This video presents a quick overview of Adafruit’s manufacturing capabilities.

Board Loader – The board loader can be thought of as an automated staging area for printed circuit boards (PCB’s). Each board that we make at Adafruit is taken first from this machine and into the stencil printer where it receives solder paste.

Stencil Printer – This machine accurately deposits solder paste onto the relevant sites (“pads”) using two opposing metal blades that squeegee the paste through the necessary cut-outs of a stainless steel stencil positioned over the blank PCB.

Pick-and-Place – Pick and place machines (aka PnP’s) PICK individual SMT (surface mount) components up from “feeders” and then PLACE those components onto pre-programmed sites on the awaiting PCB.
Samsung WT200 LE Inspection Conveyor – Fully populated PCB’s exit the SM482 and slide along the tracks of the inspection conveyor. This machine is a handy tool that allows us to inspect each board before it goes into our oven for reflowing.

Reflow Oven – Once we’ve decided that a board is to our liking we send it into the oven to be reflowed-this is the process by which the electrical connections are made. The board is carried along a track as it travels through the oven’s 8 different heating chambers and final two cooling chambers. The speed with which it moves through the oven can be controlled via the attached computer screen. Boards appear as blue squares on the system’s screen once they are seen by the sensor at the mouth of the machine.

Indexing Conveyor – Boards exiting the oven do so by means of this machine whose track advances each time the sensor sees a board as it’s leaving the oven.