progress, is I'm like unhappy and depressed. And A similar sort of addiction that I have is, is an addiction to eliminating waste. Like, I, I really, really dislike waste in all forms. Like, I, I get uncomfortable, like, putting things in trash. Cause I think like, you know, this could be so much better. You know, this is still somehow like a Ziploc bag. It's like, this is still a perfectly fine Ziploc bag, you know, but then also I don't want to be a hoarder,

Melissa: 8:54

yeah, yeah.

Chris: 8:55

but in a manufacturing setting, these two qualities that I've found in myself, these two addictions I have are very beneficial and a way to apply them is to automate. The handling of the products that we're building. And that's where conveyors come in. They keep things progressing and they eliminate waste. So maybe we should talk about what a conveyor is in, in a PCB manufacturing setting, because you've seen all kinds of shapes and sizes of conveyors. You've been in an airport and you've walked on, you know, the. You know, like, like an escalator, but flat. I think they have a term for them in airports. I can't think of what it's called at the moment people shout at their radios to give me the name of them. But you know, that's the type of conveyor you go to the grocery store. You got the big flat belt and you put your, put your groceries on it and it goes to the barcode scanner all kinds of conveyors in a circuit board assembly. setting we can't use a flat belt conveyor like that when we build your circuit boards because a lot of times there are components on the bottom of these circuit boards that would disrupt the flow of that circuit board through the assembly line you know, if we're, if it were to sit flat, imagine you've got a great big tall 25 millimeter aluminum capacitor on the bottom side or something, you know, it's like, you know, the thing would topple over, no way you could do it. So what you have instead is you have these two thin belts. And when I say belt, like picture, picture a belt that you hold your pants up with, right? Except much more narrow. So typical, I don't know, Melissa, what's, what's a typical, like a one inch, what's a typical belt? Yeah. One inch, something like that. But in a PCB setting, those are typically maybe about five millimeters. So like less than a quarter inch, less than a less than an eighth inch. I'm not sure. Very thin, very, very thin. And you have two of these holding the long edge of the PCB. So you have and, and they're, you know, they're laid down flat. So then when you set the PCB on them they're, they can free hang all the bottom side parts without making contact with anything, cause they're just held on the two edges of the PCB. And then those belts are hooked up to motors and they can move the circuit boards down the assembly line. It'd probably be best, you know, if you're not familiar with what these look like let's say I can put here, let me put a couple I'm sure I can get a good one here. Yeah, here we go. I'm going to put a link to. These conveyors in the outline, if you want to include that in the show notes, because it would help to kind of visualize what one looks like. Cause otherwise I'm going to struggle to describe how they look. But the beautiful thing about them is, you know, I've been to so many factories and I've mentioned this before, like easily over a hundred different circuit board assembly shops, and I can't tell you the number of them that. Don't use conveyors at all. And it's the strangest thing. Like, yeah, they'll, they'll, they'll manually load a stencil printer. Then they'll manually load a ping place machine. Then they'll manually load a reflow of, and they'll manually load an AOI machine on and on and on. And I don't know how they stay in business because it's so wasteful. You have, you have people moving all these products and here in the United States. You know, people want to be paid and you can't, you know, you got to pay these people well, and to move a circuit board around, it seems quite wasteful. Right? So we use conveyors to do the same thing to move from machine to machine to machine. So between our stencil printer and our pick and place, and between our pick and place and our reflow oven, conveyors. Now. Inside of each machine, there is also a conveyor. So that's how these machines handle circuit boards, is they have an internal conveyor that pulls the board in, clamps the board in place, does its operation, unclamps the board, and then spits the board out onto the next conveyor. Our assembly line, like I'll just describe what, what our kind of, we have a couple of assembly lines, but what our primary assembly line looks like. At the very beginning of our assembly line, we have a bare board D stacker. So we can put an entire stack. of circuit boards just flat on top of each other before they have any components on them. Just, you know, just all stacked up 50 high, 100 high, whatever. And we set them inside of this machine manually. This is the first step where you do it manually. After this, it's all automated. And... This machine is designed to allow one board to drop from that stack onto the, the, the belt conveyor that I was describing earlier, and then load itself inside of the stencil printer, and it's super handy because you could just Load up a hundred of these, and then you never have to go back to the front of the assembly line again. Every time you build another board, it just sends another one in. It's super convenient. So that goes into our stencil printer, and our stencil printer and our solder paste inspection machine are butted right up against each other. We have no conveyor in between them. Which is, I don't know, kind of unusual. I think a lot of shops, they, they tend to put a conveyor between them. Because if they have a problem with the stencil print, they want to pull it off before it goes into the SPI machine, but we're limited on floor space, so we have these two just connected to each other. From there after our solder paste inspection machine, we do have... Just a single transport conveyor, just kind of like a workstation conveyor where in case there was a problem with that print as it comes out of the solder paste inspection machine, somebody can come over and pick that board up before it goes into a pick and place machine. But usually in an operation when things are going smoothly, It just goes right from the solder paste inspection machine to the transport conveyor directly into our pick and place machine. We have two pick and place machines in line. These, we've talked about the Fuji AMX machines before. And they are butted right up against each other as well. There's no conveyor in between them. Again, also, Slightly unusual. A lot of people like to put conveyors between each of their machines, again, in case there's any issues, but that's not how we handle it. They're, they're butted right up against each other. After that, we have a, what's called a workstation conveyor. So a workstation conveyor looks a lot like a transport conveyor, except it has sort of like a, has like a, a work table on the front side of it. And it's kind of, it's got like a half moon shaped scalloped, I don't know what you want to call it, area where, you know, a person can sit. And do some work. So a lot of times after it comes out of a pick and place machine, there's usually something that still needs to be done to it. There may be some kind of weird part that has to be hand placed. Maybe they came in loose. Maybe you know, you just want to give it a once over and, and, and see if everything looks okay. You know, there's all kinds of reasons why you want to look at a board or do something to the board before you put it into the reflow oven. Especially in our environment where we're, you know, we're building hundreds of something, not, not always thousands of something. You know, when you're building thousands of something, you just want to get that thing in the reflow oven, but when you're building hundreds of something, usually there's some other auxiliary step. You want to take and look at. So we have this kind of a workstation conveyor. Then it goes into our reflow oven, which again has a conveyor inside of it. A very high temp, you know, all, all steel, stainless steel designed conveyor because otherwise it's getting up to 250 degrees Celsius and it would you know, destroy anything else but steel. You know, another high temp material. So then it comes out the other end and at the other end of our, of our reflow oven. I know I've talked about this a hundred times, but it's my favorite thing in the world. We have a conveyor to catch boards out of the reflow oven. I, I've talked about this so many times on the show, I know I have. I've told everybody about this and they're sick of hearing about it, but I can't tell you how many shops I've been to that have nothing at the end of the reflow oven to catch the boards. It, it blows my mind. We had, we had a company visiting us months ago many months ago. We, we have, Companies visiting us often, but this is probably over a year ago. And, and I asked him, I'm like, Hey, what do you guys have at the end of your reflow event? Cause they're a competitor to us. You're a little bit further away, so it's not like exactly a direct competitor. And they're like, Oh yeah, no, nothing. We just. You know, we'll call somebody over when it's time for it to catch the boards. And I'm like, I can't, I can't understand this because the, the, the reflow oven conveyor, unlike all of the other conveyors in your assembly line, cannot stop.

