and before I launch the talk I want to
just draw attention to a couple of
resources for folks working on hardware
the first of which is a factory tourist
group that I run out in the Bay Area and
it's an opportunity for folks they're
working on hardware whether it's
starting a product or work at a product
development company to go and see a
product actually get made I think the
benefit is you look on Kickstarter for
example a lot of people will design
these things that without a deep
understanding of manufacturing and it
puts some sort of at risk of that thing
not turning out as well as they'd like
so if anybody's on the Bay Area I'd love
to have you join me for that but if
somebody's out here instead of
interested in starting a New York sister
group I come track me down the second
thing that I wanted to highlight was a
hardware office hours and what we're
trying to do is connect folks that are
sort of starting hardware projects with
industry veterans that really know about
manufacturing or distribution or some
other area as a way to really educate
some younger folks on the process so if
you want to be connected up with
somebody or if you're in a situation
where you have some experience to share
that's something else that I'd love to
help have your help with and the final
thing is what it's hardware a staff
exchange so I think it's been neat to
see with software now I if anybody's
develop software oftentimes if you run
into a puzzle if you google it the first
thing that comes up is the stack has
changed with somebody's had the same
problem and then just somebody's
answered nicely with the solution so I
think for people that are starting
hardware I be wonderful to have a
similar resource so if you have
questions or if you think you can
provide answers I'd love to see folks on
that okay
so I'll get started then so what I want
to talk about is two styles of
electronics manufacturing one involves
surface mount components like these ones
and I'll pass these around in a moment
the other is through-hole and I guess
the way that I'm going to sort of work
through their differences is with my
experience sort of as a maker working on
a variety of different projects so for
me
my time really began and three years ago
at the 2010 New York Maker Faire and
there it was striking to see that it
seems like there
to technologies that were really
exciting and really democratizing for
folks wanted to get into this one was
MakerBot released their cupcake and the
second one was Arduino was sort of
highlighting their uno among some other
boards and I think that for me at my day
job I worked on the controls of a
conveyor and so I thought it'd be fun to
go and give the microcontroller the
Arduino route ago so it started out just
as sort of communicate a little bit more
about what I mean when I say
through-hole and its relation to Arduino
I think imagine a number of you have
seen resistors that look like this or
little LEDs the poke in the board's
desert those are used in complement with
the Arduino so do we know can you can
connect sensors of a red variety from
white sound whatever and then put out
motion or or sound or light or whatever
so it's a great way to go and connect
what you're working on to the world so I
think there are three things that make
the Arduino awesome so I think the first
is great design it's just really easy to
use and I think that where that comes
from is Massimo point of view that it's
really about users not megahertz so we
really spent a lot of time designing it
to make it just a joyous experience I
think a programming language for it is
pretty simple so it's something you can
go and just get started and also when
you're changing the firmware with a lot
of the old microcontrollers you often
don't be in a situation if it goes
through this tedious process where as
they'd wrote this nice software you just
click a button and then off you go I
think a second nice thing is in your
prototype really quickly with the
designs just unplug and replug the wires
I think the final thing that makes
Arduino great is that you have a great
community there's lots of resources both
electrical schematics and software
blocks of code they can if you want to
do something you can get up to start it
really quickly
so for me my first project was a white
controller so the light switch next to
the good door in my garage and work and
so I was used to like stumbling and
tripping over stuff on the way to go and
work in my shop and so what I did is
hooked up a little infrared sensor that
would detect when I walked in the door
and it just turned on a white really
simple circuit and but it was just a
nice way to get into Arduino
I think the second thing that I worked
on was a fan controller for my computer
the fans would usually be just going
full blast all the time it was really
loud so but when I was in a situation
where I wanted it to be a bit more quiet
when it wasn't super busy
I needed to control how much speed the
fans were and how cool it would be so I
just started putting a little
temperature sensor and the Arduino would
go and sort of vary the fan speed in
order to achieve that temperature then a
little bit more ambitious project was an
autonomous car it was neat to see with
Google and DARPA Grand Challenge how
folks had made these big cars that air
will go and drive from point A to B
without any person in it so that was the
next project that I was working on and I
think you can sort of see kind of what a
what a mess it was in terms of having
just a couple of boards all over the
place wires going everywhere and have
sort of been doing that that I really
came to came against some of the limits
10 foot surveys I
borders with using Arduino and I think a
couple things that I wanted to highlight
I think that as a design woman was such
that it was kind of fragile so you take
a look back at the at the wiring on here
every time it crashed the wires would
just go everywhere and it was time to go
and rebuild it the second thing is that
the components are really big I think
the the car the autonomous cars are
something that they can bear a little
