My first time working on an exhibition stand at a UK Nepcon show, as a mere boy of 10+ something, was in 1974. 18,000 engineers passed through the halls and warrens of the Metropol in Brighton to view predominantly PCB manufacturing technology, an array of manual assembly tools plus a few automatic insertion machines chomping away in the background. How times have changed to Nepcon 2007 in Birmingham where 2,500 new generation engineers visited a show now dedicated to SMT with little sign of any PCB manufacturing and only a handful of lead forming tools. This “new” SMT technology is nearing its 30th birthday and is now considered a mature technology. From the rear window sticker culture of 1984 “Surface Mounters do it on Top”, it’s a simple process just 3 steps Print / Place / Reflow. When you get it right the process runs like a dream, get it wrong and you have a bag full of bits with no hope of economical recovery.

The biggest change in SMT production has been the decrease in engineers on the shop floor as company’s run “lean” manufacturing. There is often no spare internal support or engineering resources leaving engineers overstretched. Yes the level of automation has improved, the reliability of the equipment is robust and rarely questioned, but component sizes have reduced and packing density has increased leading to more pressure for an engineer to get it right first time. Advances in AOI can support engineers to pick up errors sooner rather than later and provide the ability to track error trends but in many instances errors trace back to a slip in basic principles. To run a reliable process engineers must maintain good housekeeping (cleanliness), maintain discipline and have the proper training ~ so they know what makes the process tick. When engineers were in abundance so were the basic training courses remember the  EP Master classes, SMT Club and SMART Entry Level Days; all drove home the basics, but now as a mature technology often the basics are some how smoothed over. SMART is the only surviving forum to support SMT engineers and to endorse the basic principles, by popular request, they are resurrecting the core workshops that address Printing / Reflow / Rework / Inspection.

So when your process goes out of control rather than tweak and make a quick temporary fix, instead take a step backwards review the basics and you’re almost certainly guaranteed to resolve any issues, after all it’s only a 3 step process.

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