Melissa: 17:38

It just keeps going.

Chris: 17:39

It just keeps going. It literally cannot stop because if it does stop, it burns itself up. Because even though it's made of stainless steel, it's not designed to just sit there 250 degrees. Plus you don't want to let any circuit boards inside of it bake at 260 degrees, right? You got to get these things out. And so if there's nobody there to catch it, guess

Melissa: 17:58

falls on the

Chris: 17:59

Just falls on the floor. I

Melissa: 18:01

That's crazy.

Chris: 18:03

don't understand it. I just don't understand it. But anyway, we have a, we have a conveyor at the end that is specifically designed to catch boards out of a reflow oven that on a continuous basis. It has an array of sensors that point down and they're looking at the reflow oven. And they're waiting to see a board come towards the edge of the reflow oven. When those sensors see a board, then the belt turns on and collects the board. As soon as it, as soon as that board is on the conveyor, it shuts off. So you, you've created a bit of a buffer. So it's, it's sort of like a buffering conveyor. So that board will just sit there forever until somebody picks it up. Or another board comes and then they just queue them all up. So you can queue up five, six, seven, eight. You know, it depends on the size of the board on this conveyor. So it's kind of like an accumulating conveyor, and then from there, a person will come over and they'll rack the boards, you know, and get them ready for the next process. That's basically what our assembly line looks like. Remember how I said that at the very beginning of the line we have a bare board de stacker? That wasn't entirely true, but it was the easiest way to describe our assembly line. If you have a double sided board you can't stack these boards up on top of each other because they've got all kinds of components on the opposite side. So how do you handle that? Well, that's where something called a magazine comes in place. And a magazine looks like, what does it look like? I'm trying to think of how to describe what this looks like. I have no, I have no analogy for this one. I guess it's like, I guess it's like look at a bookshelf. But imagine instead of, you know,

Melissa: 19:44

Not shelves,

Chris: 19:45

12 inches from shelf to shelf, which would normally hold your books. It's like 10 millimeters from shelf to shelf, you know, very, very thin between each of the shelves.

