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LB SMT (finally good news) — Parallax Forums

LB SMT (finally good news)

James LongJames Long Posts: 1,181
edited 2008-04-02 17:42 in General Discussion
LB·SMT was notified today, that our new Pick & Place was ready to go on the truck to be delivered.

We are not sure how long it will take to get to us....but we will need about three days to get everything arranged and setup to our liking before processing boards.

We hope at least a few Parallax users will consider the service.

We will only post once more on the Parallax forums about the service. It is not our intentions to spam the forum, more to just let everyone know the service is out there.

We are planning to have a Grand Opening special when the time is right.

James L

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James L

Partner/Designer
Lil Brother LLC (SMT Assembly Services)

Comments

  • Max WoodenMax Wooden Posts: 112
    edited 2008-04-01 05:06
    Glad to hear it James! I've been following the progress of this since your initial post over at the sparkfun forums. I think you have a really awesome niche business and I wish you nothing but the best of luck! I definitely have some projects on the horizon that would benefit from your service. These days it seems that all of the cool chips are surface mount, plus I find it easier to design surface mount boards. Make sure to post photos of the machines when you get them all set up!

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    Max Wooden
    Reedley, California
  • James LongJames Long Posts: 1,181
    edited 2008-04-01 05:39
    Max Wooden said...
    Glad to hear it James! I've been following the progress of this since your initial post over at the sparkfun forums. I think you have a really awesome niche business and I wish you nothing but the best of luck! I definitely have some projects on the horizon that would benefit from your service. These days it seems that all of the cool chips are surface mount, plus I find it easier to design surface mount boards. Make sure to post photos of the machines when you get them all set up!

    Max,

    It has been a very large learning experience. We started out with what we thought was a simple idea......and how wrong we were.

    It has not been a disaster, but there have been all kinds of hurdles that we never expected. That is the difference in, thinking you know......and knowing.

    We do not have all the bases covered as of yet. But they will be covered as soon as possible.

    Our biggest trouble we have at the moment, is the inability to do boards from services like ExpressPCB (if the board has a large amount of pads). We have no way to convert the known data into a stencil for solder pasting. We can do small boards, but big boards just take too long for pasting solder dot by dot.· The only way we know of ; is to get the gerber from the service, or scan the board with one of the new reverse engineering systems. The scanning systems cost around $21k, so it may be a while before we can afford to purchase one.

    We are also going to do some advertising for some select companies. For now the advertising is free. (Yes, Parallax is one of them....we figured we owed them something for all the spam.......smile.gif· )

    I hope everyone will at least consider our service. We are aimed at the private hobby business types. We also have some larger business types that have contacted us as well. We have had great feedback so far about the service.·The next step is to insure our quality is in-line with the competitors. We have worked hard to choose carefully for quality. We didn't buy the most expensive machinery, but we did buy machinery we can maintain a high level of quality with.

    I hope to see a lot of the familiar faces from Parallax placing job orders......

    James L



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    James L

    Partner/Designer
    Lil Brother LLC (SMT Assembly Services)
  • BeanBean Posts: 8,129
    edited 2008-04-02 17:32
    James,
    So you are going to use a solder screen ? I had assumed you would drop solder dots for everything.

    Bean.

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    www.iElectronicDesigns.com

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  • James LongJames Long Posts: 1,181
    edited 2008-04-02 17:42
    Bean (Hitt Consulting) said...
    James,
    So you are going to use a solder screen ? I had assumed you would drop solder dots for everything.

    Bean.

    That was our initial plan.....but the programming time....and machine time makes it extremely time consuming. (We were also mis-lead a little by the manufacturers.....not one....but a few).

    We are only going to drop dot's for small runs with few pads. We really want to get away from this totally.......but time will tell.

    We will be using stencils probably on 98% of everything we run. (We are not going to charge for the stencil, unless the customer wants to recieve it).

    Mylar stencils of course (for most things)......if the run is a month repeat....we will probably order a metal stencil.

    James L


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    James L

    Partner/Designer
    Lil Brother LLC (SMT Assembly Services)
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