Standardizing Manufacturing with Pete Staples | The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast

Today’s episode is sponsored by Mouser Electronics. They are on the show talking about predictive maintenance this week and how the technology will change industries like automotive and industrial processing. To learn more, check out TheAmpHour.com/predictive.

Welcome Pete Staples of Blue Clover Devices!

Blue Clover Devices (BCD) is “The IOT ODM“
ODMs are a flavor of CM where they do more of the design work
Busy EEs use their services to take on more of the design work
Most products are on a 9 month cycle. Some smaller designs (like a recent SiFive dev board) are shorter timelines.
Facilities:
- Started in LA
- Shenzhen
- Now have an SF office (where Pete is located)
They reluctantly started mfg in China, because CMs wouldn’t take on the work.
The factory started with “Screwdriver work” (assembly), but have moved on to PCBA and precision cable
Core of workers help to mentor younger workers
Pete took an MBA class in operations but he didn’t expect the difficulties with manufacturing
Container party
Taking stuff to china: comes down to economics. Doing it for products making less than $1M per year doesn’t make much sense.
Learn manufacturing locally first.
Pete checked out CMs in the bay area and didn’t think they could add much value otherwise.
Devices like the LPKF and Nano Dimension Dragon Fly aren’t good substitutes for a PCB house
BCD’s flagship product is the PLT
- PLT200 – targets IoT devices like nRF52 (described in Embedded.fm episode)
- PLT300 – targets Linux devices
The PLT acts as a bridge between developers and factory
Programming and testing devices on a line
Internally:
- Programmable power supply
- Souped up JLink
- DMM
  - Volage
  - Current
  - Freq counter
- Linux computer
- UART interaction as well
- CAN bus
Many test stands are Labview based, so they are tied to that location
With the PLT, can have one in the US and one in the factory
Revision control and using CI/CD
Not built for design validation (like NI or test equipment mfg)
How does PLT talk back?
- PLT cloud – a portal to manage devices
- Needs to be a secure connection
- Slack app integration
The PLT hooks to the ICT (In Circuit Tester)
Supports 48 digital and 45 analog test points
The cassette is custom, but can be used again with future designs
Webhooks allow for pulling serial numbers
Box is enrolled to an organization
PLTs used in China
- Not blocked, but network isn’t always reliable
- Needs internet to work
YAML test script
Different steps might be connecting up to the PLT
Test Plan Reference
Scanner / label printer works at a lower level than Jan was talking about on the show
Release can be Zebra label format
How is data being used?
Example: product with 3 circuit boards
Gage R&R
PLT running Zephyr and linux
Trends: things are going up market and have more Linux in them. There will still be a separation due to power, cost.
Blue Clover is working on having less environmental impact after the pandemic
- Working with people in the climate neutral community
- Food and apparel have talked about sourcing their materials
Check out bcdevices.com for more info
Twitter @petestaples
To get a free USB cable: email pete@bcdevices.com

Pete Staples says

June 15, 2021 at 12:55 pm

I love a skeptic! Our PLTs are in continuous use at Foxconn, Flex, Inventec, and many other CMs around the world (we sent one to Argentina yesterday), so there is no reason to think that a big capable CM is unable or unwilling to use them. It is true that these CMs did not come knocking on our door in San Francisco. Their clients did, and these forward-thinking firms purchased the PLTs and had us send them to their manufacturers. Many years ago, we used IC socket programmers from Data I/O and Elnec, which I think is what you are referring to by “ESPs”. We generally stopped using them around 2010, because it was not efficient to have an entire work station set up for programming a single processor. Our clients found it much more useful to have integrated reports containing programming results for multiple MCUs, device identifiers, and a battery of electrical test results. I never suggested that a CM *couldn’t* make an ICT fixture as you describe. What you describe at your shop matches what we have found: ICT fixtures built one at a time and connected to an on-premise server at the CM. We just happen to think cloud-native is the way to go rather than putting everything on a local server at the CM that must be backed up, physically secured with biometric access controls, and have lifecycle management of its own hardware and software stack. These security safeguards are the most common way of justifying the >$200K spend on test automation at large CMs. Low cost and reliability are why these functions are moving to the cloud. Do you think you can manage data servers as efficiently as Amazon? With our Report Connector (no added cost), our clients can automatically export the test reports as CSV or JSON to their own AWS S3 bucket. If the CM you represent is shipping more than $100M of electronics annually, I’ll be surprised if you are not using a PLT within 3 years due to the superior visibility of test info and 1/10 cost to set up. You have my email in the show notes so feel free to email me directly to arrange a demo.

Comments

Pete Staples says

June 15, 2021 at 12:55 pm

I love a skeptic! Our PLTs are in continuous use at Foxconn, Flex, Inventec, and many other CMs around the world (we sent one to Argentina yesterday), so there is no reason to think that a big capable CM is unable or unwilling to use them. It is true that these CMs did not come knocking on our door in San Francisco. Their clients did, and these forward-thinking firms purchased the PLTs and had us send them to their manufacturers. Many years ago, we used IC socket programmers from Data I/O and Elnec, which I think is what you are referring to by “ESPs”. We generally stopped using them around 2010, because it was not efficient to have an entire work station set up for programming a single processor. Our clients found it much more useful to have integrated reports containing programming results for multiple MCUs, device identifiers, and a battery of electrical test results. I never suggested that a CM *couldn’t* make an ICT fixture as you describe. What you describe at your shop matches what we have found: ICT fixtures built one at a time and connected to an on-premise server at the CM. We just happen to think cloud-native is the way to go rather than putting everything on a local server at the CM that must be backed up, physically secured with biometric access controls, and have lifecycle management of its own hardware and software stack. These security safeguards are the most common way of justifying the >$200K spend on test automation at large CMs. Low cost and reliability are why these functions are moving to the cloud. Do you think you can manage data servers as efficiently as Amazon? With our Report Connector (no added cost), our clients can automatically export the test reports as CSV or JSON to their own AWS S3 bucket. If the CM you represent is shipping more than $100M of electronics annually, I’ll be surprised if you are not using a PLT within 3 years due to the superior visibility of test info and 1/10 cost to set up. You have my email in the show notes so feel free to email me directly to arrange a demo.