Melissa: 19:57

but without the actual shelves,

Chris: 20:00

yeah, yeah. Instead of, instead of, well, no, kind of because you're,

Melissa: 20:04

well like the little, the little things that you put into the wall so that you can put the shelves

Chris: 20:10

Yeah. Yeah. That's a better way of thinking of it. That's a better way of thinking of it because it's just holding, again, it's just holding the long edges of the PCB. And, Yeah, so that the components on the bottom can hang freely. So we fill up this magazine. It's about the size of like a microwave oven, roughly, somewhere around the size of that. And what you can do is you can load this magazine, full of boards into what's called a magazine unloader. And it's a little confusing because the unloader is at the beginning of the assembly line and the loader's on... On the opposite side of the assembly line, but the unloader unloads the magazine and therefore loads the assembly line. There needs to be, it gets very confusing, but that's basically what it means. So now you can automatically feed double sided boards to your assembly line. So you, you take that magazine full of boards. at the end of the reflow oven that's finished one side and you walk it over to the front of your assembly line, load it up in this machine, and this machine will unload them onto your assembly line. The beautiful thing about all of this is you eliminate a lot of risk when you use conveyors because people can drop things. Right? I was talking to one shop and they said they didn't have any conveyors between any of their machines. They manually loaded and unloaded all of their machines, which I, I, I, you know, you're spe

Melissa: 21:34

They're not that expensive.

Chris: 21:36

not that expensive. People are spending, people are spending like, you know, three, four hundred thousand dollars on a pick and place machine. A transport conveyor is like three, three thousand. You know, like 2, 500,

Melissa: 21:48

they want the extra arm workout.

Chris: 21:50

I guess, I don't know. And you have the risk of dropping boards. You have the risk of sticking your thumb in, in solder paste and. You know, parts that are placed, but not reflowed. It's just so risky to handle boards by hand, but then it's also so expensive. So yeah, that's not how we do it. We, we, we handle our boards with conveyors and we try to do the same with our AOI operations. We try to do the same with our selective soldering operations on a large scale manufacturing operation. Like we're talking, you know, your, your Jables of the world, your Foxcons of the world, everything is automatically handled. Nobody's handling anything by hand, you know, not until, not until they're broken out of their panels, but they'll literally like, they'll take a stack of boards at, in a D stack or just like ours, they'll run it through their assembly line when it gets out of the reflow oven, they'll have a PCB flipper. It's a special type of conveyor, which will clamp the board. It'll literally flip it over. It'll invert it. So now the bottom side is on the bottom because you start with the bottom side and you build the whole bottom side. Now you flipped it over. The bottom side is on the bottom now. So now the top side is, is up in the air and it goes into the next assembly line. So you have two SMT lines right in line with each other. And that's how they build double sided boards in a, in a large scale operation with that PCB flipper. And then from there, it'll go through the reflow of, and again, it'll go directly into an AOI machine. It might go into a flying probe test machine. It might go, if it has some kind of manual operation, it'll go in front of a workstation where a worker's sitting there just doing like putting the one screw in and then it keeps going to the next worker who puts the second screw in, it keeps going, so on and so forth. I think, I forget the heartbeat. That these large scale manufacturing operations want. But I want to say it's like eight seconds per panel or 12 seconds per panel. It's, there's like a specific heartbeat. There's a specific production rate that they're, they always try to achieve. And they match their, they match the number of pick and place machines and everything to, you know, and, and to hit that heart rate, it's really a wild operation. I've only seen it once in my life at a, at a big Honda supplier. It was, it was super cool. I was like, really? Remember my addiction to efficiency and eliminating waste? I was like in heaven there. It was so cool. But they you know, if these assembly lines get super long, you can picture two assembly lines back to back. You, you, how do you transport materials through the assembly line? If you think about it, right? There's a, there's three different ways that I have seen. If you, if, if you want a person to person to be able to walk through an assembly line, they will have a lift gate and it literally looks like a

Melissa: 24:43

Ha!

Chris: 24:44

Yeah, literally looks like a drawbridge. So they walk up to it, they press a button, that button will stop the previous conveyor from sending any boards to it. And obviously you got to make sure there's no boards on that lift gate. And they will literally just lift it up with their arm. Walk through it, and then bring it back down, and then the assembly line can pass through again. Those are pretty rare nowadays. They used to be more common. Far more common nowadays is what's called a shuttlegate conveyor. Or it's like a telescoping conveyor. So it's literally like three conveyors inside of a conveyor, and and what it does is it's it's normally open so anybody can walk through it. And there's going to be some light guards, so it detects if a, if a person's walking through or if there's like a cart in the way or something. So it, it won't it won't try to move the shuttle gate if, if somebody's walking through, otherwise they get crushed, right? Well, I mean, that's the thing. So it's normally open and then when it needs to transfer a board, it sort of telescopes. Open, you know, like a telescope, it expands and expands and expands and passes the board from one conveyor to the next conveyor and then it collapses again to allow traffic to go through again. Those are probably the most common I've seen in large SMT lines, very long SMT lines. But the coolest, my favorite est, dist est est, is, is the vertical bridge. And so what this is, is. It's very large. They're typically quite expensive. You know, you're talking tens of thousands of dollars for these. But it shuttles a board into a conveyor. That conveyor is then lifted way high up in the air. It shuttles the board onto a conveyor that's way high up in the air. We're talking like 10 feet up in the air and onto a long, long, long conveyor onto then another vertical lift, just like an elevator. And that elevator comes back down and then feeds the next side of the assembly line. So then you don't have you don't have a lift gate, you don't have a shuttle gate. You can just pass traffic underneath that conveyor all day long, because it's just a big bridge. You're just, you're walking through the underpass. Those are, Super cool. I love those things, but I have never seen one in real life. I've never seen one. I've seen them like at trade shows. I've seen them you know, pictures and brochures and stuff. But I've never actually seen one in a manufacturing operation. I'm confident there are loads of these in Asia where it's, it's going to be more necessary, but I've never seen one in North America. But I want to.

