The heart of the operation: the pick and place machine
A lot has changed since my last photo tour of the DIY Drones San Diego factory. We've moved next door to space more than twice as large and added all sort of new pro equipment including everything from a big new reflow oven to a special high-precision scale that allows us to count the exact number of parts in a kit by weight, so we never miss one.
It's easy to make a few PCBs or even send them out to a fab to have them made, and a lot of people getting into electronics start that way. But once you get beyond a few dozen boards to hundreds and then thousands, you need your own factory to ensure that the products are manufactured and tested right. For every product there must be a test jig and test code to check it and you need as many people in customer and technical support as there are in production.
DIY Drones now has a dozen employees doing everything from new product development to customer support. Here are pictures of many of them and their work stations:
The pick and place doing its magic!
Arturo applying solder paste
Close-up of the use of a paste stencil
Anette and Mireya in shipping
Cindy testing
Changing the feeders for a different board
Final hand-placement of components by Brian
Operations manager Lorenzo Lopez. He's The MAN!
Amateurs break their PCBs along the score lines. Bad idea (it can cause cracks)! Pros use a PCB cutter.
Rebecca does the accounting
The reflow oven!
Here's the oven's control panel
Samuel, one of the design engineers, shows off a glimpse of a new OSD board that's in development. Shhh!
Anette at a shipping station
Shipping supplies!
Comments
I had a great experience at the DIYDrones store/factory yesterday.
I had accidentally 'nuked the bootloader' on my APM card. I called them (at 858-324-1741) and was told to bring it in.
I drove to the store at 6976 Convoy Ct. San Diego, CA 92111 and was greeted by Lorenzo. He introduced me to Jordi who took me on a tour of the facilities. The place is very clean and full of very friendly people. I was introduced to Samuel and Cindy. They hooked the board to a test computer. It was re-programmed, tested and returned to me in good working order.
Thanks to you all.
If you are in the San Diego area a trip to the 3D Robotics (the DIYDrones facility) is very worthwhile. They said that they love visitors.
Nice photos. You have good working conditions and do a great job! I was happy to look it.
P.S. Why Yvett's photo is from the back?
Nice to see you have the samereflow oven as i have.
Pros use a PCB cutter if the board made right with the right Solder you dont get problems.
Pros also use a Real Stencil Printing Machine.
Nice kit
Thats a lot of new equipment!Awesome!Not assuming you have taken or rely on investments but the general question does arise... How does external monetary investment work in the open source industry???Especially in the context of IP.....which is essentially given away with an instruction booklet?
It always struck us ever since VA Research & Redhat that the mark of an open source operation was employed factory workers, accountants, & managers, with engineering conspicuously absent, engineering was the 1 part made up of all volunteers doing something else for a living. Why wasn't the customer service, accounting, manufacturing, & shipping done by volunteers, too? It was because the open source movement was started by engineers & that has always kept it specific to the engineering part in our minds.
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