85K grant. How best to use?

Unless your products are rather simple or throughput is not a major concern, you are going to have a hard time finding all of that equipment on that budget without considering used equipment. A low-end pick and place machine will consume that entire amount and leave you with much to be desired from the machine. You're pretty much left with only Chinese options like SMTMax, etc. which are geared more towards prototyping volumes.

What type of grant is it and how did you get awarded it?

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It seems a remarkable coup to have been awarded a grant without already having specified exactly why you want it, what you are going to spend it on and how it will benefit your business and the local area.

I had an email about the Fox just the other day, it pretty much costs $85k USD before you add feeders, about the same as the bigger faster Paraquda. This kind of figure is around about where many pick and place machines start before you add feeders, on which you will spend at least as much again. Your overall volumes are not that high, that suggests fewer than 3.5M components placed in 2016, pretty much any production line you come up with can manage that (not even 2k cph), to me that means you either buy to produce or you look at other areas.

To my mind 50-140 unique lines is a high number, typically machines capacity is given as the maximum number of 8mm lanes (slots) it offers, depending on the manufacturer larger lane sizes will then use multiple slots. In some cases they will use more than you might think. Typical generic machines are often 60 lanes front and back. Now your BGAs need a tray each, so add a tray changer, say goodbye to 30 slots (not always, I think Dima uses 6 slots and Samsung cunningly fits theirs on the end). Anyhow you swiftly need at least two generic machines to fit that many parts on at once. Or a Europlacer IINEO which has lots of lanes and space for 7 trays, a fully loaded one of those could well be knocking on $400k(haggling and finer points of config depending). The rest of the line could well be much more basic, Chinese reflow ovens start at $15k for something perfectly sensible (support maybe not great), and you can get perfectly good prints with a $5k manual printer. Of course now you have to cover all the logistics of buying, storing, managing and handling all that inventory.

I would suggest super basic in house production was a bad idea, fault finding a new product only to find the problem is down to being manufactured poorly or with basic errors can only be very frustrating. The likelihood of someone manually fitting 600 small parts 100% on a dense PCB is slim and I pity their eyes and shoulders hunched over the bench doing it.

Testing equipment could well be a nice addition, especially if your production house can't offer that facility to you.

Rework is also a nice thing to have, and could work well in tandem with your test equipment to quickly diagnose and repair boards with problems. I would suggest you look at as many as possible and insist they are demonstrated on your products solving issues you know you encounter. Regarding your production delays, it could also be worth checking whether your designs are contributing to the delay, perhaps they require a specific line to be free. Can the designs be simplified by reducing the BOM line count. Are you getting the manufacturer to source the parts, are those parts readily available, did you give them all the information they needed to identify and purchase the correct parts?

If you supply them, are you making sure it is clear which parts are which, are they packaged properly for production? You could even ask them for a list of the common parts they already use and stock and try to use them first and foremost, that way when they come to load your job they have less setup time.

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Hi,

if I were you, I would probably go for testing and rework equipment. Adding manufacturing to your business, will most probably exceed your preliminary expectations. Manufacturing is much more complicated than you probably think. I have used manual/semi-automatic printers in the past and I can tell you that it is not fun. Together with the small reflow oven, your manufacturing capability and overall quality do not look very promising. You will also need a lot of people to support that. Purchasing, material handling and stock,production people,solderers, quality,repair and shipping.

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I have a number of machines sitting in the back room that I have been trying to sell. 8 Siemens (4 S15's and 4 F3's). A good start if you are interested; I also have an older Omniflo7 Oven as well as an old printer if your interested. All are older but still run. You could pick it all up for around $30K USD. We may have other things you need to get started.

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I had this long post typed up and then I re-read your post. No used equipment? Like others have said, your budget could could easily be swallowed up by 1 piece of equipment.

I would work with your Program Manager at your "assembly partner". You need to make them understand that if your part of the company fails, the whole company fails. If you do not have A Program Manager (or some such similar) at the assembly partner's facility then send someone there (on your payroll, but stationed at their facility). You need someone on your side championing your cause. "Squeaky wheel gets the greasing" as the saying goes.

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