Melissa: 27:21

it's like a little roller coaster for your circuit board, huh?

Chris: 27:26

Imagine putting like a little GoPro inside of it. That'd be fun. Hmm. That's an idea. That's an idea, Melissa. I know, I know you're planning on a video coming up.

Melissa: 27:34

What a GoPro. Well, definitely not through the reflow oven,

Chris: 27:37

No, not through the reflow oven. Not through the reflow oven. But yeah, that might be fun to mount to like a little GoPro through the assembly process. I'm sure we could figure out a way to make it work. Yeah, we'll have to give that some thought. We'll figure it out. So yeah, so there's. That's how you would pass through a very long SMT line. But there's all kinds of other, like, specialty conveyors. You have conveyors that might have laser markers built in to, like, mark You know, serial numbers onto each PCB. You have conveyors that have like cooling fans. So as they come out of the reflow oven, they might have like additional cooling if they need them to cool off more quickly, if they're going like, so if you have that long SMT line where you have a board flipper, you'll oftentimes have cooling fans Either just before or just after the board flipper, because you're going to stencil print that right away. And you want to stencil print a room temperature board. You do not want to stencil print a warm board. You will, you will mess everything up because it'll cause that solder paste the slump and maybe even begin to activate and you'll have all kinds of issues. Yeah. So, you have conveyors are specifically designed to catch boards out of reflow ovens or not reflow ovens wave soldering machines. So if you've ever seen, again, hard to describe if you've never seen a wave soldering machine in real life, but they have kind of a vertical not vertical, like, like an uphill climb. Wave solder machines like, like have, it's like a ramp. It's, you know, maybe like a 15 degree, 20 degree ramp the boards go up. So you have to have conveyors that have a similar ramp to kind of, you know, feed and catch boards as it comes out of these machines. There's all kinds of very interesting things. Now, hopefully you've enjoyed conveyors so far, but what does this actually, what does this actually mean for you, the designer of the product, right? So you're an engineer. You're like. Great, Chris. I can fall asleep at night now because I have this boring discussion about conveyors, but what does it do for me? I think it's important to understand that in all of this operation, we still need some clearance to handle these boards. Like when it sits on that belt we need to make sure it's not going to sit on components, right? We need to make sure components aren't going to sit on. So we recently did a job for you know, I didn't get the permission to use their name, but it was it was a conference. We built a badge for a big conference, pretty well known. Anyway, yeah. I guarantee every listener is familiar with this. Anyway, but I didn't get their permission, so I don't want to use their name yet until I talk to them. But we built these badges for them. They have their own sort of like assembly line, but they didn't quite have the capacity to get all of them done in time, so they wanted to hire us to to get more of them done more quickly. And but they, they had, so they had all these boards ordered already before contacting us about Make getting them built. So what does that mean? That means they're not designed for manufacturing operation. They're designed for their assembly process, which they're probably loading things in by hand and everything else. So we they were about maybe like three inches by four inches, like the size of an index card, maybe a little bit larger than a post it note. And like a typical size post it note, you know what I mean? And they were just falling. on our conveyors, because they just, they didn't bridge the gap. Because in all of these conveyors and all these machines, they have to meet a very specific specification laid out by IPC. It's called the SMEMA spec. It's S M E M A. And does it actually, does that mean anything? Hang on,

Melissa: 31:16

Whoop. Yeah. It does because I was just reading a transcript from an old episode where you were talking about SMEMA and you asked the same exact thing.

Chris: 31:28

So I'm, I have the document right in front of me and it's called IPC SMEMA 9851. We, we bought the standard for this. And its title is the Mechanical Equipment Interface Standard, which is MEIS. So, I don't know. What is it? No, they don't, they don't even, no, I don't see, I don't see an acronym for it in the

Melissa: 31:58

Mount Equipment Manufacturers Association.

Chris: 32:01

you go. That must be it, but that is not mentioned anywhere in the standard.

Melissa: 32:09

Yeah.

Chris: 32:10

Go figure. Thank you.

