3 ms·

Every now and again this pops up on a different forum. I wonder how much is actually hand soldered any more vs. pick and place machines with SMT.

Pasorrijer 6y ago
In critical applications, much more than you'd imagine. Lots of defence and critical component suppliers still maintain a significant amount of hand work for low volume and critical areas. Don't have a source unfortunately other than personal experience working as an engineer.
lmilcin 6y ago
Over the years I have seen couple of closeups of various boards on youtube. As electronics is my hobby, I tend to pay attention to this. They all looked hand soldered to me. And the soldering job always looked very, very high quality.
audiometry 6y ago
I've been told that in areas where lots of prototyping isgoing on, there is lots of scope for manual rework. (a pcb design only 95% correct needs modifications to figure out the right design)
- phkahler 6y ago
  We had a board where somehow the footprint of an 8 pin SOIC got flipped in the layout. One engineer was able to desolder it, flip it, and solder it on using wires so that it floated about 1-2 cm above the board upside down. I was impressed ;-)
  - garaetjjte 6y ago
    So-called "dead bug" method.
HeyLaughingBoy 6y ago
For low volume, it can cost more to set up the P&P machine, deal with alignments, check first articles, etc. than just soldering a few (dozen) board by hand. And there are a lot of small companies in niche markets whose annual production of a PC board might be in the single digits. That and, people who hand solder stuff all day are fast.
- antoniuschan99 6y ago
  Some fab I checked out use manual pick and place if the quantity of boards is less than 100 since it probably takes more time to set up the automated stuff at such low volumes. I’ve see the videos on IG every now and then on their hand soldering skills. So fast!

Pasorrijer 6y ago

In critical applications, much more than you'd imagine. Lots of defence and critical component suppliers still maintain a significant amount of hand work for low volume and critical areas. Don't have a source unfortunately other than personal experience working as an engineer.

lmilcin 6y ago

Over the years I have seen couple of closeups of various boards on youtube. As electronics is my hobby, I tend to pay attention to this. They all looked hand soldered to me. And the soldering job always looked very, very high quality.

audiometry 6y ago

I've been told that in areas where lots of prototyping isgoing on, there is lots of scope for manual rework. (a pcb design only 95% correct needs modifications to figure out the right design)

phkahler 6y ago
We had a board where somehow the footprint of an 8 pin SOIC got flipped in the layout. One engineer was able to desolder it, flip it, and solder it on using wires so that it floated about 1-2 cm above the board upside down. I was impressed ;-)
- garaetjjte 6y ago
  So-called "dead bug" method.

HeyLaughingBoy 6y ago

For low volume, it can cost more to set up the P&P machine, deal with alignments, check first articles, etc. than just soldering a few (dozen) board by hand. And there are a lot of small companies in niche markets whose annual production of a PC board might be in the single digits. That and, people who hand solder stuff all day are fast.

antoniuschan99 6y ago
Some fab I checked out use manual pick and place if the quantity of boards is less than 100 since it probably takes more time to set up the automated stuff at such low volumes. I’ve see the videos on IG every now and then on their hand soldering skills. So fast!