bit of extra weight and it's not gonna
have a huge strain on batteries but as
you see more these like Internet of
Things or wearables or drones
that's where every little last sort of
Graham matters and where the
through-hole just add some extra weight
I think the third thing that I was
bumping up against as I was working on
the car was just the fact that the
components section is limited really
since the 80s people in industry barely
used through-hole maybe except for some
connectors and some big electrolytic
capacitors and so it's frustrating like
if I want if I saw this cool chip that I
wanted to use it wasn't available unless
smartphone or Adafruit had a breakout
board for it I think the final thing is
just the fact that I can't scale so they
have some machines but they're just
super expensive it's hard to get your
hands on them and so for the most part
when you're doing manufacturing it just
beats by hand and so I think this has
two consequences I mean first is that
you have to do a conversion process if
you want to go and make more than a
couple of boards from your through-hole
design to the service mount style that
I'll talk about a little bit later so I
think the frustrating thing about that
is that one of the purpose of the
prototype is this or test a bunch of
your technical hypotheses and if you go
this through-hole approach it's a
situation where you have to go and so
like you have a whole new set of
hypotheses when you make that transition
so now I want to talk a little bit about
surface mount as an alternative and I'll
let I'll just our pass around board and
some components that are examples of
this style so if you just send them all
around so whereas the resistors are in
the old style that usually had those
leads in a big bulb these come on tape
and there's these little little
components that come along in the tape
that get placed on the surface and
that's have a good surface mount name of
a printed circuit board so one of the
options that I look to with that
autonomous car after being frustrated
with components and the wires going
everywhere and all those other issues
was hand assembling with surface mount
so buying a microscope getting some
tweezers and just go and based on the
design that I had in my head
pick up the little components and place
them on the board so I think there's a
couple things that made this not optimal
so I think one is the frustration of
just like it's hard because the
components are so small it's hard to
place them exactly where you wanted to
place them and when you're doing a
design again it sort of that that test
of you want to be testing your design
that's what you're doing not testing how
well you can sort hand manufacture the
boards I think just give you a sense of
the size of a lot of them the some of
them are small is like five human hair
is by ten human hair so it's just
they're not that big and your phone is
full of ones that are even smaller so
the final thing is just sort of a
question like how do you want to be
using your time it's like when I was
working on this project I wanted to go
and like play with the design and sort
of figure out how to get it working I
didn't want to spend time sort of
hunched over this microscope with the
tweezers just trying to bang out the
board so it just wasn't what I had in
mind so I think the one of the big ideas
that comes with surface mount when it's
done properly is this idea of digital
fabrication
and what I mean to say with this and you
can sort of understand it by analogy to
software and mechanical design so with
software it's great in the sense that
you can write code press compile and
then all of a sudden pushed out you can
go and debug it you can go and show it
to customers and you get now you can
iterate really quickly
the same is true with mechanical design
I think particularly the advent of 3d
printers you can go and design something
in SolidWorks or whatever CAD software
you like send it off and get it a 3d
printed right back and you can go and
see did it fit exactly does it feel
right with customers all those type of
things so I think there's three things
that make digital fabrication really
powerful I think one is its
instantaneous when you're in software
you're able to go and test a lot of
things even before you even have to
bring something to reality I think the
second nice thing is it's scalable that
you can go and sort of say like hey I
want a hundred thousand of these things
and some factory would be able to go and
sort take your design and maybe make
minimal mod modifications and off
they'll go making a ton instead of me to
redesign from the three if you start
with through-hole and you know anything
is portable so you can share design so
it's like you're working on design and
you'll have a friend that that wants to
try something similar you send the
design files they make something the
same instead of having him trying to
decide for a manufacturer by hand so
what I was looking for is a digital
fabrication but for electronics so
something they would allow me design a
circuit board an ego Altium whatever CAD
software and then pretty much press
something that would go and give me the
physical board out of it so I did as I
when I looked around the main option was
going to get a contract manufacturer to
go and help out with that process this
is somebody who has a big guy sort of
room sized robot that they would load
your design manufacture the board and
then send the board back to you in the
mail I think there was three things that
really struck me as I was trying to make
a board with this process first was this
glacial oftentimes would be weeks would
be the cycle time when I was used to
sort of doing software you could do it
instantaneously I think the second thing
is it's cumbersome in sense that I I
spent a lot of time just talking back
and forth to the contract manufacturer
and
make sure that what what I wanted to is
what God made I think the third thing is
it's expensive and I'll talk a little
bit more about what I mean when I say
that study guide I'm not the only person
that sort of has sort of frustration
