Minarik

Reliability and versatility bring success in motor drive manufacturing

With most electronic equipment having one or more motors, the economic climate has affected motor and motor drive manufacturers as much as anyone. There are still success stories, though, and Minarik Drives is one of them. Based in South Beloit, Illinois in the US, Minarik is continuing to invest in new people and equipment to build its motor drives and electronic control circuits. Recently, for example, Minarik took delivery of the first Assembléon MC-1 pick & place machines to be installed in the US.

Since 1954 Minarik has built a reputation based on an uncompromising attitude towards quality and reliability. Efficient motor control is an increasing customer requirement demanding high quality design and manufacture. Minarik produces many private label drives, making reliability, quality and customer service a key component of its successful business. Minarik Drives is committed to reacting quickly to customers’ needs and is willing to design and build low volume custom orders as well as high mix/medium volume contract manufacturing. Even with last minute design changes, customers need to receive motors and drives quickly. Minarik is committed to provide quick response and competitive pricing.

The company now makes a range of DC and AC drives from 7.5 W to 18 kW –1/100 to 25 hp – with associated gearing motors (which remove the burden and cost for customers of having to design in external reduction devices to generate the desired speed or torque). The different types give different combinations of starting torque, acceleration and running speed to exactly meet application needs. The motor controls go into widely varied equipment including packaging and printing machinery, conveyor systems, exercise equipment, battery powered vehicles, medical devices, home automation, actuator control, exhaust control, tire balancers and power window controls. You will likely own equipment containing a Minarik drive without knowing it. 

First DC drive maker to use Surface Mount Technology

 
Minarik’s 32,000 square foot facility is centrally located in the United States, with the largest UPS hub in the country less than 25 miles away. That makes for fast and easy shipping, and standard delivery times of only two to three days to the continental United States. It also helps to give quick service to their other customers around the world.
The company was the first DC Drive manufacturer to use Surface Mount Technology, and now has two SMT lines: CIM (Computer Integrated Manufacturing) pc board assembly; post-cured printed circuit boards; adhesive preparation; and the surface mount line itself that places up to 49,000 components per hour.
It uses DEK screen printers, Speedline Camelot glue dispensers, Vitronics reflow ovens and Electrovert wave solderers (which as a bonus gives totally lead-free production). Minarik has also committed to a totally lead free
Manufacturing environment and has been building lead free Drive Controls since early 2007.
Minarik has recently upgraded its pick & place line and, after researching all the SMT
equipment offerings. Minarik chose to continue the 9 year partnership with Assembléon. “Assembléon gave the best overall solution for our quality, technology and commercial goals,” remarks Steve Christophersen, Minarik’s Production Manager. “We have already used Assembléon equipment, and it turned out to be an easy decision to extend our partnership. We need accurate and reliable placement and the MC-1 gave us that. Furthermore, it was the most versatile pick & place machine we could find. We bought two machines, which have allowed us to increase our capacity and expand further into contract engineering and manufacturing board level power and control components.”

The MC-1 has significantly increased Minarik’s production flexibility and capacity. The two new machines fit in the same footprint as the previous two Assembléon Topaz machines, allowing fast installation and no additional expenditure for electrical or air supply requirements. 

Accurate and versatile high-mix production

The high-mix MC-1 combines accurate chip and IC shooting with complex and odd-form component placement. Its versatility is key to meeting Minarik’s wide range of production needs.
 Placement rates are up to 19.6 k components per hour. Placement accuracy is 30 microns for ICs and 50 microns for chip components, with automatic temperature feedback compensating for temperature variations. The MC-1 handles a wide range of components, from micro-miniature 01005 chips and fine-pitch components to large (100x45 mm) surface-mount connectors and other components up to 15 mm tall. Importantly for Minarik, the MC-1 places odd-form surface mounted electrolytic capacitors, which customers increasingly need.
The accurate, reliable placement gives excellent First Pass Yields. “We have never had quality issues with Assembléon equipment,” continues Christophersen. “What’s more, quality is particularly important to us because of our private label production – a lot of motor manufacturers don’t want to have to design their own drives, so they turn to us. The extra machine accuracy is very welcome, for example helping us to place much finer pitch components than before.”
Minarik can produce prototype pc boards in house, and the MC-1 improves versatility here too, by handling a wide range of board sizes. It takes boards from 50x50 mm up to 510x460 mm, with automatic board width and thickness adjustment making for fast changeover. A double-board support system decreases board transfer time, and fiducial recovery eliminates the need to remove and clean pc boards.
A high-precision single placement beam carries eight independent Z-servo controlled heads. There are automatic tool-bit exchange nozzles and an automatic nozzle cleaning station – helping give the industry’s lowest figures for manual preventive maintenance. The machine is available in two versions: Minarik chose the Super Fine (SF) head for use with an extra broad component range including QFPs, connectors and tall components (a Flying Nozzle Change FNC head is for applications needing many nozzle changes and high output). An optional new nozzle set allows even tighter interspacing of down to 100 microns.  

Extra feeders minimize setup times

The compact design allows the system to pack up to 126 feeders. “That was a major attraction for us,” says Christophersen. “The extra feeder locations allow for quicker setup time, leading to faster turnaround for prototypes and faster changeover between model runs. We can just load up all our 8- and 12-mm parts into the back of the machines, and run our small lot sizes more cost-effectively than ever. Other machines needed dual feeders, which would have made life more difficult for our machine operators.
“We have several standard drive control designs which we can tweak for customers by optimizing component values and microcontroller programs. We can now turn round quantities of only 10 pieces, say, in less than 24 hours. Small runs like these are very important to us, and a major part of our business Typically, we experience low-volume mixed runs, and being able to change over between them quickly makes our production even more versatile. That is a real bonus for our contract OEM customers too.” New, intelligent electrical feeders help Minarik closely track and control its inventory. Devices can be fed using 8-mm tape, stick, tray and other methods. Tape cutters are installed by default.
Assembléon’s AMS 3.0 (Assembléon Manufacturing Software) seamlessly integrates machines into the factory automation infrastructure, scaling performance to precise manufacturing needs. The new machines are linked to a server network, which gives easy and accurate data management and allows Minarik to release new product designs to the manufacturing floor in real time.

“We are a relatively small company. I have 35 people in manufacturing and we don’t have a large number of manufacturing process engineers to call on,” explains Christophersen. “We therefore need an easy and smooth interface between design and manufacturing release.  Assembléon’s software gives us just that. We previously had our own software to prepare CAD designs for manufacturing, and that made the process somewhat cumbersome. Our software engineer has commented that things are much simpler for him with the AMS software, and it has reduced our time-to-manufacture from 3 days to only 2 hours. That can be critical when we are only producing 10 boards at a time for customers.
“Why has our company been so successful? Our people are well trained and totally committed to quality and throughput. We have low staff turnover – which we have found essential for continuous process improvement. We have invested in world-class wave soldering and pick & place lines. Several hardware and software features on Assembléon’s machines are helping us improve our product quality, increase production efficiency, and reduce maintenance.
“We have found Assembléon’s after-sales support to be excellent too. Installation was pain-free, which was remarkable because it was new equipment for everyone involved, and Assembléon was on hand to make sure we got it up and running quickly. The maintenance has also been excellent. I appreciate that more than most, since my previous job was with a contract manufacturer. With four production lines, equipment used to break down every week, so it is refreshing to have trouble-free production. That is helping us to stay ahead of our competitors in a very aggressive market”.
Assembléon’s equipment is therefore helping Minarik concentrate on what it’s best at – designing and building high reliability drives and electronic control boards.