Melissa: 32:12

Now, you

Chris: 32:12

for real time feedback there. But anyway, this standard, this specification, has all kinds of like, okay, if you're going to design... A conveyor to handle circuit boards. Let's all agree on the way that we design these conveyors so that they can all work together. So if I buy a pick and place machine from Fuji and a stencil printer from Ekra and a reflow oven from Bytronix, they can all work together. And so they all follow the standard, the SMEMA standard. And. They're allowed to have a 19mm air gap from the end of their conveyor to the you know, basically where it needs to meet the next conveyor. But what that means is you have 19mm plus 19mm, so now you're at 38mm, right? And then... The two conveyors are not going to touch each other. There's going to be a very small air gap between them. You know, a guy like me in a factory is going to try to line these two things up. I'm not going to make them touch. I'm going to get them as close as possible. I'll get them within you know, 4 or 5 millimeters, but I can't get them that much closer. You know, typically maybe 10 millimeters between the two. So now you have an air gap of 50 millimeters, 2 inches. And if your circuit board is only 3 inches long, You've just created a high dive.

Melissa: 33:32

mm-Hmm?

Chris: 33:33

So we, we put the, they were bare circuit boards. We hadn't we hadn't put any components on them yet. And they were just, you know, as soon as you put them on the first conveyor, just

Melissa: 33:42

Oh

Chris: 33:42

right on the floor. All right. So then we rotated them to the four inch way. We could get them to fit the four inch way. The trouble is on that side of the board, there was all kinds of components. So we couldn't, we had to mask off. Our stencil to not deposit solder paste on those components, because otherwise they would get damaged when we flipped them over to run the opposite side and we couldn't mount them with our machine. So we had to hand solder a bunch of these edge components. It was just,

Melissa: 34:13

Hmm.

Chris: 34:15

it's the first time we've said yes to. Customer consigned circuit boards in, I can't even remember, I honestly can't remember the last like years, many, many years, like probably over a decade since we allowed a customer to send us circuit boards you know, just single up like that, not, not in a, so we normally put them in a panel so that we give ourselves 10 millimeters on each edge, plenty of clearance to handle these circuit boards. Because We need to bridge that we need to bridge that 38, 50 millimeter gap between the two machines. So we need it to be long enough, but we also need room for the, to let the boards sit on those conveyors. So it was it was a bit of an annoying experience, but we got through it. Customer was happy. All the badges got built in time. I guess the conference was a success. They told us it was a success. Everybody was happy about it. And and yeah, so getting back to the spec, SMEMA says that you can use, like, if you're designing a conveyor, you can use up to five millimeters of the PCBs material to handle the PCB. So in other words, you know, say you have a, a 200 millimeter wide board. The conveyor is allowed to use five millimeters on the front edge of the board and five millimeters on the back edge of the board. So effectively our working area, we're only allowed to use when we build this board, 190 millimeters, right? Cause you subtract five from this side, five from that side, from a 200 millimeter board, we should, whatever it is that we want to do to that board should be within that 190 millimeter. area. That's why we panelize everything so that we give ourselves more than that. We actually give ourselves 10 millimeters, so huge buffer for, you know, no chance of the conveyor getting in the way of the work that we need to do. By work I mean apply solder paste with a stencil, pick and place machine, AOI, etc. So the bottom edge of the board is going to be handled by about five millimeters, and then the top edge of the board typically Very similar, about five millimeters because the top, on the top side, you're going to have a clamp because when it gets inside the machine, you don't want that board moving. You want, you want it to stay in place. You want it rigid. Especially in a pick and place machine and a stencil printer, if it moves at all, you've messed everything up. On those edges, we put our fiducials, see episode 30, whatever it was about fiducials and you know, but what we're trying to do is we're designing our panels to meet the spec of. SMEMA. So just all the, all the machines are designed to meet the spec. Our panels are designed to meet the spec. That means we're not even going to think about it. And generally speaking, you do not even think about the SMEMA spec until a customer wants to send you badges and they're in a hurry and you've got to make this work. So the specification has all kinds of important things. It defines the height of the conveyor as well. And this is an interesting one because technically, according to the specifications, the minimum height of a conveyor is 940 millimeters and the maximum height of a conveyor is 965 millimeters. So everybody should design their machines in such a way that they can be raised and lowered anywhere from 940 to 965 millimeters. But the crazy thing is, in Asia, they're all designed for 900 millimeters.

Melissa: 37:52

Mm-Hmm?. Mm-Hmm.. I remember, yeah. You talking about this before?

Chris: 37:56

yeah. And because that's the largest market, you know, we just said tack with it. We're just every, every machine we get from now on, we're just setting all of our assembly lines to 900 millimeters, but that's where those numbers come from. They come from a specification. I have to imagine there's a similar SMEMA specification for for Asia. Like maybe they have their own standard over there that's similar to SMEMA, but just for. for their region of the world. But I'm not familiar with it and likely it's not written in the language I can read. So, but yeah, so that, so it defines really, it defines everything and even how they communicate. Because if you think about it, if my pick and place machine is still running. I don't want that conveyor trying to send a board inside my pick and place machine. I need that pick and place machine to finish doing its work, evacuate the board that it's done with before it accepts the next one. And because my pick and place is made by Fuji, and my conveyor is made by Vanstron, and my stencil printer is made by Acra, and my solder paste inspection machine is made by Omron, these all need to be able to communicate in such a way that you don't have just absolute madness of communication. And so, that's... You know, they all meet the spec and everything works brilliantly. We did actually buy a machine one time. I, this manufacturer, I shall go unnamed because I don't want to that they told us it met the SMEMA spec in no way, under any circumstances, in Any fathomable universe didn't meet this Mimaspec. It had, the communication was a mess. It was an absolute mess. It did not communicate right. It would send, it would, it would request boards before it was ready. It would send boards before it was finished. It was a disaster. It was an absolute disaster. Which is why we're never going to... Buy machines from them again. So it was a whole thing. I mean, we didn't, we didn't pay our, pay our invoice for months because we're like, it doesn't meet the spec. And they said, yes, it does meet the spec. And we're like, okay, well you run the machine. It does not meet the spec.

