Located in El Paso, Texas, just across the border from Mexico, Sherwood Engineering Design Services, Inc. offers low-cost contract electronic manufacturing srevices (CEM) via our Mexican manufacturing partners in Juarez, Mexico. Sherwood Engineering is your one-stop design and manufacturing center. Not only do we design electronic products and the testers for the products, but we procure the materials, schedule and kit for manufacturing, manufacture, and perform quality assurance testing for the final product before shipping the product to you.

Sherwood Engineering's electronic manufacturing services use two basic component mounting technologies: through hole technology, and surface mount technology. Through hole technology (THT) mounts components on a PCB by inserting component leads through holes in the board and then soldering the leads in place on the opposite side of the board. Once the PCB is fully populated with components, the PCB is passed through a wave solder machine which solders the parts to the PCB.

Surface mount technology (SMT) uses components that are usually much smaller than thru-hole components and have no leads. Solderable terminals or pins are soldered to pads located on the top or bottom surface of the PC board. First a solder paste is applied to the PC board pads using a mask to coat only the pads. Parts are then automatically placed on the solder paste. After all parts are places the board and all parts are heated to melt the solder affixing the parts permanently to the PC board. The machine that places the parts is called a pick and place machine and the device that melts the solder is called a reflow oven.

The completed assembly is then tested, and packaged for shipment to the U.S. For further information on our contract manufacturing services, please contact us at contractmfg@seds.com