Hi all! I'm sure a lot of us have heard the saying; "Necessity is the Mother of Invention", well I ran across a situation where it became necessary to come up with something to solve a problem. We have this assembly here that is in a vey fragile panel. The individual board is only 1-inch wide, about 4.5-inches long, .031 thick, and double-sided SMT that is fairly dense. Building the first side isn't a big problem, but when we get to the second side, my operators pull their hair out trying to set-up the board supports...there isn't much room to position the support for each board as you will see in the picture on my web page, and often wind up breaking a panel or two when it is half built because it is so fragile. It ain't no fun when that happens... I can't take credit for the initial idea, actually our Production Manager planted the seed, but I took his idea and ran with it. I'm sure many of you have heard of "Gel-Flex" support tooling from MPM. Very unique tooling, and if any of you have priced this tooling, you know you will be paying for this "unique-ness". I made some what I call; "Okie Foam-Flex" tooling today. Only spent about 2-hours fiddling and cutting, measuring and checking, and finally come-up with something that works in our Assembleon Topaz and Emerald for board support. It's fool-proof for our operators, and takes all of 2-minutes to set it in place. You can see all the pictures at: http://www.stevezeva.homestead.com and look at; "Flimsy Panel, Foam Flex, Foam Flex 2, and Checking Support". I made this from layers of static dissipative foam that we had laying around, and double-sided sticky tape. The bottom black layers are a high density, stiff type of foam, and the top layer is a soft "squishy" egg carton patterned foam. I had to make measurements, and cut out areas to allow for the board present sensor, the board push-in actuator, and some other hardware that is mounted on the moveable rail of the machine, but really wasn't difficult at all. Best of all, it really works great! I know this board support doesn't look all that "High Tech", but it was cheap, and does the job as good as that all the other expensive flexible tooling does. Granted, it is custom for each assembly, but it will get one through in a pinch. I'm just posting this in hope that maybe one day it will get someone else out of a pinch when needed... Kind regards, -Steve Gregory- Senior Process Engineer LaBarge Incorporated Tulsa, Oklahoma (918) 459-2285 (918) 459-2350 FAX __________________________________________________________________ This message may contain information that is privileged and confidential to LaBarge, Inc. It is for use only by the individual or entity named above. If you are not the intended recipient, you may not copy, use or deliver this message to anyone. In such event, you should destroy the message and kindly notify the sender by reply e-mail. --------------------------------------------------- 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 -----------------------------------------------------