Melissa: 39:58

Yeah.

Chris: 39:59

Oh, what a mess. What a mess. We ended up just taking that machine offline. We don't use the conveyor at all. We hand load it and unload it because it still does work for what we need it to do. But not that I'm bitter. Oh yeah. Conveyors. What do you think, Melissa? Want some?

Melissa: 40:17

Would I like a conveyor in my house?

Chris: 40:20

Yeah. Why not? You could have like a, like a sushi boat thing. You know,

Melissa: 40:24

Something I could Unload the dishwasher. Yeah Like convey that would be a very hectic kitchen kitchen if you just had conveyors everywhere

Chris: 40:34

in, in a manufacturing operation, they are, in my opinion, essential, I highly recommend if you are hiring a contract manufacturer to assemble your circuit boards, pay them a visit

Melissa: 40:46

See if

Chris: 40:47

you can, if, if they're across the country and you don't want to fly out to their, out to them. Ask them to do a FaceTime tour, a Zoom tour, whatever you want to call it. And have you have them walk you around, have them walk you around their factory and just see what it looks like.

Melissa: 41:04

Conveyors then that's just that's it's very low technology well, I mean it can be high technology, but you know, like a very basic thing

Chris: 41:13

it's just, for me, it's like a sign of like poor decision making. It's just a sign of like, they're, they're not thinking critically about their operation and their efficiencies. And so, you know, it's a canary in a coal mine, in my opinion, because it means you're, you're, where else are they inefficient?

Melissa: 41:31

Right. Exactly.

Chris: 41:32

What else are you paying extra for that you don't? Have to be paying extra for it. And it's, it's built into the fat of the quote, right? It's not that it's not that there, you know, there's going to be a separate line item that says we're wasteful. So pay us an extra 500, right? It's just, yeah,

Melissa: 41:48

Pfft. Can you imagine?

Chris: 41:49

yeah. So yeah, just my opinion is canary in a coal mine. And if you don't see anything catching boards at the end of the reflow oven. means you are getting boards that have been dropped on the floor. I promise you, I promise you. And if anybody, and I know there's CMs that listen to the show. I know there's OEMs that listen to the show. If you are one of these shops that does not have a conveyor. At the end of your reflow oven, email me. I will send you a link to a conveyor that you can put at the end of your reflow oven. It is cheap. It is worth every penny. You can afford it. I promise you can afford it. I will send you a link to it. I'm happy to give this recommendation for this conveyor. We love ours. It works great. And you will save your customers all kinds of headaches and yield because you won't be dropping their boards anymore.

Melissa: 42:39

Oh, that just gave me an idea. You know what we should do, Chris? We should become Manufacturing Equipment Influencers.

Chris: 42:47

Ooh, Influencer. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I like the sound of that.

Melissa: 42:50

And then get the companies to pay us commission for recommending their products on Pick, Place Podcast.

Chris: 42:57

Oh, I, what do they call that? They call that not paid promotion. There's like a term for paid content, right? Isn't it like sponsored content or paid content? Yeah, let's do it.

Melissa: 43:06

Yeah.

Chris: 43:07

Just totally do it. I bet we probably, I bet if we tried, we probably could get

Melissa: 43:12

I'm sure we could,

Chris: 43:12

component distributors, manufacturers or whatever. I feel like, I know it's not why we do the show, but, yeah, we do the show because we love our listeners and we want them to understand how to be better engineers, especially when it comes to manufacturability.

Melissa: 43:27

And because Chris needs an outlet to express his love for conveyors.

Chris: 43:31

Yes, you know what also I need an outlet for? Pet peeves.

Melissa: 43:35

Oh yeah.

Chris: 43:36

I need an outlet for pet peeves. And this is a timely one. See what I did there? It's a

Melissa: 43:41

Oh, oh yes, yes, yes. Okay, finally used it. There you go.

Chris: 43:46

It's a timely one. It's about daylight saving time. Now. I love Daylight Saving Time. I loathe Standard Time. We've made the switch here in the United States. I don't think it's every state, but most of the states here in the United States, we switch. No, like Arizona doesn't switch.

