Mr. Holton, Kudos! I couldn't add any more than what you said. I appreciate designers design fancy products, but if their production dept have difficulty building them, it is another story entirely. I say the same thing for the discussion about reversed tantalum capacitors. It is inevitable a human error creeps in regardless of fancy assembly tricks mentioned in the discussion. I already gone thru some of these tricks. They add extra assembly overheads. As one mentioned, orienting all the caps in the same direction is one practical solution fixing the problem at the root. What I am saying is a lot of manufacturing defects (I would say about 60% or more from my experience) are the result of poorly designed products. It is no good to do design reviews after designers finished product layouts. It is seldom that design changes recommended by a manufacturing engineer get implimented. Many manufacturing defects get fixed or patched up on the floor. This is especially true for sub-contract assembly houses. It is very effective to do on-going design reivews when designers start to layout boards and when component package selections are made. Sorry being too hard on designers, this is just my sound opinion. regards Matthew Park NII-Norsat International Inc. >>> Ed Holton <[log in to unmask]> August 7, 1998 6:51 am >>> As a manufacturing engineer, my advice is to visit your manufacturing engineering department and work with the M.E. They are building your designs, they know what they need. Get a tour of the production line, learn the basics of how the machines work, how the components are placed, how the machine handles them, keep out zones, how the production line works, etc. The M.E. dept should supply the capabilities of the machines so that your designs do not exceed machine capabilites. The idea is that the infamous wall between design and manufacturing no longer exists. I can't stress this enough, work with the manufacturing engineers to make the design something that can be easily built. Review component placement, component orientation, the mix of components used. The goal is to develop a design that can be built to a 6 sigma quality level, and this can never be done unless you work with the people building your design. Ed Holton Hella Electronics [log in to unmask] on 08/06/98 06:11:51 PM Please respond to [log in to unmask]; Please respond to [log in to unmask] To: [log in to unmask] cc: (bcc: Ed Holton/Hella North America Inc.) Subject: [TN] New Designer!! Howdy, I am relatively new to the designing of circuit boards so please bear with me and my petty questions. The company I work for has been in the business of designing its own circuit boards for several years now. I have found out that past designers had no formal training in the processes of designing of the boards. What I am trying to say is previous designers had vast knowledge in the way the designed theoretically worked but, when it came to the layout of the board and where components were placed became a random process throughout the area of the board. There was some knowledge of where to put certain devices, but the designer seemed more interested in aesthetics of the board rather than proper function. What I am looking for is some rules, tips, and any information that will help me improve old and future designs. Also, I have been given the task of converting old designs with regular components on them to an all surface mount design. Again, if anyone has any tips or past experience I would greatly appreciate it. THANKS FOR ALL THE HELP!!! JASON MARKOSKY [log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]> ################################################################ TechNet E-Mail Forum provided as a free service by IPC using LISTSERV 1.8c ################################################################ To subscribe/unsubscribe, send a message to [log in to unmask] with following text in the body: To subscribe: SUBSCRIBE TechNet <your full name> To unsubscribe: SIGNOFF TechNet ################################################################ Please visit IPC's web site (http://www.ipc.org) "On-Line Services" section for additional information. 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