Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1111672
MAY 2019 I SMT007 MAGAZINE 45 huge issue. People use a footprint that's close, but with footprints, close enough is, quite often, not close enough. Johnson: Do you have a caution- ary tale from a bad customer expe- rience you could share? Benson: Once, we had a job where there was a wireless module on it, and we bought all of the compo- nents except for the wireless mod- ule. The wireless module was from a cheap offshore supplier, and it was a batch, so I'm guessing it was overstock or something like that. They sent us the documentation, and the data sheet for the module was very ambiguous. It was very difficult to tell what the orientation was supposed to be, and the documentation led us to believe that the component was supposed to go on 180 degrees from what it really was. We built 5,000 of these, and after build- ing it, one of our technicians thought that something didn't seem right. So, before we shipped them to the customer, this technician looked at them and determined something was wrong. We contacted the customer, and they were not very happy. So, we said, "We may ruin these when we pull them off. It's going to take a lot of time to pull off 5,000." In response, the customer said, "That was over - stock or an out-of-production order. There are no more of those." As a result, we had to bring extra people in from the EMS division to help Screaming Circuits pull 5,000 of these things off, reverse them, clean up the board afterward, and put them back on. It was incredibly painful. We made it work, but an ambiguous data sheet caused that entire problem. Our customer received working boards on time and at the original price, but accurate data would have made it a lot easier for us. Johnson: That particular design process took the ambiguity and kicked it down the road. Benson: Exactly. The sooner in the process you can clear up any ambiguity, the better we will all be. Diodes and LEDs are horrendous in terms of marking. I design and build some of my own electronics devices from time to time; I call myself a method actor in that regard. Johnson: That takes us all the way back to the beginning: communication is important. Because you're high mix/low volume, you see a lot of jobs and have a lot of highly varied experience. Benson: Right, and that goes right back to BOM accuracy. Every single character in that part number is critical. Johnson: Do you see customer needs and requirements changing, and how are you adapting to that? Benson: I do. Over the last decade, the elec- tronics design and manufacturing world has changed radically. Even more in the last few years. The rate of change is staggering. With half of the companies we deal with today, the design engineer does everything, and design engineers in the past typically designed a sche- matic; they didn't lay out a board, figure out what a BOM needs, or plan and forecast. The High-speed SMT line.