CharTrain Consulting is a company devoted to delivering knowledge and expertise to the electronic assembly industry. Ray Chartrand founded the company in 1997 after leaving his previous employer an equipment manufacturer. His 20 year employment there was first as a designer, then researcher and finally as technical director of training. Being involved in design, fabrication, commission and troubleshooting of his products, Ray realized a need to bridge the gap between equipment and processes. Too many situations arose where defects were either blamed on equipment or materials or combinations thereof. The resulting finger pointing often caused ill will and did little to solve the problems at hand.

 

CharTrain Consulting has partnered with equipment manufacturers to optimize their machine performance, worked with consumable suppliers to alert them to machine capability and deficiencies as well as with instrument manufacturers to adapt their products to changing environments. Chartrain Consulting and their associates pioneered the "one stop shop" concept in the early 90's. An SMT boot camp was created and presented around the world. Chartrain has base lined many new equipment platforms and evaluated them against their competitors.

Many of their findings have been published and taught in recognized technical proceedings around the world. Our name appears on several patent innovations for areas such as inert soldering, novel approaches in wave geometry and no clean flux application and control. 
 

Few consulting firms possess the breadth of knowledge to assess a production line all the way from PCB design, to material selection, consumable compatibility, machine setup and process control all typically found in our process audits. Our training programs have ranged from small mom and pop shops to multinational firms requiring copy direct style manufacturing regardless of location.