Leafing through my latest issue of NASA’s Medical Design Briefs, I saw a good article about surface mount battery connectors. Now the NASA site requires registration, so I typed the first sentence into Google and found the same article published on page 14 of Battery Magazine. A bit naughty of Keystone to double submit an article. EDN requires first publishing rights, so I have learned to put key phrases into Google, as well as the author’s name, to find the people trying to resubmit already published material. I catch a lot of companies trying to rehash old material. So anyway, maybe NASA Medical Briefs does not care the article has been published before.
I also got a card in the PO Box yesterday from a Silicon Valley pcb assembly service. Flashline Electronics will assemble 5, 10 or 25 pieces, and they have one of those great matrixes (scroll down for assembly) that show how many parts per board. They have to charge you $200 for a stencil that they use to apply the solder paste, but 5-board assembly ranges from $69ea for 20 parts to $81ea for 80 parts per board. I have never used them; I always used Pactron since they were in the same industrial park as my shop. Last time I checked, they said they wanted a few feet of tape-and reel for all your parts, unless you wanted to use standard parts they had on hand. At first they used to hand-solder but lately they just run everything through the IR reflow, which is really better. It proves out your pick and place file (insert, in Orcad parlance) and it verifies the reflow temperature profile for the board. A shout out to Sanjay Singh, I don’t know if he is still there, but he was a manufacturing engineer they put in sales, that’s how cool of a company they are. If he is still there, he will give you the honest straight dope on getting your boards made.
And speaking of board assembly, that brings me to a note I got from the great folks at Advanced Assembly. The vivacious Lisa Holms dropped me a note and a press release, which I heavily edited below:
Advanced Assembly today announced the company expanded revenue 32% compared to the first quarter of 2010.
Advanced Assembly is an Aurora, Colorado company specializing in quick-turn, SMT assembly for design engineers needing low volume or prototype printed circuit board assembly. With customers like Motorola, AT&T and Intel, and close supplier relationships with Digi-Key, Mouser and Arrow, Advanced Assembly is quickly becoming the industry leader for prototype printed circuit board assembly. The company is committed to delivering high quality services and is ISO 9001:2008 certified. For more information visit //www.aapcb.com or call 1-800-838-5650.
I don’t usually publish business types things but it is good to know that Advanced Assembly is a viable company that won’t loose your boards. By the way, although they are right down the street from prototype PCB fabricator Advanced Circuits, these are two separate companies. Advanced Circuits is happy to send your boards to Advanced Assembly, however.
And while on the subject of PCB assembly and $200 stencil charges, last time I checked Sunstone has some deals where they would include a free stencil with your order. They are near Screaming Circuits up near Beaverton/Portland Oregon. I have toured both facilities and I can assure you they are both first-class outfits. Screaming Circuits is cool since they have invented special feeders for the pick-and-place machines, so you don’t have to send them a meter of tape and reel if you are only making 5 boards. They can put in one of those little “cut-tape” sections from Digi-Key and just build one board, if that is all you need. The great thing is that you still get your pick-and-place file proven out, and you run your board thought a real IR reflow process to prove out that as well. Remember, making a prototype is not just giving “the old College try” to getting something working. It is proving out all your documentation, Gerbers, fab drawings, assembly drawings, insert files, stencils, and so forth. The more of your documentation gets proven out in the prototype phase, the fewer disasters you will have when your design goes into Manufacturing.
