SMT/HYBRID/PACKAGING 2010
Article Type: Exhibitions and conferences From: Soldering & Surface Mount Technology, Volume 22, Issue 4
Seeing the show on the middle day was always going to be a good test, and the buzz in the halls from quite early on indicated that the industry is now well and truly back in business. Glorious Spring sunshine welcomed visitors, already up 5 percent on Day 1, to the SMT/hybrid/packaging 2010 which had 555 exhibitors and 39 represented companies in the show which ran from 8 to 10 June 2010.
Once again they had the live production line, which demonstrated the technological and logistical demands on equipment in medical electronics; as well as the panel discussions and experts forums in Hall 6 and the forum “EMS in Focus” on Thursday, 10 June in Hall 9.
The exhibitors included Siemens Electronics Assembly Systems who were presenting a new, software-based setup concept for SIPLACE placement machines with intelligent X-feeders. The SIPLACE Split Table Mode splits the component tables at the SMT line virtually and assigns their feeder positions to two consecutive setups. That way, one area can be used to manufacture a previously optimised product while the other area is used to prepare for the next product without having to stop the line. This new “floating” setup concept is especially useful for electronics manufacturer with great product diversity and relatively few component overlaps. They can now execute their product changeovers with no downtime, reduce their investment in component tables and insert rush orders into their production schedule more quickly and easily.
The main attractions naturally were the SIPLACE SX1 and SX2 placement machines with their replaceable gantries and their unique capacity-on-demand capabilities. As the speed module of the SX platform, the company also unveiled its four-gantry SIPLACE SX4, which can place more than 120,000 components per hour. The SIPLACE Peak Demand and SIPLACE Floating Demand concepts, for example,let customers reduce their initial investment in new lines and flexibly scale their line performance and capital requirements with demand by renting SX gantries as needed.
The four-gantry SIPLACE SX4 is the high-speed option for large manufacturing environments and can be equipped with three head models: the SIPLACE SpeedStar CP20, the SIPLACE MultiStar CPP and the SIPLACE TwinHead. In an area of only 1.90 × 2.65 m, which includes the space taken up by 148 8-mm feeder slots,the SIPLACE SX4 can place up to 120,000 components per hour www.siplace.com.
Moving from the new to the nearly new, one of the problems facing ADOPTSMT was that there is not enough second-hand SMT equipment on the market to satisfy demand. Bizarrely, they have just shipped a massive order for an SMT line to Siemens in Brazil, for telecom equipment, which proves the adage that availability is one of the key ingredients to sales. AdoptSMT have had a very successful 12 months since the last show and have expanded their warehousing facility in Austria by a further 11,000 m2. AdoptSMT are able to move swiftly to provide quality equipment to meet demand from their many offices in Europe, flexibility being key to much of their activity, combined with comprehensive market intelligence.
LPKF were introducing their new MicroLine 1000S UV laser depaneller, a fast clean and accurate depaneller which makes clean, burr-free cuts in FR4, FR5 CEM,ceramic, polyimide, polyester and other PCB substrates. With a UV laser that operates at low temperature, features of 250 × 350 mm can be cut right to the edge without clamping or fixing, and minimal residue. Needless to say, there was a goodly crowd around the machine which, unsurprisingly, had already been sold.
Another new item of equipment was on the GÖPEL electronic stand where their Opticon X-Line 3D X-ray system made it possible to provide simultaneous images to be captured from different angles, so that a PCB populated or not, can be inspected top and bottom at the same time. The system can be employed either in-line or stand-alone, and the tomosynthesis allows the analysis of different layers of the circuit board to be carried out directly. This is 360° AOI.
Sitting conveniently close to the LPKF stand was XENON who were showing off their 3D MID (Moulded Interconnect Devices) insertion, assembly and inspection robot. This neat piece of design and function can place SMD components on 3D circuit boards, can test switches, inspect incoming components, insert contact pins, dispense with AOI and solder with IOI. Versatility is the name of the game here and fits well with the rise in MID demand within the automotive industry.
