Hi Jack!

It can be done. I had to think outside the box a while back.

We bid this assembly for a customer and was awarded the job. They were still working on the design of the board, so our bid department quoted the job just from the Bill of Material.

When the gerbers were done, they sent them to us so we could go out and buy the fabs. Our board buyer always comes to me for my input for panelization. When she called me, I asked; "Is the board that small that it needs to be panelized?" she said; Yes, it's only about 2-inches wide..." I told her to email me the gerbers and I would take a look at it.

What she didn't tell me at the time was that it was 27-inches long! I went to our bid guys and said; "Do you know you what you did? You bid a board that we can't build in our equipment!" Why, what's wrong? they asked. Because the freaking thing is 27-inches long! All I heard then was; "Oh.."

Luckily, we didn't have too many of these to build. I had the board made in a 4-up panel. I have a DEK-288 and it can only print 20 X 20, so what I did was to get just an unframed foil from my stencil vendor and hand printed the solder paste. There was no fine pitch on the board, so it was a piece of cake.

I've Assembleon pick and place equipment, a Topaz and a Emerald. We wrote two progams for the board for each machine. One program for one half of the board, and another for the second half. The second one was with the board rotated 180-degrees out from the first half.

I had to disable some sensors in the entry to the machine, and also a pneumatic actuator that pushes the board against the board stop.

We manually loaded the board into the machine, and let it place half the board. Then once it was done with the first half, we manually unloaded the board, rotated it 180-degrees, loaded it back into the machine, called up the second program and finished it off.

Like I said, luckily we didn't have a lot to build, but when there's a will, there's a way.

-Steve Gregory-

That's the question.

No, it doesn't need to be depanelized.
One board would be 13x27.

I was just thinking if the paste screen is large
enough and the conveyor is at least 13" wide,
what difference does the length make?
(I'm not an assembly guy. You can tell, right?)

Doesn't it just go through the oven zone by zone
by zone until it gets to the end? Why can't I
have a 48" board?  All I could think of was that
the pick and place program would have to be
divided into sections with extra fiducials, so you
could place one zone, move the conveyor, place
another zone? ridiculous?

Jack (the "thinkin' outside the box" guy)



----- Message from "Morse, Carrie" <[log in to unmask]> on Fri, 19 Nov
2004 14:16:09 -0500 -----

                   Subject: Re: LongBoards


What are the max dimensions the assembly placement machines can handle?

Will the board need to be depanelized?  If so, what's the max size for
that equipment?

-Carrie

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