The electronics manufacturing has begun and its going very fast! We stay on top of the manufacturing of the IMPLEXUS, so we have visited the electronics manufacturer last week. They were really excited to show us how the printed circuit boards are being assembled.

The workers at the factory were enjoying the IMPLEXUS project a lot. They told us they don’t see a board of this size and component count very often. This makes it an exciting project for them as well. Its good to see the IMPLEXUS is being made by people who enjoy their work and are passionate about electronics and some even music!

Handsoldering the prototypes IMPLEXUS took us for ever,  so we are really happy to get some help from the machines! In this video you can see how all electronic (surface mount= SMT) components are placed on the printed circuit board:

When the “Pick and place” process is done, the components are in place, but are not “soldered” yet. At this moment you still need to be very careful with the circuit boards, because you could wipe off all components of the board in a single stroke!

When all components are placed on the printed circuit board, the board goes through the reflow oven where they are  “soldered” onto the board.

After the reflow process the printed circuit board is ready for inspection! This inspection is done by an AOI (automatic optical inspection)  machine. This machine checks wether everything is placed correctly and the solder joints are perfect via image recognition techniques. You see some close up pictures of the soldering in the video below:

After inspection the IMPLEXUS boards are finished! The factory will need a couple of days to do all boards and then we will pick them up in person and solder all knobs and switches at the Majella headquarters. When everything is done we will fully test each and every IMPLEXUS at the lab!