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SMT007-Jan2024

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32 SMT007 MAGAZINE I JANUARY 2024 3. Everything below that is headed for the gar- bage can, or the manufacturer is using their own technician to touch it up. What you don't see everywhere is the repair of bottom-terminated components and that's because there's a lack of ability. We see ball grid arrays (BGAs) the size of your thumb- nail with 1,000-plus connections underneath. ose must be done with specialized machin- ery and highly technical people who are capa- ble of working with that. It's followed by X-ray imagery to make sure the repair is okay. It's a sensitive repair—which no board or chip man- ufacturer wants—because it typically involves multiple heat cycles before it goes out into the field. Is there a trend for the contract manufactur- ers to increasingly outsource repair to specialists, or is it a skill set they develop in-house? Patten: I don't see signs they're growing it in- house unless their problem becomes more than, say, a quarter-million to a half-million dollars in a year. If you've got a quarter-mil- lion-dollar problem, something horrible hap- pened and it's a massive problem. ey like it when I fix the problem, but they do not want to have that problem. at's when you cer- tainly would want to invest in equipment to do it yourself. If you are one of the bigger BGA manufac- turers, you have your own abilities. But we see a lot of issues from a variety of customers, so we have the "variety" skill set here. If repair increasingly requires skilled sol- dering technicians and special equipment, what's involved in setting up a system? Patten: e simple solution is a machine, such as for BGA repair. A very simple one-trick pony might be in the tens of thousands of dollars. But if you need to do multiple types of devices on it, it will be more like hundreds of thou- sands of dollars. You can buy that machine, but it won't likely get delivered for three or four months because these machines are hard to come by. Everybody forgets that a machine will need experienced technicians to run it. You use one of your engineers or hire one from a place already doing it, which means they lost an engineer. Now it's months to be up and run- ning—a long time before they can take on any project. at's a massive time cost. Now, will they stay? If the technician leaves, you start over again. is is why I believe we've had such a successful and sustainable busi- ness in this sector. We are just a small part of the industry, where providers want to do it all robotically and get it right 99.99% of the time. If they're doing it right, they shouldn't need us. But they all do. Laura Ripoli: You also need X-ray equipment. Patten: Exactly, and those start at $150,000 to $250,000. Do you have a tech who can run it, or is it the same tech who runs both? If it goes down, for how long? is is a critical path, so do you have a backup? To have it in-house could easily turn into a million-dollar invest- ment. We like to think we are the insurance policy for much less money. Dan Patten

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