Community Spotlight: Robin Thorn, Creator of Thawney Products

Robin is a wonderful soul who has a huge passion for music. At such a young age, it is amazing to see what they have already accomplished. Robin sells their musical equipment at a range of places from local shops to online vendors, but you can check out the products directly on their website, Thawney.com.

The LumenPnP is helping them bring their fun music tech products to life by allowing them to accurately and reliably assemble their boards, building the confidence needed to scale up quickly. 
 

Tell us a bit about yourself and what you make.

My name is Robin Thorn (they/them), I make musical devices, fun ways for people to interact with computers, and more recently, work in accessible technology.

While I may be young, I have over seven years of experience in the theatre and music industries. I have amassed a small following online and achieved a few million streams on my musical projects.

What are you building with your LumenPnP? 

Making PCBs for a guitar pedal that creates stuttery, aliasing, pretty glitching reverbs! Eurorack synthesis modules that convert plant data to musical control signals, and pretty chord oscillator modules. I have recently been working on some custom MIDI control surfaces (not out quite yet).

 

Did you build or buy a LumenPnP? Have you made any modifications from the original build?

I bought one because I love to tinker, and had various quality control issues [with outsourcing], such as wrong components in production runs (imagine having to replace 600 red LEDs you specified had to be white), as well as tombstoned 0402 components from the fab house.

I am working on a mod that allows me to spot heat PCBs. I have some boards where I can do QC before needing to solder on the expensive chip, and being able to do that later is great, but right now, that gets soldered after, which feels wasteful for a whole hot plate.

What is your favorite feature of the LumenPnP?

The auto feeders are absolutely wonderful. They are so much more reliable than the push-pull feeders, and they remember what components are in them. AMAZING!

How many boards a month do you produce with your machines?

It really depends. During prototyping and testing months, maybe only 20, but I have super shaky hands, and I probably couldn’t make that many by hand. On my busiest month, I was assembling 100 business cards for a conference! Even though I don’t run at a massive scale, my machine is amazing to have and indispensable, especially as things ramp up with the guitar pedal release coming soon.

How were you building these boards before the LumenPnP?

First, I hand-soldered each one (yeowch!). Then, I moved on to using a stencil and hand-placing components. For my most complex boards, that process could sometimes take almost an hour per board.
 

What has the LumenPnP enabled you to do that you previously couldn't?

Smaller components, higher accuracy, and the ability to multitask. I can program and calibrate boards whilst another is already being made. I can even run multiple different PCBs at once so I can scale production with orders.

  

What is the single most important piece of advice for people who are trying to get into PCBA production?

No matter how many PCBs you are assembling, it is ALWAYS worth it to get a stencil for solder paste.
  

What's your solder paste of choice? What do you use for a reflow oven?

I use Loctite GC10 and absolutely love it! I still reflow with a cheap hotplate. (I don't do double sided SMD and I like being able to fix components if they move during reflow.)