In commercial through-hole PCB manufacturing (I know, this is like asking about commercial horse-and-buggy manufacturing...), how are the component leads clipped off after insertion and/or soldering?
Is there some sort of spinning-saw-blade arrangement, or a dozen underpaid workers with wirecutters, or ... ?
Yes, each of the above, depending upon where the board is fab'd.
Glenn
Still lots of companies use non-SMT components, including our place. We don't need to use SMT and for the low volume stuff that we do it's fine to use hand assembly.
We have a couple of ladies that do all the PCB assembly work, and make a very good job of it.
Strangely enough, in my first job at Mullards in the early 1960's we were doing identical assembly then, only they were single-sided SRBP boards, double sided were probably not in common use then, and glass-fibre material was very high-tech and only used on MIL spec stuff.
Peter
-- Peter & Rita Forbes Email: snipped-for-privacy@easynet.co.uk Web:
"Walter Harley" wrote in news:eqKdnVPhU6Q-wj3enZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@speakeasy.net:
Machine-inserted parts have their leads bent over slightly and simultaneously clipped,to retain them during wave soldering. For low-volume runs,assemblers do it manually.
-- Jim Yanik jyanik at kua.net
asking
component
underpaid
Walter,
For high volume work there are Lead Saws that are used to trim the component leads after the board has been wave soldered. You can see one here ->
For low volume stuff simple wire cutters are used. For somewhat higher volumes, air powered cutters are used to minimize operator fatigue and repetitive motion injuries.
I suspect that where labor costs are low and worker health isn't an issue, even higher volumes may be done by hand.
Hope this helps.
-- James T. White
Why cut the leads after soldering ? Most common I know is that the components are bend and cut before soldering. The leads are not bend to keep them in place for wave soldering like some said. They are bend to keep in them in place for the insertion machine.
If you want to make high quality then don't stress the components with a inserter. Bend and cut them with a good machine place the components by hand.
But as always there are more solution possible depending on the situation.
KC
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