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Or Joplin, Missouri, USA in the early '80s when my family was making C band LNBs for the home satellite reception market prior to today's K band Direct TV and D
by hga 12y ago
Or Joplin, Missouri, USA in the early '80s when my family was making C band LNBs for the home satellite reception market prior to today's K band Direct TV and Dish Network.
It's really not that difficult; I'm not sure they even had a pick and place machine when they got started, the LNBs didn't have all that many components.
- HeyLaughingBoy 12y agoPretty different paradigm though. In the early 80's P&P machines cost a few arms and a firstborn and probably were automated with paper tape! Your family was almost certainly not using surface mount. Or at least, only for a handful of RF components. The outfit I worked for after leaving college in the late 80's shipped hundreds of boards a month doing everything manually. By the time they folded, the only change was sending them out for wave soldering. These days I can outperform them with a solder paste stencil and a toaster oven. Blows my mind.
- hga 12y agoNah, I went to a Route 128 expo on this sort of technology in that period and pick and place machines were way beyond paper tape. And I did a lot of thru hole soldering when I was growing up in the '70s; the LNBs were surface mount (one of the reasons they asked me to go that expo). Maybe there were some thru hold components I'm not remembering, but there was a definitely a lot of surface mounting (my intro to the concept, I think), and I e.g. remember seeing their reflow oven when I got a tour of the place.