with this transition from software and
the design process and they are to
design process and hardware so this is a
woman who does the Internet of Things
company called Pinocchio and she's using
doing like UX and other design type
stuff and when she started her Internet
of Things company it was just sort of
this jolt of it takes a lot longer for
each iteration so I think this is a
diagram of what I mean when I say it's
cumbersome so you sort of start out with
designing the board and then you have to
send some design files off to a fab
house to make the PCB you have to send
some other design files off to a Content
manufacturer this gonna be able to be
assembling you have to pull out from
your design the Bill of Materials with
all the components that you want send
that to the contract manufacturer but
also sort of place in order with the
distributor to make sure they give give
you what you want you have to make sure
that the boy everything gets shipped to
the right place so that when the board's
done it gets shipped the assembler the
components ship to the assembler and
then then finally you'll get your board
back and so this is what I mean when I
say it's it's a comedic distraction just
the execution process of getting a board
made by a third party
I think it's price is another
consideration I think it's study gets
frustration friday-night frustrating
when you're talking to a contract
manufacturer and I want to do this this
quick cycle I don't spend $1400 every
time that I do it so I think that when I
was looking at the existing option of
this like for digital fabrication of
these big room size machines it was it
was like putting it in software terms
it's like you press compile and you have
to wait wait a week or so for to see
what the result is you have to go and
spend $1400 and here's to spend hours of
your time just working out the logistics
so that didn't feel like a very
attractive option either I in addition
to the hand assembling so I think it was
it was I mean now I will return to sort
of that MakerBot idea that I saw at the
New York New York
maker faire in 2010 and I'd need to see
that just as software had gone from
these big room size mainframes to these
machines that could be on your desk or
or on your lap similar you'd make your
bot I think it was expiring and
spiring to see started for mechanical
design you have that same type of
pattern where you start with these big
zeorge ient refrigerator-sized printers
that are just in university labs big
industrial R&D spaces and then they go
and move to something that i could use
on my desk so i decided to do something
that was kind of similar with the
MakerBot but for this electronics
approach so the idea was to have this
desktop robot that you'll be able to
deserve design a circuit board and
software send it to the robot and then
it would manufacture the board so the
sort of central idea for the interaction
of how are we hoping to use the robot it
was really inspired by document reading
so I think it's great when you're
printing a document I just said sending
up the printer is just a matter you
snapping the toner you put in a blank
paper and then you're ready to go
similarly with electronics to me it
feels like it should be you put a bare
PCB you put in components and you're set
and ready to start I think the software
interaction should be the same so it's a
situation where you can type the
document in Word file print and there's
your document the goal is the same thing
with electronics so instead of doing
file print maybe file make from Eagle
Altium whatever software it would be so
in order to be able to sort really go
from this this idea where you start with
just sort of a design and end up with a
functioning board the machine has to do
a lot of things so it needs to be able
to make PCBs like that one that I was
passing around and one way to do that as
the routing process where you start with
that blank board and it cuts out the
copper leaving just the little bit
remaining that you want to conduct you
also have to go and put down solder
paste this process of this sort of glue
like conductive material that's an
interface between the components and the
board then it's picking place so you
have the components that then you have
on the reel and you have to go and
actually physically put them on the
board according to the design final step
is you put it in a reflow oven it's an
oven that's precisely temperature
controlled such that the board and the
components get bonded well the final
step is testing just to make sure that
when you load the board in it turned out
all right
so see if getting it sorry looks like
that let me get the video never knows
so just to give you sort of a sense of
where we are right now in terms of what
the interaction is for the robot take a
look at a video so following with that
printer setup analogy so you put in a
tray of a variety different components
you put in the boards and that's that's
really all it is on the hardware side
from the software perspective you design
the board and eagle or whatever you like
export the manufacturing files then drag
them drag and drop them into our
software that point the robot takes over
and is able to go and do a lot of the
setup itself so it's able to figure out
exactly sort of where the board is by
going to sort of take pictures around
the whole surface of the board to figure
out what it's orientation is and what
its position is I think an added benefit
of this type of pattern as the fact that
you can put the board in any way you
want you can throw it and it's like a
frisbee and be able to figure out where
it is and still do the placement
so the computer vision is also involved
with finding the components so you load
in the components in that tray that I
mentioned and computer vision stable go
and figure out where each of different
ones is this is another step where it's
just one less thing that you have to
deal weapon telling here's where this
component is here's where this component
is it's sort of say some of the tedium
then so just press make is the goal and
alphago is picking a placing so the way
