Design for manufacture and service
Processes in manufacture
A number of processes are used in the manufacture of this product:
- PCB etching, coating and printing
- surface mount and through hole assembly
- hand fitting of battery, Dual In Line ICs and connecting of cables
- injection moulding for plastic casing
- cutting and bending of sheet steel
- manufacture of assembly specific semiconductors on PCB
Component Parts
The case assembly is specific to the LC "pizza box" form factor and so requires tooling (and some processes) unique to this product. The motherboard is also a component part that is unique to the LC series.
The assembly of the other component parts are not specific to this product.
Ease of Assembly
Assembling from the component parts into the product is very straight forward and discussed in the product construction section.
The assembly of the motherboard utilises both surface mount and though hole assembly, the motherboard has been designed such that all of the small passive surface mount components are placed on the bottom side of the PCB and then all of the larger surface mount and through hole components are placed on the top side. This will have been a design choice made to optimise the assembly of the motherboard. Small surface mount components can be placed very quickly on an assembly line configured for speed and precision. The larger components can be more efficiently placed together on an assembly line configured for placing heavier components.
Top side of motherboard with large and heavy components
Bottom side of motherboard with small surface mount components
Servicing
Disassembling the product is increadibly easy, it was achieved in under 1 minute with the use of only a screw driver (the power supply and cooling fan were missing but these would not have added a great deal of time). This makes the removal and replacement of piece parts straightforward. Further detail on product disassembly is given in the product deconstruction section.
The further disassembly of the motherboard is significantly more difficult. All components on this piece part are soldered to the PCB by either surface mount or through hole assembly. The graphics memory chips are Dual In Line packages and so can be easily removed from their sockets. All other components on the board have to be de-soldered and their replacement soldered in place.
In summary, the replacement of any of the component parts mentioned in the product construction section is straight forward. However, the repair or service of individual piece parts is an expensive and laborious process.
Replacing component parts
The motherboard is unique to the LC series computer and so obtaining a replacement would be costly.
The SCSI Hard Disk Drive, floppy drive, fan and speaker are commercially available components that are used in many other products. They are therefore easy to replace.