Ha... that was good thinking Steve... It's also a great example of the impact a non-standard assembly can have on the assembly house and why it drives up the price to exceed the max size the equipment can handle... A simple change in the design to make it a 2 board assembly would have avoided the whole problem and probably have been cheaper. Thanks, Bill Brooks - KG6VVP PCB Design Engineer , C.I.D.+, C.I.I. Tel: (760)597-1500 Ext 3772 Fax: (760)597-1510 e-mail:[log in to unmask] http://www.dtwc.com http://pcbwizards.com -----Original Message----- From: Steve Gregory [mailto:[log in to unmask]] Sent: Tuesday, November 23, 2004 6:11 AM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: [TN] LongBoards 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 --------------------------------------------------- Technet Mail List provided as a service by IPC using LISTSERV 1.8e To unsubscribe, send a message to [log in to unmask] with following text in the BODY (NOT the subject field): SIGNOFF Technet To temporarily halt or (re-start) delivery of Technet send e-mail to [log in to unmask]: SET Technet NOMAIL or (MAIL) To receive ONE mailing per day of all the posts: send e-mail to [log in to unmask]: SET Technet Digest Search the archives of previous posts at: http://listserv.ipc.org/archives Please visit IPC web site http://www.ipc.org/contentpage.asp?Pageid=4.3.16 for additional information, or contact Keach Sasamori at [log in to unmask] or 847-615-7100 ext.2815 ----------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------- Technet Mail List provided as a service by IPC using LISTSERV 1.8e To unsubscribe, send a message to [log in to unmask] with following text in the BODY (NOT the subject field): SIGNOFF Technet To temporarily halt or (re-start) delivery of Technet send e-mail to [log in to unmask]: SET Technet NOMAIL or (MAIL) To receive ONE mailing per day of all the posts: send e-mail to [log in to unmask]: SET Technet Digest Search the archives of previous posts at: http://listserv.ipc.org/archives Please visit IPC web site http://www.ipc.org/contentpage.asp?Pageid=4.3.16 for additional information, or contact Keach Sasamori at [log in to unmask] or 847-615-7100 ext.2815 -----------------------------------------------------