ASSEMBLÉON SHOWS ITS NEW SMART SOLUTIONS AT APEX 2010

Veldhoven (Netherlands), 1 February 2010

Royal Philips Electronics subsidiary Assembléon is showing more ‘Smart Solutions’ at Apex 2010 (April 6th to 8th, Booth 325) held in Las Vegas, U.S.A. Several initiatives are aimed at helping customers to improve business perfomance and reduce SMT production costs. Assembléon is for example introducing the cost-effective MC-24X – a versatile extension to the company’s end of line solutions for high-volume and high-mix production  lines. In addition, there is a new all-in-one solution for small and medium batch sizes with a high product mix: the MG-5 with its new thin 8 mm feeders that allow 30% more feeders on the same floorspace.
 
Also on display is Assembléon’s MCP screen printer, which halves the industry’s benchmark defects per million (dpm) figures while boasting a board cycle time, including board transport, down to 11 seconds. The high quality output from the MCP is a perfect match for the company’s A-Series pick & place machines, which have the industry’s lowest placement dpm figures. The A-Series itself now takes boards 800 mm long by 457 mm wide (31.5” x  18”) for industrial applications that are key in the U.S.
 
The A-Series (which includes the AX-301, shown at Apex) also solves the problem of production fluctuations, with Assembléon’s True Capacity on Demand. This is the industry’s first initiative to allow customers to temporarily rent and install extra pick & place robot heads to meet peaks in demand. There is no change to the equipment footprint, and calibration-free robot heads are quickly and easily fitted to the machines on the line – without changing vulnerable internal hardware.  According to Leo van de Vall, Assembléon’s CEO in the US, Assembléon’s True Capacity on Demand initiative saves equipment assemblers 20% on initial capital costs, with the A-Series also saving on running costs by having half the energy consumption of competing machines. “Our unique parallel placement technique has established itself as the industry benchmark for best placement quality at high output” said van de Vall.  
            
Also new is a tray trolley on the AX-201 end-of-line machine that doubles the the speed of feeding, critical to success in high-volume applications with a high tray component count.

 
Versatile new machines are compact

On show for the first time is the MC-24X full-featured dual-sided pick & place machine, which packs up to 96 intelligent feeders in just two and a half square meters (27 sq. ft.) of floor space. With its top speed of 54,000 components per hour, it is a high-speed end-of-line addition to Assembléon’s end of line solutions.. The versatile machine places components from 0.4 mm by 0.2 mm (01005) up to 45 mm square (1.77”) on boards up to 700 mm long by 460 mm wide (27.56” x 18.11”). That makes it the most flexible and compact machine with the highest output of its kind.

    MC-24X
Aiming at the entry level market, also at the show is the MG-5 all-in-one modular pick & place machine, which speeds the route from CAD data to first products. It handles large boards and odd-size components, and has 106 fixed feeder positions. At highest speed, the machine places up to 20,000 components/hour, including devices up to 45 mm square (1.77”) and 15 mm high (0.59”). Like all M-Series machines, the MG-5 is compact, and has simple machine setups with rapid changeovers for highest productivity. Based on the advanced techniques of its high-end brothers, the MG-5 delivers quality at a very attractive low price. The machines are versatile and reliable, and are backed by Assembléon’s award-winning service and support. 

 
Industry’s highest speeds and qualities

With around three quarters of all production defects caused by faulty screen printing, reducing defect rates can bring huge savings. Assembléon’s MCP printer does just this, with its superb printing process saving around US$ 10,000 per machine per year in materials and repair costs. It does this while also being the first stencil printer to match the high throughput of today’s pick & place machines. The printer has a board cycle time down to 11 seconds, and handles a wide mix of components down to 01005 chips, component interspacings down to 80 µm, pc boards and Flexible Printed Circuits.
 
The innovative single swing squeegee head design uses variable attack angle printing, which is unique in the industry and which delivers the exact amount of solder paste needed by each component. This gives consistently flat and uniform solder deposits, even on boards that mix large and small components. It aims at high speed and high quality manufacturing, and perfectly complements Assembléon’s single-digit dpm A-Series pick & place machines.         
  
            Additional, stable print quality can be controlled by an optional closed-loop control paste inspection camera, which will not only search for known printing defects, but can automatically adjust printing parameters or initiate stencil cleaning when necessary.
 
The A-Series is also seeing continual improvements, with the machines now taking extra-long and extra-wide boards, essential for many industrial applications. On the AX-201, a new tray trolley uses a unique tray caching system to double its tray feeding speed. With the increasing unbalance between tray and tape components, the new tray trolley avoids tray components being a production line bottleneck. 

AX-201 tray trolley