We were recently invited to Synetica’s factory to witness their air quality IoT sensor manufacturing processes. In this short blog, we will cover what we found during our visit and the value Synetica offers to the UK market.
We have been working with Synetica for quite a few years. Our relationship was based on several factors:
The Importance of Air Quality IoT Sensors
Air quality IoT sensors are one of our best-selling types of sensors and are becoming increasingly important in today’s world. We use them to help our customers monitor CO2 levels in schools, protecting against the transmission of viruses and pollution levels in city centres, advising people when and when not to venture out for shopping. These sensors monitor current air quality levels and predict changes to further improve air quality, enhancing our health, wellbeing, and even focus and concentration levels.
Ensuring that the sensors used are of high quality is paramount, as is ensuring that they are manufactured and assembled in the best way possible to maintain that high quality throughout their operation.
The Manufacturing Plant
The manufacturing plant is located roughly in the centre of the UK, just outside Birmingham, and is not as large as you might think. While the warehouse was not as large as anticipated, the facility was relatively modest in size while still fulfilling its purpose of storing components efficiently. As some of these components can be printed, the warehouse needs raw circuit boards and some physical components, like resistors. It also holds the information to print directly onto the circuit board.
The plant sits within an industrial park alongside numerous other buildings, from equipment services to florists. Location is key, as it needs a good network of roads to ensure that deliveries of the required components have good access.
This leads to another interesting challenge for assembly plants: cash flow. They have to buy everything upfront, and the lead time between paying for the components and completing a batch run can run into months. I’ve always assumed margins would be rich, as with volume purchasing, costs go down. However, the money required to buy, store, and run the assembly without income is a huge challenge.
This transition underscores how and why the manufacturing process has evolved.
The Automated Manufacturing Process
When it comes to manufacturing plants, you may expect to see huge swathes of people soldering components to the circuit boards. But while we did see some, it was not nearly as many as you may envisage. Manufacturing has had to change and embrace automation.
We start with the setup.
The modular-style printers, the size of a small car, are initially set up for a batch print. They are set up with a digital recipe initially, and the circuit boards are loaded. Each printing reel is loaded manually into the correct area, ready to go to work.
The setup is the most important part of the batch run. Get this wrong, and you have wasted lots of raw material and a huge amount of time. The circuit boards are loaded, dipped, and printed. The printers, for lack of a better word, are purposely put in a line so that as one-part finishes, they can be visually checked before being put onto the next conveyor belt to ensure they are dried and ready for the next stage.
The next stage is manual. The swathes of people that are just not there are a bank of desks, very brightly lit, and they look like they are all prepared for a mass building of Lego. This is not far from the truth. Everyone has an instruction booklet on what additional components need to be manually added to the boards, and they get to work. Every break is controlled by a bell. When the bell sounds, employees stop working for a break, returning to work promptly when it rings again.
It was a fascinating blend of automation and manual labour, where the assembly process is currently stuck between the automation world but still requires manual soldering of components onto hundreds and thousands of boards. Once everything is soldered, it is then passed to another machine that removes any long pieces of metal before it gets its next quality and assurance test.
A bank of computers sits waiting for someone to place the circuit boards down and manually test the connections. A ratio of boards per batch are also run through a testing program to make sure that not only are the boards printed and soldered correctly, but all components are operating as they should. Each sensor is tested using custom-built software to ensure optimal assembly and performance.
We never got to the housing, as that is not completed at the assembly plant. Once the circuit boards are assembled and checked, they are packaged and sent to another plant for the housings to be printed and assembled with the newly printed circuit boards inside before being packaged and sent out to AllIoT Technologies’ warehouse in preparation for provisioning and unique credentials to be applied for shipment.
Importance of Air Quality Monitoring and the Assembly
Our visit to Synetica’s factory Air Quality IoT Sensors Manufacturing really helps to signify how air quality impacts us daily. It can be the cause of increased transmission of viruses, respiratory problems, headaches, and can also severely impact our levels of concentration and focus. The contrast is also true. Good quality air can prevent disease from spreading, improve our health and wellbeing, and keep us alert and enhance our focus and concentration. Besides the mentioned benefits of good air quality, there are other speciality measures alerting us to other toxic gases such as carbon monoxide that can also inform us of other issues that may be present in our own homes.
Air quality is crucial because it:
Protects us from disease
Makes us more productive
Improves our focus and concentration
It’s important to understand and trust the manufacturing of these devices, with Synetica, we can rest assured
They use the best components.
Quality and assurance are tested at multiple points and in multiple ways, from visual inspection to manual testing and specially written computer programs, all to ensure the sensor works as designed.
They are made in the UK.
These sensors can also be adjusted if customers need something specific, such as a new sensor node or a change in form factor. To discover the Synetica range or for free advice on the best air quality monitoring devices for your applications, simply contact our expert team. Whatever stage you are at in your IoT journey, we’re here to help.
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