Hi just a quick little behind the scenes video here I was just uh, packing up all of the microcurrent Parts ready to ship out to the assembler and I thought I'd just show you um, all of the parts here that are needed just to manufacture uh, 2,000 boards and I don't even have all of them uh ready yet? But anyway I thought I'd um show you all the stuff on the reels and everything else that goes into that. So let's have a quick look and of course one of the first things you have to do when you're preparing uh parts for manufacturer at an assembly house like this is to make sure you buy everything in reels like this even if you have to buy more than your allocated uh, you know quantity. For example, I'm making 2,000 boards but I might have to buy you know 3,000 of some part because it only comes on reels of a th000 although you can from you know the likes of Digi Key and Mousa uh get them Reed so you can use their reeling Service: You pay like seven bucks or something and they'll give you the exact number of Parts but you know often it's just easier um and also uh for the future. You know if your product takes off is more popular than you anticipate, then it can actually be um, cheaper and more beneficial to just you know, buy things on reals for example.

uh and you may not get that service from uh, some of the other Uh suppliers. but the likes of Mouser and Dig Key do that. do that. But anyway, um, you know, take a look at these like these: uh Precision resistors here.

um in this case there are 1K it's a 1K uh 102 there means 1K these are uh, the uh, Precision 0.05% resistors and I've actually uh, numbered them here five cuz what I've got is my um uh bill of materials here which I give to my assembler and it actually has an item number down here which then I match up with the real so that there can be no mistake. So number five there is item number five here. it's got all the description and everything and the component designator that it goes to Etc so you know that just minimizes the uh, you know any mistakes or something like that. So in in case of those, I've got uh 2,000 of them I think yeah these ones.

even though this is not a full reel as you can see, it does come on a bigger version. but the stocked part from Uh Digi Key in this case only came on a 1,000 uh reel. So I you know I bought uh, four separate 1,000 reels instead of say one reel of 4,000 or 5,000 which I could have got directly from the manufacturer but hey, the lead time would have been an issue and I yeah, I probably could have saved some money there I was willing to wait the extra time, but in this case they're in stock. So I just got four separate reels of 1,000 there.

but that's not a problem for the assembler. and then you've got you know, ones like this real cheap I got 10,270 ohm resistors these are, you know, just regular Joe blogs. you know, 5% 0603 things. You can get them from any manufacturer.

In this case they happen to come from uh Rome which is a decent manufacturer. It's not like they're unbranded or anything like that. and yeah, I just ordered a reel of 10,000 in this case I need like 8,000 but like, what's the point this whole reel? I Mean this is actually a big reel if you compare this in size with what this is, you know what you get as a standard reel. but check out the size of this.

It's a big beast and um, most assemblers can handle. you know, a large uh reel like this. It's not like it's any, uh, thicker at all. it's just physically, uh, larger and holds more parts.

But this reel was like5 or $6 or something for 10,000 parts. So this sort of stuff like you don't they're practically free. You don't even bother uh, getting the exact number of Parts crazy and then um, yeah, I've got more Precision resistors here here. they all are Bingo most of these were in, um stock in some cases I had to get them from um, several different, uh suppliers cuz they didn't have stock more Precision resistors.

Uh, what do we got there? Yeah, oh, that's the 10 Ohm 0805 resistors. So once again, they're numbered number nine. They go in there. Um, you know, cheap ass.

What is it? Uh uh. 10 puff caps. Things like that. Um 100K resistors.

You know, what does that real cost? A couple of dollars? Crazy now. Um, this is interesting. These are the Uh leads. These are the special Uh.

Kingbrite leads specified a specific lead because it has a specific brightness at a certain Uh current in this thing and it comes in here. Caution: Moisture sensitive devices and there's a it's a moisture seal bag. You can see that they physically, um, heat sealed that along the Co top. There's a desicant.

Yeah, there's a desicant satch it in there to get rid of all the moisture. And really, um, don't open these things before you send them to the assembler because if they're sitting out in the open too long, moisture can get in to the Uh leak into the package and then when that goes through the Reflow machine, um, they can. the case can crack. You know that um, uh, moisture in there can evaporate, expand, and actually Crack the Case and ruin your leads leads.

um, and quite a few Uh chips, um that aren't hermetically sealed packages can can be susceptible to this sort of thing. and you'll find that they come packaged from the manufacturer Kingbrite. In this case, it's it's not like Digi Key did this vacuum package. It's um, uh, straight from Kingbrite.

come straight off the assembly line. Bam straight into the moisture sealed packets like this. So just be very careful. don't open these yourself.

