That's a new fancy stencil printer coming in, beside one of our pick-and-place machines at the 3D Robotics factory in San Diego. All sort of new equipment is in place, including the new reflow oven, automatic glue dispenser (for two-sided boards), lots of smart feeders for the pick-and-place etc.
All this automation and high-quality equipment has meant a massive improvement in board quality and yield. Our aim is to produce the most reliable and robust boards in the industry, and this kind of investment will help us get there.
We'll be moving to an even larger (8,400 square foot) space in the next few weeks, in anticipation of ramping up with a bunch of new products. If you're in San Diego and want a tour, ping me and I can arrange a time with the team there.
Comments
That is actually a great Idea Chris, I like the sound of that even more than touching up on our skills...
I don't want to give to much away as of yet (mainly because I don't know what will come of it) however, I maybe able to come up with a way to make it even cheaper to build circuits and possibly even be organic... There was this company I was going to invest in, in which they made Organic Substrates that can withstand a more of a thresh hold when it comes to heat than your typical and basic PCB's, I think it could handle 250 to 300 degrees Celsius, which I know is far more than the regular PCB's... Also with that, I have contacted the R&D division of xerox in which they make a nano-particle silver conductive ink which you can print circuits on a plastic or paper substrate... Once I receive my materials, I am playing on making a few dummy circuits to see how they operate and fail... Once this is complete I will have a better understanding of the application into the UAV system...
The reason I mention this is because, if all goes to plan, I will be printing circuits on a organic plastic type substrate which will be cheaper and more flexible and will withstand more heat than the current PCB's... Also this will vastly improve on the weight of the circuit... The only down fall at the moment I should note is, the difference between boards, the current boards will have holes for you to solder to, the organic substrate on the other hand, will need to be surface mount components instead of the typical leed components... This will result in having to use a conductive epoxy or adhesive... Also one other note worthy mention would be to find a way to protect the traces without anything touching it... like random metallic particles or conductive objects...
Chris,
I think your right... In fact this is the only site I have come across that has the level of information pretty much anyone needs, and for the different types of UAV's... I also like the fact that you have requested presence of professionals in their appropriate fields and for you to include higher job level professionals to look at what your doing to see if it is within the laws and to let the govt/law understand this is just for hobbyists and not for hurtful spying and other propaganda they will say we are doing...
I am most confident that if your turning out 97% quality boards then once you weed out the other older ones, it will be smooth sailing... You never will get the error out of soldering in the average house hold because the training isn't there... When I was in electronics class I was the best one out of 3 different classes, so my teacher said... I think you have to practice, and it doesn't hurt doing it in school when the parts are free lol...
I think at this rate, if you keep moving forward as this pace, you should offer some seminars every so often for the few who want to learn or touch up on their soldering skills could do so... I don't know how affective this will be because most of the people who would need it are not in your area lol... (just two cents)...
To point out, though this might be the wrong place... I plan to design some boxes that would be dirt, and air and water tight... I also hope to make it some what shock proof as well... These boxes would be for the xbee communication PCB's and for the Autopilot PCB's... I was wondering if you had any type of machines there that would be able to simulate high altitude crashes as if the plane would do a nose dive into the earth lol... All I could do is throw it around and see what happens lol
Richard: all boards do go through a very comprehensive QA process before leaving the factory (nothing leaves if it's not tested and working), but what we've learned is that for complex boards like these with many fine-pitch components, there are things that can go wrong after it leaves the factory: in shipping, use (vibration), and errors in user soldering.
We've already made many small changes in the boards to reduce these problems. We've switched to gold-immersion foils, redesigned contact pads to be bigger, upgraded both the pick-and-place machine and reflow oven for more consistent placement and soldering (and as this post described, have now upgraded the stencil machine, too) and enforced better antistatic measures throughout the factory. All those are designed to improve the yield at the factory and to make the boards more robust and vibration tolerant in use.
Our yield rate (QA pass) out of the machines is now 97%, which is up there with best-of-breed electronics manufacturing. So I think you'll see a dramatic reduction in hardware issues in the field.
The last thing is user soldering error, which continues to be a problem as we reach a bigger, less technically-skilled market. So I think you'll see future boards all pre-soldered. Going forward, all designs are focused on minimizing chip counts, using specially reinforced USB connectors, moving all configuration to software rather than hardware switches (which can break in crashes) and otherwise making these things as bulletproof and foolproof as we can. All of the investment you're seeing in the factory reflects three years of learning with thousands of autopilots in the field. Aside from the military I don't think anyone has stress-tested autopilot electronics as much as our community has, and all that experience (sometimes painful!) has led to the design and production process that we've now got in place.
Chris this is good new... I like seeing post like these...
Also is there going to be a QA control measure with these boards? I myself have seen people post problems about their boards and a lot of the time it is due to the lack in QA on soldering... Meaning there are cold solder joints and bridges which in turn can short out the traces or not give it the proper connection... I know if I'm paying 300 to have a board tested and assembled then it should be near factory precision...