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64 SMT Magazine • February 2016 every board by hand soldering touch-up—it doesn't make any sense. Even though you may have very good people doing the soldering, you occupy and pay them for the rework. This, of course, adds to the total labor cost of the prod- uct, making it harder to compete with low labor rate markets. That's one example of the many we have done. But, you may ask, what about material cost of the new pin? Here's the punch line: This new pin costs the same, because it's a stamping/coining pro- cess that we use to manufacture it. In other words, you are not paying any premium on the price of the material, which is important. One must always compare total costs, including ma- terial differences and non-recurring costs to see if there is a reasonable return—or, worse, any return—on the investment. Goldman: But it's a much better design. Borkes: Yes, and for a number of other reasons besides labor content reduction, it's a good so- lution—but, I won't go into them here. Goldman: What about pin insertion in the daugh- ter board. I thought you said the entire process was automatable with the new pin? Borkes: Total automation of the pin assembly process was the project goal—the production quantities involved permitted investing in tool- ing. The thing is, how do you automate the pin insertion? Putting the pins in tape and reel was one possibility. However, this adds an ad- ditional material cost of 3.5 – 4 cents per pin, plus NRE and tooling costs. We chose to use a Figure 5: Top view of bowl for automatable pin. tHe JeFFersoN ProJect, Part 2