The Dipping Machine (or whatever you call it)

The dipping Machine is used to solder PCB quickly and efficiently as compared to manual hand soldering. This is true for plated through hole pcb type. Non plated could be used either but not really recommended as the result may not comply the IPC standard.

The Tray

The tray comprised of two customized aluminum hollow bar which is placed in parallel to hold the pcb while inserting the component. The PCB placed on the tray allows the bottom solder side exposed so that the through hole component can be inserted. I is a very useful tool for mass production of pcb boards.

The aluminum bar is placed in parallel to each other. It is hold on by a very long bolt and nuts to tighten and adjust the tray width at each end to suit the pcb size. The nuts are placed on each of the tray side wall so that it could be firmly tightened. The length of the aluminum tray could be around 2-4 meters depending on the amount of space available.

This tray is designed to be used with the PCB dipping machine. This is because all of the component in that PCB is inserted completely, then it will be soldered using the dipping machine. (see the posts on dipping machine)




This is how the hollow aluminum bar looks like.








This is how the PCB is placed onto the tray.







That's me after doing those component insertion.







The complete inserted component on PCB ready for dipping machine.

PCB manufacturing

The Company doesn't manufacture their own PCBs. This is because several factors such as time, cost, manpower, etc. This is what is believed being done by the most of electronic related industries because it is way much better than doing it themselves.

PCB manufacturing requires the equipment necessary to produce an industrial standard PCB. Home made PCB would not be good enough and may not have marketable presentation as they are not well prepared according to the IPC standard. Besides that, each PCB design may require different equipment in order to produce. It is not viable if the company to purchase specific equipment just to produce the one off specific design. Therefore, outsourcing would be really good measure to fully optimize the cost of prototyping or mass producing the PCB.

The process of manufacturing a PCB here in Korea would take only 1 day to complete. The designer will send a Gerber format file to the manufacturer and then the next day, they will send the PCB complete with all the required specification. This might be a different scenario back in Malaysia because not that many PCB manufacturers are available. Therefore the time to produce and cost will be very much different. Some of the so called manufacturer do not even do that themselves, but outsource the job to the company in China instead. This will take more than a week to complete.

Masking is very important in a PCB design. Some people might not know how much important it is until they want to mass produce the product. This is very common to a fresh university graduates as this knowledge did not being taught to them. Masking will help to ease the soldering process and help to produce a very clean and tidy PCB soldering task. The mask will separate the pads from the rest of other pads and pins. Besides that, only the masked PCB is able to be soldered using the PCB dipping machine. The use of dipping machine will produce an industry standard PCB.

Through hole plating and vias are are another important aspects of a PCB design. These two techniques will enable the use of vias and better through hole manual soldering. Remember that the IPC standard will require the volcano shape fillet. The through hole plating will help to stream away the excess solder at the certain pin and creates a well shaped volcano fillet on each through hole pin.

The micro-Robot

It's been a while I haven't write anything in this blog. Anyway, I'd like to write about the things which happened at the company which I'm having the industrial training at.


There After the first few weeks in the company, I have been given a set of robot parts & tools to build. This is like a lego building toys but in a different way. The pre-etch and manufactured PCB were prepared and what i need to do is just to find the right electronic components and solder it onto the PCB. There are 2 pcb plates involved in a set of robot part. The first part would be the top part which consists of the microcontroller module, LCD, power control, switches, 7 segments display, RS232 communication interface, electronics user interface hardware as well as a servo motor to navigate the Ultrasonic sensor. The other part is the bottom PCB which consists of the geared motor, motor driver IC, rectifiers and a few other electronic components.

This robot that i build were the first prototype of the microrobot build by the company. This was the testing platform to measure and investigate if the robot would be the fit for market and to correct as well as improving the robot system.

One thing which obviously lack about the robot is that the design of the center of gravity. It requires the placement of the tyres and the roller to be placed well apart to make sure that the robot is stable. Other than that, the robot is fine and ready to market.

This would be considered as one of the cheap but less powerful as compared to the company's first built robot.