Thinking through through-hole reflow
15 March 2010
Is through-hole reflow a good idea in an awkward situation? And how did NEW SA go?
I was speaking to someone a few weeks ago from Weiland, a company who is keen to impress on the market the need for its through-hole reflow connectors. During our conversation I started thinking that one of the biggest hurdles that such a company faced was the continuing trend towards outsourcing.
The logic goes thus. Using connectors, or any other components that have been sufficiently fortified to undergo the reflow process, allows the manufacturer to remove a step – either selective, hand or wave soldering from the production process, thereby reducing production cost and therefore reducing end product cost. It is often forgotten that removing process cycles, particularly thermal ones, invariably has a beneficial effect on quality as well, but this is a secondary issue. The main argument for changing to through-hole reflow components therefore becomes a production one. However, the replacement of a surface mount connector, or a press fit one or conventional through hole one for that matter, is not an issue for the production engineer, particularly in an EMS company – the decision to alter component types is for the design engineer alone. While many of the leading EMS providers do offer a design for manufacture service, they are never going to be as reactive or flexible to change as when design and production remain in close proximity. A fundamental change in component types is therefore a rarity and so the use of a technique or component that may be better and cheaper is delayed until the next generation of the product is unveiled and therefore new components can be designed in.
Many EMS companies do keep an eye on ways that they can remove cost from their customer’s projects, but I am not so sure that most would approach the designer with fundamental changes to the components specified. If you have any thoughts on this topic or any other related design-for-manufacture issue that you would like to share with the readers of EMTww then please drop me an email at the usual address; tim.fryer@imlgroup.co.uk.
On a completely different subject, a word of congratulations to the team behind National Electronics Week South Africa. The inaugural event took place last week in Johannesburg and from what I have heard the team have been rewarded with a larger than expected number of visitors, and a happier than expected band of exhibitors.
In international terms this was a small show, but there had been fears that the finite South African market was being adequately served by a group of distributors who knew all of their customers and therefore obviating the need for an exhibition.
As it turned out, 1700 visitors turned out over the two days which indicates that there are a lot of engineers in South Africa who have an interest in finding out about a wider range of equipment and techniques. Claire Saunders, the Event Director, commented: “We’re obviously delighted with the show – we always knew it would be successful but the scale of this success surprised even us! The atmosphere inside the exhibition hall was practically euphoric; I was inundated with positive feedback from UK and South African exhibitors alike. Manufacturing equipment provider, Red Rhino, even sold an entire production line on their stand! 1700 visitors turned up, many of them with Gerber data and real world production challenges to investigate with exhibitors. Because of this, we saw large volumes of equipment sold. The visitor response was phenomenal and we’ve sold even more space for this year’s UK event as a result.”
The UK event Claire mentions takes place in May at Birmingham’s National Exhibition Centre. For event details check our events page and we will be doing a full preview prior to the event, but I hope Claire and her team manage to take some of their South African momentum forward into the UK event.
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