The first interview with Whelen was a huge response in the industry in 2015. 2 years later, foreign circuit board manufacturers face the problem has become a problem in China. Labor costs, recruitment difficulties, rising raw materials, tight delivery, the end of the product of the radical technology and the yield exerted tremendous pressure on this series of problems quickly to China's manufacturing industry to the forefront of automation and intelligent manufacturing The We think it is necessary to do such a series to our Chinese readers. And now come back to see the original article, or will feel very forward-looking. Need to remind the reader that the data is 2 years ago, of course, we will not stay in the past, our team once again came to Whelen, look at the current factory will bring what bright spot, please pay attention Our follow-up reports.
US PCB manufacturers see a good time to recapture the market. Prior to this, the Asian manufacturers to control most of the PCB market has been up to 20 years. Although the United States in the near future are discussing the industry back, but the situation is not very optimistic, the industry does not necessarily change greatly.
While some companies are returning to the United States, it is widely believed that most companies will move to the next emerging market with labor dividends, such as Vietnam, Mexico, and so the lower cost of this place. Then the same is the automated production of the United States will make efforts for the industry to return it? In a company in North America, the answers we received were exciting.
The future of US manufacturing may be in a small community in Charles City, New Hampshire, where there is a Whelen Engineering company. The company was founded in the 1950s and was headquartered in Connecticut, a leading manufacturer of emergency lights and sirens for the automotive and aerospace industry. Over the years, Whelen has spent about $ 7 million a year from China to buy PCBs. But the company has been advocating the work and funds back to the United States, so two years ago they decided to start buying PCB in the United States.
Which company did they choose as a new supplier? Interestingly, they chose themselves. How does a company specializing in audio and visual alarm equipment begin to produce PCBs? Alex Stepinski has a wealth of experience in the PCB industry, and Whelen employs him to design the plant and supervise the internal manufacturing work, which was the first private PCB manufacturing base in North America for many years.
Alex has been working in this industry for many years, has worked in TTM and Senmina such a landmark factory work. He was very excited when Whelen made an invitation to him. Imagine how exciting it would be to design your own PCB production line on a 45,000-square-foot blank canvas with a $ 12 million budget, and Whelen did not interfere with Alex's work too much and did not give him much (ROI) is reasonable, the production line to meet the single-sided, double-sided panels and some of the typical production requirements of multi-layer board can be. The company plans to launch a product line with 2,500 different part numbers. These are their basic needs, but they get the return is far greater than these.
When these are done, Whelen will have the world's first fully automated on-line, lighting-free, zero-waste, 100% digitized PCB plant, which is not only an opportunity to build a PCB production process A good opportunity to build a fully automated PCB production process. It is worth noting that the reason why Alex chose to use the automation process is mainly because this way to recover the fastest investment. The plant is very surprising, and you have seen any PCB factory facilities are not the same. The entire production line was rectangular, in the middle with a control tower, to facilitate you in the entire process of follow-up processing progress of the circuit board. The whole process is conveyed by conveyor, and you put a good hole in the end of the circuit board, 4.5 hours later, you can get PCB products at the other end; Whelen company has the production cycle from a few days shortened into a few hours designers The day you can get the test board and the whole plant is the most noticeable place is rarely used manpower. The whole layout is open, you can see the entire production line next to only two workers, and usually the production line is 8 to 10 workers need to operate.
In order to shorten the production time, the new plant has adopted a large number of innovative design - many innovative design is not long-term test, so there is a certain risk.Alex did not take a safe and reliable road; in addition to automation, he also hopes to introduce new technology Shorten the overall production time, such as the use of MuTracx Lunaris line imaging equipment, the technology can be achieved before plating, took only two minutes to line the circuit on the circuit board. This machine has played a key role in the entire process, which can print about 50 double-sided panels in an hour, with built-in automatic optics (AOI).
After that, the circuit board is fed into the integrated processing system (IPS) plating line for automated plating. The company not only provided electroplating lines, but also by Alex as the main equipment partner, the factory more than one-third of the equipment are provided by the company. The plant's strong portfolio of equipment and technology, which comes from 39 different supply companies, are almost all of the US company's set.IPs not only can manufacture equipment, but also play an important role in integration, it designed The software used to connect and control the production process, but also to help design and install all the elevated equipment.
These elevated equipment is very beautiful, all clear mark, with color coding, u adverbial clauses bracket tightly fit together. Our PCB007 team visited the factories around the world, but seldom lamented at the end of the visit, "Oh, the equipment is too much!" In such a factory with so many new technologies and new equipment, and other the most advanced Of the equipment, such as elevated equipment such facilities is negligible, such as the factory waste treatment system, with the system factory do not need to apply for waste raw material permits, as well as Whelen production of the alarm, will be in the production line When an issue occurs, an alarm is issued that can be set up according to the different production lines, making it easy for the operator to find the problem.
When we saw the solder mask layer on the production line, we found that the factory's processing methods were different, and the new technology and integration were constantly trial and error. It can be seen that in order to bring the manufacturing back to the United States, Whelen is willing to take some risks.
In the use of automation to shorten the production cycle, Whelen's model can give other manufacturers a lot of inspiration, and even attract some OEM began to consider the possibility of building an internal factory. But the real reason for the success of the Whelen plant in the US manufacturing industry is that they are happy to share their innovative solutions with other PCB manufacturers in North America to improve the overall level of the US PCB industry. Although it is an internal factory, Whelen is not worried that peer competitors stole their business or craftsmanship. Many manufacturers want to see how new devices like Lunaris work in a production environment before they actually install , So Whelen's share is a valuable resource for them. As the problem continues to be solved, the feasibility of the program is constantly confirmed, and there are many places in the factory that are worth learning, and Alex Stepinski and Whelen set the standard for PCB manufacturing in North America.
