Automatic solder-paste printer standing in line ahead of placement machines, component reels stacked below the conveyor and safety beacons on top

Factory · Bao'an, Shenzhen · Single site

Seven SMT lines, two THT lines, one board path.

Nine production lines share one 10,000 m² building, and so does everything that supports them: the SMT path runs printer → 3D SPI → placement → reflow → AOI, the two THT lines sit downstream, and inspection and functional test happen in the same building rather than at a third party. Nothing leaves this site between bare-board receipt and sealed export carton.

Plant at a glance

What occupies the building

10,000 m² Single site
One address in Bao'an, Shenzhen; production, test, coating and packing under one roof.
7 SMT lines
High-speed lines with automatic paste printing, in-line 3D SPI and Panasonic NPM-D3 placers.
2 THT lines
Dual-wave soldering with robotic selective soldering and automatic axial and radial insertion.
2 Functional test lines
ICT bed-of-nails, functional test benches, flying probe, burn-in and Hi-Pot capability.
300,000+ Boards / month
Single-board output per month, from prototype quantities through volume production lots.
ISO Class 8 Cleanroom
Controlled area used for conformal coating and for assembly of contamination-sensitive units.

SMT line order

One direction, five stations

Station 01 Solder paste printing
Automatic printer with laser-cut stainless stencils and a nano coating; area ratio ≥0.66 keeps paste release predictable on fine-pitch apertures.
Station 02 3D SPI
Solder-paste inspection measuring volume, height, area and offset against the print, in line and before any component is placed.
Station 03 Placement
Panasonic NPM-D3 modular placers, rated 84,000 CPH, covering 01005 / 03015 parts up to 100 × 90 mm connectors.
Station 04 Reflow
Ten-zone forced-air convection ovens running lead-free SAC305, with nitrogen atmosphere available where a programme calls for it.
Station 05 AOI
In-line optical inspection after reflow for missing parts, offset, polarity, bridging and insufficient solder. X-Ray is configured per project.

Material flow: paste printing → 3D SPI → placement → reflow → AOI

Placement

Panasonic NPM-D3: what it can actually take

Placement capability, per machine and per assembly
Parameter	Value
PlacerModular placement platform	Panasonic NPM-D3, modular heads and feeder carts, in line with printer, SPI, reflow and AOI.
Rated speed	84,000 CPH — machine nameplate rating, not a line throughput figure
Placement accuracy	±25 µm — machine-rated, at the placer
Component range	01005 (metric 03015) chip passives up to 100 × 90 mm, 28 mm maximum height; PoP supported.
Fine pitch	QFP 0.4 mm pitch and BGA 0.4 mm ball pitch; both require the laser-cut, nano-coated stencil combination.
Board thickness	0.4 – 4.0 mm
Panelisation	Array panelisation, V-CUT and stamp holes; depanelling by router or by V-CUT.

Soldering & stencil

The process window around the joint

ESD-controlled entry to the production area, with heel-strap and wrist-strap testers mounted at the doorway beside the floor marking

Reflow, atmosphere and paste release

The reflow profile and the stencil are the two variables we control hardest on a fine-pitch assembly, because between them they decide whether a joint forms properly the first time. Both are specified per programme and both are recorded in the lot file.

Reflow oven: 10 zones, forced air convection
Alloy: Lead-free SAC305
Nitrogen reflow: Optional, O₂ ≤ 1000 ppm
Stencil: Laser-cut stainless, nano coated
Stencil area ratio: ≥0.66
Required for: 01005 and 0.4 mm pitch

THT, test, environment

Everything the SMT line hands over to

THT and DIP

2 lines · dual wave · selective solder

Two THT lines run dual-wave soldering with a turbulent wave followed by a laminar wave, spray fluxing and a preheat zone. Robotic selective soldering with a single-point nozzle handles the joints that sit close to surface-mount parts, where a full wave would put avoidable thermal stress on neighbouring components. Axial and radial passive insertion is automated for the high-count boards. Through-hole fill and wetting are judged to IPC J-STD-001.

Pin processing: press-fit · pin-in-paste · riveting

Test area

2 functional test lines

ICT runs on bed-of-nails fixtures with in-house fixture design, functional test benches are built with their own fixtures and test programmes, and flying probe covers low-volume and high-mix work where a fixture cannot be justified. Temperature-controlled burn-in and Hi-Pot dielectric testing are available for programmes that specify them. Test development is part of the NPI gates, not an afterthought once boards exist.

Selection basis: flying probe under 500 boards/year, bed-of-nails above 2,000

Environment and handling

ISO Class 8 · ESD discipline · MSL control

Conformal coating and the assembly of contamination-sensitive units run inside the ISO Class 8 cleanroom. Assembly and rework take place at ESD-controlled stations, and moisture-sensitive components are tracked from the moment a bag is opened: exposure time is logged against the MSL level, and parts that exceed their floor life are baked before use. Finished boards are packed in antistatic bags, moisture-barrier bags with desiccant and a humidity indicator card.

Coating types: acrylic · silicone · polyurethane (IPC-CC-830)

Capacity, with the assumptions

The placement numbers and the arithmetic behind them

Placements per day

Rated 14,000,000 placements a day is the nameplate figure — seven machines at full rated speed for 24 hours, with no changeover, no setup, no inspection stops and no downtime. It is a rating, not a delivery promise. 14,000,000

A planning figure of ≈5,600,000 placements a day comes from 7 lines × 84,000 CPH × 24 h × 40% overall equipment effectiveness; the 40% OEE is an industry-typical assumption, not a measured result from this plant. ≈5,600,000

The number we will hold ourselves to in a quotation is a board quantity, not a placement count: 300,000+ boards a month across the site, scheduled against the lot sizes on the order. 300,000+

Component availability, not machine time, is what usually moves a date. Long-lead semiconductors can add 12–26 weeks before assembly starts, which is why every printed date is an assembly lead time ex-components. 12–26 weeks

Come and check

Four things you can verify without asking us to be honest

Visit the plant, or send an auditor

Factory visits and buyer audits are scheduled against the production calendar, and the right to audit this site and its records is written into the quality agreement. Auditors can follow a lot from bare-board receipt through to the sealed carton.

Lot-level traceability

Printing, placement, reflow, test and packing parameters are written against the production lot, together with the component batches consumed. A question about a specific shipment is answered from that record.

First article inspection report

The FAI package carries the SPI and AOI data recorded on the first article together with the appearance criteria it was judged against, so the acceptance decision can be re-read rather than taken on trust.

DFM report inside 24 hours

Prototype Gerbers and a BOM receive a first-round DFM report within 24 hours of receipt, listing land-pattern mismatches, solder-mask sliver risks, panelisation and process-edge problems before any tooling is committed.

Test assets

Test coverage is engineered, not bought off the shelf

In-circuit test bed-of-nails fixture with a board clamped onto a dense array of spring-loaded probes

ICT BED-OF-NAILS FIXTURE · POGO PROBE FIELD

What this station proves

The stations below are the production asset base, not a showroom. Every acceptance decision taken at them is recorded against the board serial and the process lot, so a query six months later resolves to a record rather than a recollection.

Softly lit out-of-focus circuit board surface with faint copper traces and via pads

Next step

Put your board against these lines

Send the Gerbers, the BOM and the annual volume, and state the largest component, the smallest chip and the tightest pitch on the board. You get a quotation with the bare-board source, the assembly lead time ex-components and the inspection class it is priced against.

Reply within one business day

DFM review, stencil specification and a machine-time estimate come back together, so the date and the price rest on the same reading of the drawing.