VISCOM were using the show to announce their new desktop wirebond AOI system S2088BO-II which has been developed to inspect medium and small production runs and gives reliable defect detection on die, ball-wedge, wedge-wedge and security bonds. AOI replaces mechanical tests, which can be destructive, and electrical tests, which can be insufficient. This desktop version inspects everything from aluminium thick wire and aluminium or gold thin wire connections, down to diameters of 17μm.
Launched at Productronica last year, but now in volume production, their S3088VPI 3D solder paste inspection system was also on display and the highly precise 3D measurement technology records and inspects solder paste height,surface area and volume and ascertains topography down to the last detail.
ESSEMTEC had new equipment on their stand as well, theirs was COBRA, a chip mounter that has been developed to meet the fact that SMD boards are being assembled in increasingly small batch sizes. Just in time or set productions require completely different manufacturing methods. It is not just about the placement rate but about the whole programming and set up concept. Simultaneously, today’s machines have to ensure that future component types and manufacturing technologies can be utilized. The Cobra mounter provides highly efficient and economical SMD manufacturing for service providers and in-house production.
SEICA S.p.A. Seica has been innovative in the last 16 years; in 1995, Seica developed flying probe, combining existing ICT testing with a live board. Partnering with GenRad, Seica launched into the States and the flying probe test was adopted there very rapidly. Between 1995 and 2005, they produced four probe single-sided testers, for MDA, ICT, vectorless tests, prototypes and low volumes, and then in 2005 introduced the vertical machine, which made dual-side testing possible, with two probes per side; it reduced the footprint and reduced costs. In 2008, they introduced the first vertical machine with four probes each side, called the Pilot V8, capable of testing two boards at the same time. Having the board in the vertical plane means that bending/warpage is not a problem and the effect of vibration is reduced.
Now Seica want to deploy the machine to be more versatile, which means, test,and repair. Ing. Corli explained how production stacked up against repair, with many different requirements and limitations. Reverse engineering is the way in which a board with little or no data which fails can be “rebuilt”using data from a “golden board”. After testing, the data for netlist are generated, which can be used to generate a test board. If CAD data is not available, the flying probe machine can employ its camera to create an image to compliment the netlist data. This leads to the creation of something called the Fnode waveform, injecting a suit of frequencies into the board from every single target learned. It then identifies different groups of targets with identical signatures. Once the net is known, testing can begin; then components can be inserted, where one manually inserts components in the test programme to create the worklist, or CAD data.
Unique to Seica is the power probe. Power cabling to power up a board during test can be an obstacle to more automated f/p testing. Seica have developed a system whereby two more flying probes mounted in the same head which power up the board, with six different power supplies to the power source. They also now have Quick Test – a functional test that can be performed without prior knowledge of the machine, in a typical ICT environment. It can be executed thinking only of the UUT. Thermal scan is a simple concept, by using a pyrometer mounted on one flying head of the machine, one can measure the temperature of all the components on the board. By measuring a golden board, then further tests show the hot spots generated by something that is abnormal, e.g. a fault or an open.
Flying probe testing has changed over the years and Seica have contributed to that. Now flying probe can do more than just test – it can measure, repair and reverse engineer.
Not untypical of the EMS companies present was TBP ELECTRONICS based in Dirksland, The Netherlands, with a 30,000 m2 factory in Belgium and a sales office in Germany. They specialise in end-to-end product life-cycle solutions, employ 420 and have a turnover in excess of €120 million. The fields covered are telecommunications, broadcasting, entertainment, graphics,ICT, industrial petrochemical, construction, shipping, and medical and defence sectors, with a string of awards for both quality and entrepreneurship. The sort of company who make all things possible and make all things reliably and who remain relatively unsung heroes of the European manufacturing base without which we all be the very much poorer.
