Steve,
We have a predecessor to your unit, the CS400A. We originally bought the unit to satisfy a customers
requirements (and an old Mil requirement) that all leads be cut before soldering (no exposed base metal).
To meet this requirement we used a combination of auto-insertion, the CS400A and some hand cutting and
crimping prior to wave soldering.
Time studies we did here indicated that once you got out of the learning curve, our push line would far
outpace the CS400A. Because of this, the only other use this equipment saw was on low volume highly
complex assemblies. Since SMD has replaced most of these type of assemblies, our CS400A is presently being
used as a dust collector.
On the machine speed issue, I always felt this this old girl/guy was sooooo sloooow because it had a
single tasking computer. But, on further consideration, I decided that when you have an operator
interfacing with moving equipment there are probably a limit to how fast you want the equipment moving in
order to allow them to go home with all the appendages they came to work with.
Stephen R. Gregory wrote:
> 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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