After bringing four LumenPnPs into their microelectronics lab, Lorain County Community College gave their students hands-on experience with the same technology used across 90 regional industry partners at a fraction of the cost of traditional pick-and-place systems.
"The LumenPnP pick-and-place system prepares students so well to work at...our 90 industry partners.""
- Johnny Vanderford, Assoc. Prof. & Coordinator of MEMS Degree, LCCC Microelectronic Manufacturing
Lorain County Community College's microelectronic manufacturing program covers the full spectrum of electronics production: through-hole assembly, SMT, troubleshooting, mass manufacturing, and silicon processing. It's a program built from direct industry demand, and it holds itself accountable to a single outcome: getting students hired.
We spoke with the LCCC Microelectronic Manufacturing program faculty to learn how community colleges and technical programs can deliver industry-grade SMT training without industry-grade budgets.
Built Around Industry Demand
In 2013, eight companies approached the college with a shared problem: they needed technologists and technicians who were already familiar and trained on SMT assembly equipment. These were companies that design and manufacture circuit boards, and they needed graduates who could walk in and get to work.
"We started up a program that held us accountable for making sure that we could get students hired," says Johnny Vanderford, Assoc. Prof. & Coordinator of MEMS Degree. From that foundation, the program has grown to serve 90 industry partners, and approximately 75% of them have SMT pick-and-place needs. Teaching students to run a pick-and-place machine is core to the success of the program.
Great Expense from Industrial Solutions
For years, LCCC's SMT training relied on hand placement of surface mount components. It was a starting point, but it wasn't representative of what students would encounter in the field. They have a single large SMT production line, but that was not sufficient for teaching an entire cohort of students efficiently.
LCCC's full scale production line is only capable of training a handful of students at a time.
"Pick and place systems easily cost, as of right now, six figures, $100,000 to $200,000 for even a basic quality model machine," says Vanderford. "As a community college, we really don't have a very strong budget when it comes to some of these things."
Industrial pick-and-place equipment is priced for production environments with production-scale throughput. For a teaching lab running student cohorts, that price point put efficient SMT training effectively out of reach.
Pivoting to the LumenPnP
LCCC has been able to efficiently and inexpensively train MEMS students since implementing the LumenPnP into their curriculum.
"It was a complete game changer once we saw the price; it was less than half the price of what our mostly manual systems were," says Vanderford.
"Once we program it, put your board in, you hit go, and then you can walk away and prep another board while it's just doing its thing."
- Ryan Palmer, MEMS Program Instructor
The tabletop form factor meant their machines fit easily into an existing lab space, with room to grow alongside a reflow oven and stencil printers. Setup was straightforward, guided by online documentation that got the team up and running easily.
"Each one of those feeders [from our industrial pick-and-place] costs as much as this whole machine," says Ryan Palmer, MEMS Program Instructor.
Teaching Skills That Transfer Directly to Industry
The real value LCCC gets from the LumenPnP is that students learn skills that are directly transferrable to their career. The workflow students learn on a LumenPnP maps cleanly onto the workflow they'll encounter on industrial systems costing orders of magnitude more.
"The LumenPnP pick-and-place system prepares students so well to work at these companies," says Vanderford. "It relates to every single pick-and-place system amongst our 90 industry partners."
Scaling Up With Student Demand
LCCC's program is growing. As regional industry demand for electronics technicians continues to increase, LCCC expects enrollment to follow and their LumenPnP fleet is already planned to expand alongside it.
"We're also going to buy some additional Lumen pick-and-place systems because we expect our student population to grow. We expect the need in the area to be able to grow as well. And the affordability just makes it an ideal situation for what it is that we are currently doing within our education system," says Vanderford.
For a program built around accountability to industry outcomes, the ability to scale the lab without scaling the budget is exactly the kind of leverage that keeps the pipeline between students and employers strong.
Interested in the LumenPnP for your institution or lab? Learn more about the LumenPnP, or reach out to our team with any questions.