|
 Thursday, November 19, 2009 |
| The story of 9 finger Bernhard |
|
I have not posted in a while, I have been busy after my work in China with a ton of new  work here, but I do have a story to tell. A while back my business partner, Ed Kafrissen, and myself got a contract to deliver a product to Telerobotics Corp. The president, Carl Flatau, contracted us to deliver the electronics for a force sensing control system for his robotic gripper product. This device we gave him was pretty slick, his product was pretty slick, but that is a different story.
Carl was a stickler for quality. All the devices we delivered to him were 100% tested before we delivered them to him of course, but he wanted to know details about our manufacturing. So Ed suggested I visit the sub-contractor we hired to stuff and wave solder our pcb's since at least a few pcb's came to us with some sort of problem from the assembly house.
That is where I met '9 finger Bernie'. When I shook his hand it was immediately apparent, and let me tell you an awkward moment. Bernhard (or Bernie) had many years of experience and a heavy German accent. I asked him why we were getting some defective boards. A few boards had chips in back-wards, or the wrong resistor value stuffed, ... just a hodge podge of errors. Our pcb's were mixed technology, SMT and thru-hole. Bernie grabbed one of my boards and used the stub of his missing finger as a pedestal to hold the board as he talked to me. Bernie then gave me a bit of advice that has taken me some time to appreciate.
He told me the pcb's had too many different components. He said that for his staff to give me the fewest defects, then my pcb would need to be simpler. He told me the ideal pcb had all the same value resistor. He chose resistors rather than diodes or some other component because the orientation of resistors does not matter. Second he said that he would prefer all the resistor's to be lined up next to each other. I did not laugh at Bernie (I also helped him set up a better quality control on his line for our product, but I pondered on his advice just the same.)
I wish I could have gave him his ideal pcb. Unfortunately I do not have the knowledge to design a board that performs all the functions necessary for a product with a single value resistor. As one step in the design process I do try to simplify my pcb's though now because he was right. A simpler pcb is cheaper to produce and will be more reliable.
It takes good engineering to simplify a board because it's a more difficult challange. |
damon at 7:36 PM |
(1) Comments |
Add a comment |
Permalink
|
|
|
|