Intro to Saturn 2.0
DES & SES bare board manufacturing
In the few years prior to the COVID pandemic, Saturn was already experiencing difficulty in finding labor to meet increased customer demand. We had begun planning methods to add automation to select processes to address shortfalls.
In February 2020, a fire sprinkler head in the drilling department malfunctioned and discharged, covering six machines (all high-speed drills) with water, rendering four of them completely unrepairable. These machines represented approximately 60% of our drilling throughput since most of the remaining machines were older models with lead screw motion instead of linear motion found on the newer high speed machines.
Within one month, our Governor declared a shut down over the weekend of March 20th. On the following Monday, only three out of 113 factory personnel showed up for work despite Saturn having letters from various customers that our products were deemed essential. Saturn’s management and office personnel moved to the factory floor to keep production running.
Over the next 24 months we have had waves of employees come and go as unemployment benefits changed. During this time Saturn Management began full implementation of the Automation and Production Streamlining Plan.
Here are some of the highlights as well as our future plans.
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High-Power Heavy Cu Resource Center
Heavy / Thick / Extreme copper printed circuit boards (>2 ounce copper per layer) are not commonly designed or consumed. Yet, their high current carrying capacity and thermal benefits do lend them to be great fits for certain applications. Due to their scarcity, though, good information for designers can be hard to find. We aim to make this resource center a bridge between design and fabrication. Should there be a topic or question we have not addressed, please contact Jim Kelch and we will do our best to research the topic and add relevant information to this portal.
Here you will find information on the materials and specialized methods used by Saturn Electronics as well as the latest articles, calculators and DFM rules. Our goal is to provide Heavy Copper PCB Designers and Users with the most advanced, up-to-date information--with an emphasis on the advanced techniques utilized during the Etching and Plating processes.
High-Power Heavy Cu Resource Center
