This is painful. They got a used solder mask holder, a Lumen pick and place machine, a bunch of old Siemens feeders, and a small automatic reflow oven. All these tools needed major work. Everything with firmware needed firmware mods. Everything else needed assembly or major cleaning. Everything needed adjustment. They had to 3D print their own solder paste squeegee. They're six months in and still trying to produce one simple board.
I've been down this road of populating a surface mount board. There is a minimum size for a practical board-stuffing operation, and they are below it. They are using prototype techniques for 100 units or so, not techniques that scale.
Surface mount soldering requires applying hot air in a very controlled way, with the temperature ramping up, holding at the high temp for a few seconds, and then ramping down. On a small scale, you have a programmable oven which tries to do that. Those always have heat distribution problems. For production, you have a tunnel oven, with about six sections at different temperatures and a chain conveyor to take the boards through the tunnel. With the tunnel oven, you let the whole thing warm up and stabilize, and when all zones are at the right temperature, you can repeatably solder boards successfully.
They're using a hobbyist-grade pick and place machine. Slow, but cheap. Plus the software isn't ready for prime time. They looked at a used production machine. Runs Windows XP and wouldn't fit through the door. Rejected that.
They're about EUR 30,000 into this, not counting their own labor.
This approach is not going to revive electronics in Europe.
You are saying the same thing they said -- it doesn't scale. It's not how you build a large factory. They acknowledge this and pretty quickly move on to say that they are aiming for smaller and sustainable.
They even specifically call out why they chose not to use a conveyor based oven in the video.
Basically they believe they can be price reasonable at small scales, small batches. Build process knowledge and expertise over time, and then incrementally scale up after assessing bottlenecks.
I think the route of local sustainable, grow as needed or collaborate to expand capacity is pretty reasonable.
I've been down this road of populating a surface mount board. There is a minimum size for a practical board-stuffing operation, and they are below it. They are using prototype techniques for 100 units or so, not techniques that scale.
Surface mount soldering requires applying hot air in a very controlled way, with the temperature ramping up, holding at the high temp for a few seconds, and then ramping down. On a small scale, you have a programmable oven which tries to do that. Those always have heat distribution problems. For production, you have a tunnel oven, with about six sections at different temperatures and a chain conveyor to take the boards through the tunnel. With the tunnel oven, you let the whole thing warm up and stabilize, and when all zones are at the right temperature, you can repeatably solder boards successfully.
They're using a hobbyist-grade pick and place machine. Slow, but cheap. Plus the software isn't ready for prime time. They looked at a used production machine. Runs Windows XP and wouldn't fit through the door. Rejected that.
They're about EUR 30,000 into this, not counting their own labor. This approach is not going to revive electronics in Europe.
They even specifically call out why they chose not to use a conveyor based oven in the video.
Basically they believe they can be price reasonable at small scales, small batches. Build process knowledge and expertise over time, and then incrementally scale up after assessing bottlenecks.
I think the route of local sustainable, grow as needed or collaborate to expand capacity is pretty reasonable.