Good news ! Prof. Marcelo Knoerich Zuffo of the University of Sao Paulo (USP) has offered gta02-core the use of his SMT facility. As if this wasn't generous enough, all he asks for in return are a few of our prototypes for his team to play with.
Here's a picture I took: http://people.openmoko.org/werner/smt.jpg Just kidding :-) This is just a manual rework station. Here's the real thing: http://people.openmoko.org/werner/smt-line-usp.jpg There are three pick-and-place units with a total of about 200 feeders. The long white thing at the end is a 12 zone lead-free nitrogen oven. I'll upload some more pictures later today, when I'm back home. Regarding PCBs, there are no PCB houses that are good at making this kind of board in small quantities in Brazil, so the production team at USP recommended that we look for a PCB maker elsewhere. If anyone has a recommendation, please post it. As a reminder, our PCB design parameters are 6 layers, 1 mm board thickness, 5 mil track width and clearance, and ENIG coating. (USP had some nasty experiences with cheaper coatings, and we wouldn't want to lose half our boards to SMT problems.) 1 mm for six layers is a thin board, which may drive the price up. 5 mil is also more demanding than the 6 mil many mainstream PCB houses offer. I also asked about whether we could use micro-vias under pads and the production team promised me a response in a few days. Oh, and I forgot to ask for a recommendation for a place that makes stencils. I'll do so by mail. We also owe a lot of gratitude to Jon "Maddog" Hall who brought me in touch with Prof. Zuffo and who convinced him to support our project. - Werner _______________________________________________ gta02-core mailing list [email protected] https://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/gta02-core
