Monthly Archives: January 2017

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Mydata Upgrades Increase Screaming Circuits’ Efficiency

Over the last quarter, Screaming Circuits has upgraded the hardware and software on all its Mydata equipment.

“Since we created Screaming Circuits, MyData machines have been an important part of our formula for success. As we integrated a MY12 into one of our production lines, we saw the opportunity to make upgrades across all our MyData lines and standardize them,” said Ashley Rochholz, Screaming Circuits’ Manufacturing Manager.

The upgrades included new cameras providing improved optics on all machines, software revision level upgrades, new hard drives and a new server.

The optics are particularly important be-cause as a quick turn prototype house, Screaming Circuits must deal with a wide variety of component styles and packaging types. Not all received material places well. The upgraded optics are identifying issues faster and providing more detailed error codes, which decreases the time needed to correct the issue. The new server has reduced programming and offline setup time.

The addition of the MY12 has also enabled the team to increase throughput.

“With the addition of this machine, we were able to take an older MyData ma-chine offline. We are now using it to experiment with offline setup strategies, while the MY12 has provided some nice efficiency gains,” added Ashley.

Ashley estimates that overall, the improvements have increased efficiency by 140 percent.

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Screaming Circuits Provides Prototype Circuits to Badgerloop

Milwaukee Electronics’ Operations Manager Terry Martin, Senior Director of Business Development Scott Pohlmann and Design Services Group Engineering Manager Larry Holten recently represented Screaming Circuits at the Badgerloop Pod Reveal Event in Madison, WI. Screaming Circuits is one of many sponsors of this innovative engineering project and has provided prototype circuits.

BadgerLoop is a student organization created to represent UW-Madison in the SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition. The competition seeks to innovate transportation with Hyperloop, an idea presented by SpaceX and Tesla Motors co-founder Elon Musk in 2013. Hyperloop transportation involves pod-like travel down a vacuum tube at high speeds. Badgerloop’s ultimate goal is to win the competition, but more than that, to help lay the groundwork for this innovative new transportation technology.

The Badgerloop team revealed their pod on Dec. 6, at the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery to eager transportation enthusiasts, including University of Wisconsin-Madison students, industry sponsors and community members, in preparation for the SpaceX Hyperloop competition this coming January.

The free event featured multiple aspects of the transportation pod, including displays of its motor, software components and magnet arrays. Representatives from many of Badgerloop’s 19 teams displayed and explained their work on the prototype, demonstrating that Hyperloop is more than a transportation dream.

Last January, Badgerloop placed third at Design Weekend, the initial phase of the Hyperloop pod competition sponsored by SpaceX. Badgerloop was the only team comprised primarily of undergraduate students.

In January of 2017, Badgerloop will attend competition weekend at SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California and test their pod on SpaceX’s mile long test track.

Above, Milwaukee Electronics’ Operations Manager Terry Martin sits in the Badgerloop vehicle.

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Message from Mike – New Year 2017!

As seen in the latest newsletter:

Exciting things are happening at Milwaukee Electronics. Last month we announced a merger with San Diego PCB and we’ve also analyzed the results of our annual customer satisfaction survey.

The San Diego PCB merger is significant because it rounds out our complement of engineering and manufacturing service offerings. Mike Creeden, San Diego PCB’s owner and now our VP of Layout Services will discuss the capability additions in detail in our Engineering in Action article. From my perspective, I see this as very beneficial to both our companies. We chose to call it a San Diego PCB Merger Announced merger because we recognize that the bulk of the value in San Diego PCB is its expert, certified team. They employ some of the best designers in the world and match them with the best CAD tools. We see this team as a strong complement to our engineering resources and wanted to acknowledge the bench strength they represent appropriately.

Another key element that makes this merger extremely beneficial to all parties is our cultural alignment. Mike’s focus is delivering a Rev 1 that has been executed well enough to eliminate the need for further spins. Our focus is delivering perfect product. Together we will both continue that “be the best of the best” culture. We also both believe in listening to the customer. Even when the customer is saying that he or she only wants a specific service rather than all the services we sell. We built Screaming Circuits around the value proposition that you can buy as little or as much as you wanted from us. We will continue that mindset. We offer a full a lifecycle solution that includes layout services. We also sell just layout services.

Listening to the customer is also what drives our annual customer satisfaction survey. This year we saw customer participation rates drop slightly. However, we saw generally improved performance ratings across all locations. There are still specific issues we will be addressing. Cost and changing technology are the most significant concerns among our customers. We plan investments over the coming year that will continue to drive improvements in our responsiveness, ability to support advanced technology and efficiency.

One particularly interesting data point in our Screaming Circuits survey was that over 44 percent of our customers in that business unit are now Millennials. We are continuing to evaluate our customer experience and ordering tools with that metric in mind.

I’d like to wish you and yours a very Merry Christmas and a Happy and Healthy New Year. Thank you for your support and business.

P. Michael Stoehr

President & CEO

View our LinkedIn page for additional updates.

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