Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1541985
22 PCB007 MAGAZINE I DECEMBER 2025 a cadre of skilled, trained workers to monitor and maintain the equipment. By the late '70s, they were significant players in the U.S. market. How the U.S. Responded Unfortunately, when faced with this competition, many American shops took the opposite tack. They reduced their skilled, trained (and highly paid) labor to the minimum needed to run the shop efficiently. They brought in more minimum-wage labor, rely- ing on the remaining skilled labor to monitor and guide the unskilled labor. The skilled labor became overwhelmed trying to keep up, and efficiency dropped off at an alarm- ing rate. When I ques- tioned one manager about whether this was short-sighted in the long run, all I got was a terse, "I don't care about the long run. All I care about is next quarter." This attitude is still prevalent, and not just in the printed circuit industry. Most shops that took this path are no longer with us, and most didn't make it to the '90s. Focusing all one's planning on next quarter's results at the expense of longer-term plan- ning is a losing strategy in the long run (note the irony). Automation is not something to do on the spur of the moment. It requires insight into where you want your business to go, and that requires some planning. So far, I have been using the term automation in a general sense, but as I was thinking about what to write about, I realized I had a rather narrow view of automation. For us, automation has always been conveyor loaders and unloaders, and robots to move materials around. The purpose is to reduce labor and increase efficiency; i.e., the people who formerly placed panels on and took them off the conveyor and stacked them at the end of the pro- cess could be more profitably used to monitor the process and equipment. One experienced opera- tor could monitor several processes in place of four or five who did nothing but load and unload con- veyors. This operator doesn't need to be a college graduate, but should be someone knowledgeable about the process and paid enough to care about their job. Big and Small Benefits So, the advantages of some types of automation are obvious, but who benefits the most from auto- mation? I assumed that most of the quotes we sent out that included automation were for big, high-vol- ume shops, but the interest shown by medium and smaller shops that have smaller lot sizes and more varied product design surprised me. However, some have calculated that it may be more cost-efficient to let robots load and unload conveyors and use the personnel to do the tasks not suited to robots. Even for a smaller shop, it's worthwhile to look into some form of automatic equip- ment to handle repetitive chores. If we consider using auto- mation as a labor-saving device, shouldn't we also consider process controls as automation? I got mixed results when I put this question to our mar- keting and engineering departments. What brought it to mind was the failure of my free acid control for my cupric chloride etcher in my lab recently. It has been in use on this etcher for several years and has been so reliable that, other than monthly check- ing the calibration, we forget about it. After over 10 years of use, the transmitter failed, and I found we hadn't used this type of transmitter for several years. There were no parts in stock, and it would take a few days to free up an electrician to install one of the new-style transmitters. For the next three days, before operating the etcher, I had to titrate for the free acid, calculate how much acid to add, and measure out and add the acid. This took 20–30 minutes that could have been used more profitably in sample preparation. To my mind, this automatic process control is some- thing even a smaller shop can consider. These are my thoughts on automation in factories of all sizes, and uses of automation beyond what we might traditionally think about. You can agree or disagree, but there's always something to talk about. PCB007 Don Ball is process engineer at Chemcut. To read past columns or to contact Ball, click here. T H E C H E M I CA L C O N N ECT I O N " " Even for a smaller shop, it's worthwhile to look into some form of automatic equipment to handle repetitive chores.