White hot day of fire at the assembly plant

One of the realities of doing business with China. Everyone's trying to raise the price after we've already accepted their quotations. The testing lab is saying we need to test the LED to laser safety standards. The PCB assembly house forgot - whoops! small detail - to add the cost of the stencils to their estimate. Stencils are several micrometers thick laser cut metallic masks used to place solder only on the PCB pads.

We're fighting hard to avoid getting whacked at every corner and we've been fairly successful up to this point. We'll move the LVD testing to another lab - they seem more honest and will do the job for less. The assembly cost went up but only by a bit, not the amount they had in mind.

The good news is that we were able to test the few components that have substandard packaging or other strange properties, and determine that all can be handled by the assembly machine.

One of the components in particular uses a reel whose compartments are too wide, so there is some uncertainty in the position of each chip; if the machine isn't able to precisely pick up a component then its PCB placement may also be uncertain. However, their machines are truly state of the art with robotic vision algorithms that can visually determine the exact location of the chip that's been picked up! We did a test pick and place and we can gladly announce we don't have a problem after all.

Having renewed our arrangements with the PCB house all is pending us getting enough cashflow to bootstrap this process. As planned we'll be manually assembling the very first units and as shortly as possible after that switch to machine assembly.

Machine assembly is vitally important to be able to put out enough pieces to satisfy demand. Assembling one remote and one receiver by hand takes 3 to 4 hours, and the PCBA guys themselves confirmed this is how long it would take for them to do it manually. Machines can do the job in 5 to 10 seconds per set!

Hard day, but - mission accomplished!

Comments

By akw123 at 2010-09-21 15:16:47 Reply

Considering that this item will run around 500 USD, and not sure of the quality in hand assembly, I will wait until the machine assembled version is available.

By obedient2you at 2010-09-21 17:19:37 Reply

Many people have asked "how much", but nowhere on this site has DLL stated $500. Are you someone with special insider information?

By dreamloverlabs at 2010-09-21 21:21:38 Reply

We haven't decided regarding pricing especially at the beginning where circumstances will be a bit special; if we had this information we'd tell everyone...

By johnsteed at 2010-09-21 19:39:25 Reply

Have you really been following the development of this device? Have you seen the attention to detail and quality in each and every decision made? The integrity and belief in what is being done?

I'd have no concerns about hand assembly. Besides, DreamLover Labs would fall all over themselves to make good if a unit was defective.

Anyway, the big problem with hand assembly on this sort of thing is that it's just so hard to get it right. Especially surface mount. You can ruin parts in the process. In which case DL Labs has to eat the cost of the damaged parts, but it doesn't hurt customers. But after that, it's a binary process. Either the unit does not work, or it does work. And it's not like you might have an engine with a missing piece. It's not going to work for awhile and then fail later because you left the piece out. Electronics aren't generally like that.

By dreamloverlabs at 2010-09-21 21:35:27 Reply

We have these hand assembled units that were created, what, 2-3 months ago... they have been used daily for testing which means they were often touched with the hands (something you shouldn't do), once dropped on the floor, then zapped with 8000 volts of static electricity in the lab - never gave any problem, never one missed packet or a false positive...

The issue with hand assembly is that it takes an inordinate amount of time to put together the chips and test them. There are over 50 components on the product some of which are 3x3mm in size and have up to 12 microscopic pins. Putting these together requires the utmost concentration, not something we want to be doing for a living. After hand assembly we need to make sure all pins are soldered properly so we have to test each function meticulously with the oscilloscope.

The only other thing is that the soldering doesn't look as clean as the hand assembled version (there is a bit more excess solder on each pad). But, through the enclosure, you won't really see the difference. Plus if we become famous, these will be collector's items! :)

The first mini-run will be a bit special, because of the limited quantity, the hand assembly, because we will be customizing the firmware a bit based on people's opinions (pulse level, dog mode grace period, that sort of stuff) and also refine the documentation as we go along... The first orders will involve some degree of direct support on our part and probably a complete replacement of the unit if it stops working.

By akw123 at 2010-09-22 12:06:10 Reply

People reading my post would assume that $500 USD for the device is my opinion based upon my estimates, not inside information. Maybe I should have stated that. And you can't tell me that you haven't floated a MSRP while you guys are just lounging around. You don't want to post it, just in case you get it wrong, too low.
You covered the details on the risks of hand assembly so I won't repeat. As far as this being a binary decision, it works or it doesn't doesn't take into account failures caused by the heat and handling during assembly that don't show up right away.
again my opinion, I don't place an extra value on these units(hand assembled); collector items in electronics? really who?
I just want a unit that I can rely on that works consistently day-after-day!