Steve
Amen brother!  Somewhat...

I think that using machines like the CS400E is a good idea if you are
building a high mix of products, and if there is a good chance that
parts may be put in backwards / wrong location.  If I have 10 resistors
of 10 values, all in a row, I would lean towards putting them on with a
contact machine.

But - if you are a medium volume, continuous flow, and your operators
are OK at what they are doing - use the machine as a boat anchor.

Here we build high mix, so we tend to use it for parts that might get
confused and mixed.  For anything else I agree that it is faster to
stuff by hand.

You might ask them how they could spare the one they shipped to you...

 - Graham Collins

-----Original Message-----
From: Stephen R. Gregory [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Tuesday, November 24, 1998 12:55 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [TN] Assy: Contact CS-400E Efficiency


Good Day All!

     I'd like to solicit some opinions from those who have had
experience with
Contact component locators. We're a start-up contract assembly company
here in
the silicon valley. We have a parent company back east who saw fit to
send one
of their CS400E's out here (they had 4, but now have 3) to add to the
list of
equipment that we started out with.

     This is the first occasion I've had to work with one of these
machines,
most other companies that I've worked at dealt with the PTH in a slide
or push
line, or with auto-insertion equipment like universal...still needed a
slide
line for the connectors and what-not though.

     This Contact machine is a neat concept, it presents the parts and
points
where things are supposed to go, and it cuts and clinches, but the thing
is
FRIGGEN SLOW! We do a little telecommunication board that's completely
PTH and
comes in a 30-up panel, that takes around an hour, to an hour 15-mins.
on the
locator to get stuffed. We get these boards in 1,000 piece kits which
take
close to a week (40-hours) to stuff. If any of you know how competitive
it is
here in silicon valley, you know that if you take a week to turn
something
around, you're choking in everybody's dust.

     My problem is with management. It seems that because that boat
anchor was
shipped out here, we HAVE to use it! Before we got the thing up and
running,
we ran a few of the 1,000 piece kits...in three days! That's stuffed,
waved,
and shipped. I don't have a real slide line, but I bought some used
trays and
lined them with conductive foam then set two work tables end-to-end to
create
a sorta "quasi" slide line. Made me some good visual aids and set-up 4
"stations". But for some reason, there's those that feel that what I'm
doing
is "primitive".

     Don't get me wrong, I think that the Contact is a neat machine, and
if I
had 3 or 4 more I might feel a little differently, but only having one
and
forcing us to run ALL our PTH through it is a big mistake in my opinion.
I
think it slows us down way too much and because of that any benefit that
it
might provide is overshadowed by it's lack of speed and efficiency.

     Does anybody else share my view? Or am I missing something?

Thanks!

-Steve Gregory-

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