Leave it to the assembler because if you did open them, then they, um in theory should have to actually, uh, bake them for uh, you know, 24 hours beforehand or something. It gives you, uh, baking instructions 100 hours at 60? There you go If above conditions are not met required before met. So 100 hours so that would you know If you're serious about your manufacturer that could that could kill you. You got a 100h hour wait to bake these things.

I Mean you know some assemblers just wouldn't care, they just you know, load your parts and be done with it. But if you got a proper assembler who follows the rules and does everything properly, then they would come to you and say hey, you supplied this without a moisture sale packet or in some cases they wouldn't know. For example, if I just gave them this real out of this packet, they would have just gone and mounted it. um cuz they they wouldn't know that it's a moisture C Packer But when they get these, they know to not open these on the day they get them if they're going to manufacture them next week for example.

So they've only got a limited life. There you go, mounted within 168 hours of the factory conditions, blah blah blah. So there you go. You generally don't want to open those.

Uh, leave it to the assembler. Um, stuff like the Maxum uh, the main Maxum chip for example. uh, these com in reels of uh 2500 I had to order these directly from uh Maxim and yeah, there it is. And once again, um, these are ones I still don't have enough of.

Um, they're on, uh, back order. so I'm still waiting for delivery of those. even though Maxim have them in stock, it takes time to um them in places like that. These ones stuck.

Was stuck in customs sitting here in Sydney in customs for 2 weeks because the bloody Courier oh was it I don't know who it was Bloody DHL or somebody. um yeah. screwed up the Customs on it. it was real pain in the ey I was sitting there I couldn't get my hands on them anyway.

more Precision resistors. uh what do we got? Um 3,000 uh. voltage? um uh. voltage monitors? Um, they're the Texas Instruments ones.

yeah I'd Love how they put a little smiley face on there that actually came from the I assume the um from someone at Texas Instruments or someone at Digi key? uh did that I Love it. Someone's got a sense of humor. Brilliant. Anyway, Um, so yeah.

I just I don't need 3,000 of those I only need 2,000 but hey, they're cheap enough. Came on a real of 3,000 stocked I just got those. what the hell? and CU I might be able to reuse them in other Uh projects and stuff like that. For example, same with the Opab um I don't need 3,000 of them, but hey, I couldn't be bothered I just bought him in a reel of 3,000 and then the Precision current shunt resistor.

uh, for example this one I um uh. had to buy up basically the world stock from different suppliers I cleaned out I think the entire planet of these parts and I'm still waiting for more parts. and I've only got uh I think 300 in here or thereabouts. But and they're not on reels, they're just on loose.

uh, tape like that. But luckily my assembler um, said that that's not a problem. Their machine, their pick and place machine can actually handle loose tape, but don't assume that your manufacturer can actually do that because often they'll have to reel them and you can give them. uh, you know, Parts just on loose tape like this.

but generally they will have to, uh, reel them on reels for you and they'll probably charge you for that as well. It's not a big deal, but anyway, it's just something to watch out for. You should generally Supply in reels like that, uh, what else have I got? serial number labels? Nice little holographic serial number labels. got those custom printed.

Really nice. So I'm going to have the assembler put those on for me. Uh, Pcbs? I haven't got all my Pcbs yet. Some are still being shipped.

These are uh 20 uh panels. so I can manufacture uh 200 uh boards. It's got the uh edge. Here we go give you a quick look.

it's got the nice uh Edge test connector on there. although I'm probably not going to use that for actual testing. I'm going to use it to power so I'll have like a battery that I can hook up there. It can power all boards at uh once.

but I don't think I'm going to have like a separate jig that sort of plugs directly into the top. So I sort of changed my mind there. But anyway, so I got more of those on order. There's like I think there's like 50 kilos of boards or something like that.

Crazy. And they sent me a sample of a matte green one here. Anyway, this one's not quite red. it's more like orange than red.

I think from this manufacturer so that's that. Um, that's the matte green one. I Don't mind it. Um, probably not as nice as as the olive uh green one which hang on if I get that here we go.

There's the olive green board. There it is and I'm not sure if I got my white balance set corre set correct here. I'm not actually on my lab at the moment, but yeah, I think the olive green probably looks a bit sexier but I don't know if you're a fan of the matte uh green. I am going to uh, just get one panel of those assembled so we'll give that a go.

and uh, maybe some people will want those. uh, what else have we got? We've got uh switches once again. I cleaned out the world's supply of these special Cnk switches which I've used and I got them uh from all different. uh, like I think four different suppliers or something and I've pretty much cleaned out the planet on those.

and I think I've got more on order as well. so yep, um, even. You know, my little lousy project run of 2,000 boards here cleaned out the world's supply of, uh, you know, certain types of Parts Just absolutely crazy. I've got, um, all the connectors.

here we go. We got Tada red and uh, black. um the nice gold connectors. They're really quite nice and they come in boxes of thousand.