Melissa: 44:05

I didn't know

Chris: 44:06

yeah, yeah, there's a, I

Melissa: 44:07

How

Chris: 44:08

a, I know, can you imagine? Yeah, there's certain areas that don't switch. So, I don't know the history, I'm not going to get into the history of Daylight Saving Time because that's a boring, it's not a good pet peeve. You know what is a good pet peeve? When it's

Melissa: 44:20

into the

Chris: 44:21

Dark at 4. 30. 4. 30. It should not be dark at 4. 30 in the afternoon. Like you're just getting, you're just like you're just getting out of work and it's already dark and you're just like depressed because you missed the whole day. Like, no, I hate it. I hate it. So technically we're in standard time. Standard time is what we're in now here in November 2023, November 10th, 2023 is when we're recording. We're in, we're in standard time. It's dark at 4 30. I hate it so much. I could never be one of those people that lives in an area of the world where it's dark for like six months out of the year. I couldn't, I, no, I can't. I, I, humans need sunlight. I'm sorry. I can't handle it. I need sunlight. I, I could be one of those people where it's bright for six months out of the year. I think, you know, put some long curtains on your windows. You could sleep, but no, I, I do not like the darkness. Sorry. And, and, and I wish, and I don't like switching all the time. Switching thing is annoying. I, I, I love it when it gets dark at like 9 30 at night. That's perfect. That's, that's time to go to bed before then. No, no, thank you.

Melissa: 45:31

Oh, and yeah, I just experienced for the first time the end of daylight savings with a child. That's, mhm. Because they don't

Chris: 45:40

to it. Yeah, my dogs, my dogs are the same way. They're like, Hey, time to eat. And they're like, nah, you got to

Melissa: 45:46

you're like, it's it's 4 30 in the morning. You're not getting up

Chris: 45:50

Yep, exactly.

Melissa: 45:52

but yeah, I thought I'd play devil's advocate because you know, there is a bill or an act or something

Chris: 45:59

Yeah. Yes. I've heard

Melissa: 46:00

try to get Basically permanent daylight savings times and

Chris: 46:04

So no more standard time. Just whatever we are calling daylight saving time. Oh, by the way, another pet peeve. It is daylight saving, not daylight savings. Yeah.

Melissa: 46:16

yeah, I didn't

Chris: 46:17

Not really a

Melissa: 46:18

my apologies.

Chris: 46:19

it's not really a pet peeve. That is technically the correct way of saying it. And you know, I want to be that pedantic jerk that everybody's annoyed by. Like, actually, it is daylight saving time. There is no S.

Melissa: 46:33

Okay. I apologize for my

Chris: 46:35

Apology accepted, Melissa.

Melissa: 46:38

Yeah, and so there's a bunch of researchers that say that the change will be bad. Bad for all of

Chris: 46:44

Did they have reasons for this?

Melissa: 46:46

Yeah, it's, it's very detrimental to our health apparently.

Chris: 46:51

What?

Melissa: 46:52

Because it disrupts our normal circadian rhythm, usually It gets dark and that, signals your body, Okay, it's time to start getting ready to go to sleep, but since it's lighter, closer to bedtime, then your body's not, prepared to go to sleep because it just had all this input from all the light.

Chris: 47:11

Hmm.

Melissa: 47:12

Mm hmm,

Chris: 47:13

Hmm.

Melissa: 47:14

yeah. And also, apparently Daylight Saving Time, saving, yeah, saving, okay, was invented by Ben, supposedly invented by Benjamin Franklin.

Chris: 47:26

The inventor of all things.

Melissa: 47:27

Yeah, of course. To economize candle usage and save people money. But now it's doing the opposite. So the extended use of daily hours is causing more energy usage

Chris: 47:40

Maybe because, like, air conditioning and stuff like

Melissa: 47:42

Mm hmm, because of air conditioning and then heating. Yeah. Mm hmm,

Chris: 47:48

Yeah, I don't know. Maybe I just need to like, move to the southern hemisphere during the winter. You know what I

Melissa: 47:55

or you can just wake up earlier and go to sleep earlier. Or not.

Chris: 48:02

The reasoning is sound, Melissa. That is very sound reasoning. You know what? That, that, I think I might apply that advice. I think I might apply that advice. I'm sure my dogs would appreciate it, because they're still like, waking up and they're like, hey, time to eat.

Melissa: 48:23

that's what I have. I have to do that now. There's no choice. So, unless you have stuff to do at night, you know, unless you're out and about, then it's difficult.

Chris: 48:33

no, I just, I just, I don't know. I'm a lot of people, like a lot of people, I tend to be the most, like, my mind works best at night, and I tend to be, like, the most productive at night, and yeah, I don't know. Mornings, I really, really struggle with mornings. I need, like, a long time to It just, I can't be, I can't get up and go, and I envy people that can, and I've tried to be one of these people that can. Unfortunately, I'm not. I'm not! Well, the other, the other thing is, because we have two shifts at Wordinton Assembly, I tend to kind of work between the two shifts. So I tend to get into the shop around, you know, nine o'clock or so, and stay till six ish to try to overlap the two shifts and, and work with each team. So. That's another reason that annoys me, because, well, but at least when I'm like... On my way to work, it's nice and bright. So at least I get it in the morning. But, but it's like, I love to like, you know, be in my yard and, and, and be around my house and getting things done around my house at, at, in the evening. And I can't do anything because it's dark.

