After bringing the Opulo LumenPnP on-site, Sight & Sound eliminated the delays, rework, and outsourcing costs that had been slowing down their productions.
"I'm actually sad that we didn't have it sooner."
- Erik Hendershot, Automation & Effects Technician
Sight & Sound produces massive, year-long shows with deeply integrated technology. Props light up with precision-timed LED effects. Five-ton set pieces drive around stage in a choreographed pattern amidst a full cast of actors. And when running two to three shows a day, downtime is a luxury that they cannot afford.
We spoke with Sight & Sound's Automation & Effects team to learn about how engineering departments can rapidly prototype, validate designs before costly contracts, and produce production-scale PCBAs with in-house SMT assembly.
Widespread PCBA Demand
Circuit board production at Sight & Sound is central to every show. PCBs drive LED effects built into props, carry signals from microcontrollers out to the vehicles and set pieces moving across the stage, and power industrial automation panels backstage.
The effects and props for Sight & Sound's productions do not exist as off-the-shelf products. Each one is custom built to match the requirements of the director.
This is also complicated by the fact that the volume of these boards vary wildly; some boards are built once, used for a single scene in a single show, while others are used in large quantities across effectively every show. Both types have to be delivered quickly and work reliably.
Erik Hendershot, Sight & Sound Automation & Effects Technician, leads the team on producing and procuring PCBA parts for shows. "There might be a one-off where it's only used in one show one time for one scene. But then we also do things where we use it consistently in every show. And we have to be able to do that both quickly with great turnaround and reliably so that we have a very well-functioning product on a regular basis," says Hendershot.
Looking for a Solution
For smaller runs, boards were assembled by hand. For anything approaching 20 units or more, Sight & Sound outsourced by sending jobs to domestic or overseas assemblers, waiting for populated boards to arrive, and then finding flaws.
Finding flaws meant sending boards back, which mean spending weeks waiting for the corrected version. In a production environment running on tight creative timelines, that loop was untenable.
Drew Kibler, Automation & Effects Technical Designer, feels the impact of long lead-times on his design process. "Whether we were getting it populated overseas or domestically, we were just finding flaws every time, and then it's a whole other step to send it back and get it back in. I don't have that kind of timeline. I need it as soon as possible," says Kibler.
The logical next step was bringing pick-and-place assembly in-house.
The first pick-and-place machine Sight & Sound acquired had a steep enough learning curve that only one or two people on the team ever reached the point where they could actually use it. Worse, when something didn't work as expected, there was no support to help them get back up and running.
"The support just wasn't there. So when we didn't understand a feature or we couldn't get something to work, it was kind of 'figure it out on your own,'" says Kibler.
With a system that only a fraction of the team could operate, and no support structure to lean on, the machine never delivered the in-house capability Sight & Sound was looking for.
Finding the LumenPnP
When the team started looking for alternatives, they found the LumenPnP.
"We were seeing great success throughout the community, and as a product the Lumen was really attractive. We know that there is support out there, better documentation to get us off the ground," says Caleb West, Automation & Effects Designer.
"The ease of use is just fantastic. The best thing is that I am able to set up a job, hit play, and just walk away."
- Erik Hendershot, Automation & Effects Technician
For Sight & Sound's tight timelines and complex requirements of prototyping and production, they need a tool they can rely on, not a project that requires tuning and tweaking. Erik Hendershot uses the LumenPnP every day, and feels the need for a reliable production tool.
"The ease of use is just fantastic, especially compared to the old machine. The learning curve is so much easier. It's super fast. You can bounce back and forth between projects. The best thing is that I am able to set up a job, hit play, and just walk away," says Hendershot.
From Outsourcing to On-Demand
Since installing the LumenPnP, Sight & Sound has rethought how they approach both prototyping and production. With common components now regularly mounted on feeders, setup time for new jobs has dropped dramatically. Prototype builds that used to require preparation can now be spun up quickly by reusing existing feeder configurations.
"Since we've set the Lumen up, we've been using it more for just one-off prototypes and things like that, because all of our common parts are now getting mounted on feeders. Some of that initial setup that we would have done on a big job, we can just reuse that setup and move feeders around here and there and then build prototypes faster than we otherwise could," says West.
For full production runs, the speed advantage over outsourcing is even more pronounced. The team can go from finalized design to finished boards without any handoff, waiting period, or quality uncertainty.
Case Study: LED Pucks
One of the clearest illustrations of what in-house production unlocks isn't about speed or cost, it's about creative flexibility. When designing LED pucks for a production, the team needs to test a series of different lighting colors for approval by producers. Previously, committing a board design to an outside assembler meant locking in every component value before a single puck was tested under show conditions.
With the LumenPnP on-site, multiple versions can be tested rapidly.
"We can get boards in, play with those LED wavelengths. We can swap out the resistor values to match. We can build up six different options of colors, show that to a director and producer, and then they can pick the one that they like, and we'll make 20 of that with the same board. All of those options are way more open to us now that we have production on site," says West.
For the LED puck run, Sight & Sound iterated through a couple of revisions and then ramped directly to 120 units. Once the ideal configuration was chosen, the transition from prototyping to production happened in-house, without any interruption.
Scaling Up As Needed
As production complexity has grown, so has Sight & Sound's LumenPnP configuration. The team started with 25 feeders and expanded to 50 as job requirements increased. The modular, scalable nature of the system made that expansion straightforward; buy what you need, when you need it.
"I need to be able to do more than one at a time. Having two, three of them definitely would make our process a lot better and smoother. I can crank things out more quickly so that someone can have their end product before they even need it," says Hendershot.
Interested in bringing PCB assembly in-house? Learn more about the LumenPnP, or reach out to our team with any questions.