I've got more on order, but because these are mounted later in the manufacturing uh process. I Don't the you know, not having these won't stop the assembler assembl in my boards. So I can get the boards assembled with the pick and place machine. Not a problem and they can sit around waiting for these connectors to turn up because it's a separate process so not a problem Uh, what else have we got? We got a huge reel over here.

Now the these are the uh battery. Um, the CR 2032 battery come in quantities of 400 there on a reel like this. I've got like uh, you know, half a dozen uh reels of this thing and um, you'll notice how wide these things are and you just got to be careful cuz not all assemblers can actually um, have the uh, have the uh reels? uh that can handle um, these things this wide so you just got to be uh, careful with that. So anyway, I got a whole bunch of those.

they come in huge box there and what else have I got? um there the uh, plastic boxes. um I've some are still sitting down in my car. a h bunch of them. There are 100 of those per box.

So I've got uh yeah, there's 200. sorry 20 of those boxes total. Absolutely crazy. And these connectors, by the way, weigh a ton.

just like a th000 here. weighs like 15 kilos or something like that. I've ordered 8,000 of these things. Um, 8,000 connectors total crazy.

But there you go because I've got four connectors per board. 2,000 boards. Woo! That is a buttload of uh, physical connectors. They weigh an absolute ton.

So shipping these to the assembler actually costs. um, you know, quite a bit of money and really in long term I would have you know, if I was doing this properly? I would have uh, had my Um suppliers send directly to the assembler and you know once you got everything set up and and running, you know I I I wouldn't handle these parts cuz it's just double handling really so so you wouldn't bother doing that and then reshipping them. But in this case it's the first time I've done this microcurrent gold just wanted to make sure everything was fine and because I hadn't chosen an assembler um, up until uh, fairly recently I didn't know who they were going to so I got them all sent here and Bob's your uncle? There you go. There's all the parts.

Well, a lot of the parts for uh, 2,000 uh boards. In fact, I'm going to do a trial run of Uh 200 boards and uh, see how it goes and that will of course fulfill the um Kickstarter uh, early? Well the um, you? yeah, the early backers of uh, the 200 units. So there you go. Time to pack and ship to the assembler.

Oh goodness. Oops. I Forgot to show you this. this is the stainless steel uh, solder paste stencil and uh, this is what they're going to uh, put into their automated uh paste machine to apply the solder paste to the boards.

There we go I had this uh manufactured uh from from a local company. Only cost like $98 or something like that. You can see it's um, uh, aluminium, welded aluminium, uh frame there and that is quite good. So I'll send that along with the boards and otherwise generally you leave this up to the assembler.

but I happen to have this I was going to actually uh, use this to hand assemble the uh 30 or 40 um early uh boards but I actually just did those one by one I didn't use the uh, the full panel like this but this is designed for the 10 separate boards. but anyway, they can reuse that so I'm going to ship that to them and then I don't have to pay the extra cost for solder paste uh, stencil from them which is usually a couple hundred bucks and I goofed it I actually uh, forgot in my haste to um, mask out the card Edge connector here so they can just uh, mask that out there CU I don't want to be applying solder paste to the card Edge connector cuz you want the original gold contacts on the side there for to hook up to your card connector. so if you got solder, um on you know nice thick solder coating on there. It ruins your day.

it' still work. It wouldn't be a showstopper, but anyway, that's just something to watch out for. One more thing I Forgot to mention but I have mentioned in previous videos on stuff like this all these uh real Parts if you're manufacturing 2,000 units you Pro and you really really want uh to get 2,000 units back, you probably shouldn't send them just 2,000 Parts on a reel for example, you generally need to, um, send like you know a 5% extra might be. You know a rule of thumb for uh, some passive Parts like this or you know, a couple of percent extra.

Anyway, ask your manufacturer cuz they're going to lose some when they you know the pick and place machine will lose some and stuff like that. but um, some of the other parts like these, uh, loose Precision resistors for example I mean these things are expensive. you know, $45 a pop in? uh you know, a couple of thousand quantity. So you know losing five % of these could actually be a big deal.

So you can actually ask them just to be, um, extra careful with the expensive Parts But you know things like the 10,000 of these for you know5 or $6 Eh, you don't give a toss. And last but not least, of course, your sample board. and of course I could actually mention the pick and place files as well. But oh I Jeez, that's enough for this video.

I'm going to pack and ship these things. See you.