Problem: A fixture designed to plate chloride onto silver pins and platinum black on gold pins was suffering from low yields and was in constant need of repair. Plating solution would routinely leak through the base of the fixture and corrode the electronics within. Although the fixture had ten bays, up to six bays were typically down, which required technician intervention to disassemble and re-solder the internal electronics: establishing the plating process as a bottleneck. In addition, the quality of the coating produced was oftentimes rejected by the operators due to surface “defects”, which required nearly a 100% rework rate.
Solution: Given the nature of the process, the threat of leakage was ever-present, so the severity of a leak was reduced. A redesign of the plating fixture moved the electronics to the back of the bays, out of the way of the corrosive solutions. Push-on wire harnesses were used in lieu of the soldering and a modular design was adopted for the fixture, which allowed the operator to quickly change out a bay without tools if it would become inoperable: negating the need for constant technician intervention. A test method validation (Gage R&R) was performed between the operator, process engineers, and R&D to “recalibrate” the operators as to what was acceptable. All these changes resulted in a 67% throughput increase in the platinization and a 75% improvement in first-run yields for the chloridization process.