SMT assembly for engineers

There are a lot of ads in the back of our magazine for PCB fab houses but it is far more rare to see someone offering PCB assembly. Putting on all those tiny parts is getting to be a real pain and it might make sense to off-load it to an assembly house. I got a card in the mail from AAPCB Assembly in Aurora Colorado. They say they have an online-price calculator and I just spoke at length with Chet, one of their sales people. He tells me that they have a strategic alliance with Digi-Key and can get the parts from them and stuff your board. I wondered if they were related to Advanced Circuits, the famous board house from Colorado but Chet said no, although Advanced Circuits is right across the street and AAPCB can work with them or any other fab or parts distributor. He said business is booming and I can see why. They do a free design for manufacturability check and often find errors in the BOM regarding the footprints of the parts you called out. Then need a Gerber of the solder paste layer so that means you are getting that checked out as well. This is more than a service for people like me that can barely see the parts, it is checking out and proving out your documentation. That is huge, especially if you are going to send the board out to a foreign CM (contract manufacturer) in Asia. Solving manufacturability issues with a company on the other side of the world is a lot tougher than dealing with Chet and the gang in Colorado. Chet said they do singe boards all the time and often are called on to stuff one or two boards while holding the rest back until we give ‘em an OK, at which time he sends the rest of the order. He also said they can turn things in a day if you really need it fast, but their standard time is a 5 days. You don’t have to send reels of parts either; you can just send loose parts or have them get the parts from a distributor for you. This seems like a great way to get your documentation proved out and spare yourself from spending half a day soldering when you could be doing something valuable like reading EDN and insuring you stay up and the latest design techniques so you qualify for a big raise.