that works it as a vacuum and so it
drives to the component picks it up make
sure that it is where it was supposed to
be and it drives over to the board and
drops it
so the after after the board would be
filled with components like that the
next step would be you would go and put
it in that oven that I mentioned before
for it to be refloat and then you do
test to make sure that it worked out so
we have the robot at the show over here
but one of the really exciting
opportunities for us to use it was at a
hardware hackathon I think in many ways
software hackathons really demonstrate
the power of software and the tools
associated with them right now and it's
that's what you sort of start at what
you can really from over the course of a
weekend you could come in with pretty
much an idea and walk out with with a
decent application and it's it's because
all the things that exist in software
that that's really possible and so I
think you're doing frustrating going to
a bunch of hardware hackathons and sorts
so we do all this design and it's like
here's the schematic or here's the board
layout is what we have at the end of it
instead of here's the PCB so we went to
this Hardware hackathon and helped teams
to go and actually build out the boards
that they have designed and it was just
a demonstration of what was possible so
think in many ways our goal with this
machine is really to go and do anything
that is going to be electronics so
anything from like the wearable so you
know the things devices all the way to
the drones and other autonomous vehicles
so I think they just sort of sum up it
seems like it's a situation where I sort
of started it started out trying to
understand what's gonna be a good way to
build this autonomous car and a
through-hole approach just was not a
very attractive one and so I switched
over to surface mount and the nice thing
about that was be able to use that
digital manufacturing approach that
allows you to go and sort of quickly
quickly iterate through your designs so
the and the final things are just some
some light some ways that you can go and
help if you want to be involved with the
project so I think one is being sort of
an early adopter I think that it's a
kind of a new technology and we we
really welcome feedback and guidance on
the design the other thing that we're
really would love to give you sort of
the way to say thanks for that help is a
discount on the price so we're also
after we locked down the design a little
bit more I were planning to do
crowdfunding and
that's something that under on the
horizon coming up shortly there's also
two folks that we're hoping to have
joined our team one to help run our camp
crowdfunding campaign and the other one
doing manufacturing engineering so if
you or someone you know is in one of
those categories please come track me
down I guess the final thing that would
be wonderful is if you guys know
somebody at eagle or dipped race or one
of the LTM anything like that in order
to really achieve that file will make
you need to have integration with that
software and so if you know somebody
that's in that group that would be
really big help so that's what I have
thanks so much for your time okay so I
guess it sounds like three or four
minutes of questions is if anybody has
anything they want to ask oh I guess one
final thing is we're just right over
there maybe like 3040 feet over there so
if you want to see the robot in the
flesh
please come stop by
is their microphone or something like
that I can't hear it all I can't hear it
so the question was what are the
differences when you translate from one
design to another so like that from a
through-hole design to a surface mount
one I think there's there's a couple of
them so I think one is that you have to
you just select completely new
components so instead of having a sort
of through-hole components with
electrical characteristics they have you
have to go in transition to something
else that's gonna be a surface mount I
think a second is also just laying out
the board instead of a guy with a
breadboard where you poke in although
the designer you want you actually have
the traces and that's gonna connect the
different components so that's just
design time that you need to go in
instead of converting the instead of
having the through-hole just wires these
transition actually traces any other
questions yeah okay a tray with one set
of component you have to go in and well
pray for so it's a really good question
that question was do you need different
is you have only one trade for type of
components and I think our goal is to
try and make it kind of like that
continue the document printing analogy
with toner are you put in a couple of
different toner styles and you're able
to go and make a huge variety of
different colors so our goal is to have
a couple of different trays that you
would go and load in the machine
so each tray would have a diversity of
components so maybe one would have a
bunch of resistors and capacitors
another one would go have
microcontrollers and crystals and things
like that and you just be able to switch
those out exactly right
so the second question was about pricing
and where what we're planning on is
5,000 for the pick'm place and then a
thousand for each other capability so a
thousand to do solder paste thousand to
do routing and so on yes
so the question was about what component
sizes can the robot support and so the
question was can the robot distinguish
between different component sizes and it
can and the way it does is you have
templates so for each of different
styles of component and the computer
vision will compare what it sees against
that template your time
yeah
so so the question is can again the
robot tell apart different parts that
are the same package and I think that we
got something what we're working on but
for the first version the plan is that
the tray would have something indication
to say here's what's in the tray and
then based on that information and be
able to go and populate the board but
you can't change out stuff into the tray
all right thanks so much your time