Melissa: 49:42

Well, although at the same time, it would be cold anyways, so you don't really want to be outside doing all that stuff anyways.

Chris: 49:51

Eh, cold doesn't really bother me. It's not, it's really not the cold that bothers me because I'll just bundle up and especially when you start working on something you get hot, you know, you know, you tend to, all of a sudden you're shedding layers off because it's too warm but yeah, so then you just got to wait for, you know, weekends or you got to take a day off to where it's nice and bright out so you can get stuff done. Like right now, I got to clean my gutters and I either have to take a day off or I have to do it Like early in the morning before I come into work. And the problem with trying to do a project like that before going to work is you don't really know how much time it's going to take. You know what I mean? Like you think like, Oh, I could probably get this done in two hours. And all of a sudden, like you don't even have your ladder set up for an hour and a

Melissa: 50:33

right.

Chris: 50:34

you know, versus.

Melissa: 50:36

into something.

Chris: 50:36

Yeah. Versus like, if you come home and it's bright out and you get started on it and you don't finish it in a couple hours, like you think you will, well, it doesn't matter. You're not going anywhere. You're home, you know? So like, I don't like to start projects in the morning because I, I don't want to leave them unfinished. And, and then I can't start projects outside in the evening because it's dark. And it's like, the darkness is also like, it's like, I don't want to drive. In the dark. So I don't want to have to like start an errand and then be driving around in the dark.

Melissa: 51:09

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I went grocery shopping and I was done. I was like, whoa, have I been in this target for hours? Because it's pitch dark out and it was like, nope, nope, it's 4

Chris: 51:20

it's four 30. I just, I don't, I, the cold has never bothered me. It's the darkness that has always bothered me ever since I was little. I, it was like, Oh, I want to go out and play play. There's no, I can't see anything. Yeah. Okay. So, okay. So my pet peeve isn't with, with standard time or, you know, changing from daylight or back and forth. It's my pet peeve is the darkness. That's what it is, Melissa. It's the darkness. I want some darkness, not too much, not too little. I want the appropriate amount of darkness and the appropriate amount of darkness is the longest day of the year in the summer.

Melissa: 51:58

Then just move to Alaska during the summer

Chris: 52:02

I know.

Melissa: 52:03

And then,

Chris: 52:03

you know what I, I, I think Melissa, we should start. CircuitHub Australia, and I just, six months in Australia, six months in the United States, it's a win win.

Melissa: 52:17

all right, if you can figure out all the logistics and financials of doing that, Chris, I think that's a fantastic idea.

Chris: 52:23

Well, if anybody has advice on how to help me move to Australia and work there six months out of the year, feel free to email us at contact at pickplacepodcast. com. You can X us at CircuitHub or at WAssembly or whatever social media program you prefer. Let us know, I think you had mentioned this on a previous episode, if there is one that you did have a preference for. If you enjoyed this episode, which I know you did because it's my favorite topic, tell a friend about it. Hopefully they enjoy it as well. And let us know, like, I'd love to, I'd love to hear people who have found this information helpful. Like, like, if they themselves feel like they've become a better engineer from listening to some of this advice and, and have seen improvement in, in their ability to outsource manufacturing and, and it'd be good to know. I don't know. So. You know, reach out, let us know what you think.

Melissa: 53:16

Oh, something we forgot to mention is that the show now has over 50, 000 downloads.

Chris: 53:22

yeah. Do I have a is it, what's this?

Soundboard: 53:24

Chalk, huh?

Chris: 53:25

No. Yeah. That's about, that's about as close as I

Melissa: 53:27

close enough.

Chris: 53:30

Celebratory ballpark music. Yeah. 50, 000. So thank you everybody for listening and downloading. Yeah, that's, well, so that's crazy. That is, that is mind blowing. I,

Melissa: 53:46

Especially for what we're talking

Chris: 53:47

I know, I know. I mean, like Rogan, watch out, here we come.

Melissa: 53:53

Not quite.

Chris: 53:54

Oh,

Melissa: 53:55

Nah, just a little bit more. Just a few more thousand.

Chris: 53:59

I just got to get I just got to get you know, Elon Musk on the show. And then I think we'll, we'll catch up,

Melissa: 54:06

Elon, if you're out there listening,

Chris: 54:08

which I know you are. Cause I know you love, you love efficiency.

Melissa: 54:12

Can you imagine if he's just out there secretly listening to the Pig Place podcast?

Chris: 54:18

I, I have no idea how I would feel about. That if I learned that that was true. I have no idea. I don't know if I'd be thrilled or upset or confused. I'd definitely be confused for sure. That is the emotion I would have, but yes, congratulations, Melissa. 50, 000. Awesome.

Melissa: 54:39

Yeah, Elon, if you're out there send us a, send us an X x us. And for everyone else, 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.

Chris: 54:57

Thanks Melissa.

Melissa: 54:58

Thanks, Chris.