July, 2015
www.us-
tech.com Europlacer Helps CEM Improve Continued from previous page
ers are easy to drop and damage and expensive to repair or replace. Smaller feeders are easy to store and handle and, if dropped, offer a better chance of surviving the fall. This equipment search parame- ter led to two suppliers but differences were also noticed between the two. Most of CEM’s feeder supply consists of 8mm
feeders and this is where much of the equipment investment is focused. Both manufacturers seemed to offer the same capabilities, but one manufactur- er required the purchase of several different styles of the 8mm feeder, and each of these only worked on a specific type of 8mm carrier tape. As a result, a total of 400 to 500 8mm feeders
would be needed to support four or five different 8mm feeder styles. What was needed was more like 200 8mm feeders. Europlacer uses one 8mm feeder to handle all 8mm parts. There is no need for special feeders to handle different 8mm component pitches or carrier tapes, which equates to a significant cost savings and greatly simplified equipment set - ups.
CEM required a feeder capacity
greater than its then-current setup of 190 (two placement machines com- bined) per line. But any new machine must fit into a freight elevator with a length limit of 11 ft. No single ma- chine came close to this except for the Europlacer system. This one machine has a capacity of 264 8mm feeders, and all feeders are located on carts that can be rolled directly to the ma- chine and locked in for production, and this allows off-line setups. Euro- placer provided the most efficient lay- out to maximize feeder capacity. Three JEDEC trays can even be added without losing any of the 264 feeder locations.
Faster verification and component placement
Looking forward, CEM wanted
to build even more quality into its products. For over 10 years, the firm has used automated optical inspec- tion (AOI) as a means to provide cus- tomers with an additional level of confidence. Component verification is a means to further improve that quality. Unfortunately, component verification also tends to slow down any production process. The key for any new manufac-
turing system was to minimize the amount of time required for compo- nent verification, and the two suppli- ers differed a great deal with their systems. One supplier used only one nozzle (even though it has eight noz- zles on the head) to test each part, so that a full cycle (pick, test, place) was needed to test each component. Test- ing 50 parts translates into the trav- el time required for 50 cycles. The Europlacer system can test compo- nents with every single nozzle, so a machine configured with two 12-noz- zle turrets can test 24 components in one cycle. In addition, the Europlacer sys-
tem is configured to test only the first three components. However, it knows if the feeder was removed for any rea- son and will automatically retest the next three components off that reel when the feeder is reattached. This setting cannot be overridden by the operator, so that the system makes it possible to catch components that were mislabeled by a distributor be- fore they were placed on a printed cir- cuit board (PCB) being assembled. In the past, a mislabeled part would have been discovered only following solder reflow upon AOI.
The next consideration in finding a next-gen-
eration assembly system involved the machine’s operating system and programming software. An MS Windows-based program was desired
because of the large number of users, including among employees. Europlacer’s system was found to employ a user-friendly interface that makes it possible to program new products quickly once the component libraries have been established. After some experience, programming times with this system had dropped to about 30 to 45 minutes for relatively complex boards. The Europlacer sales staff was impressive
with their knowledge of their system and with the way they were able to communicate the different capabilities and options. The machine addressed CEM’s needs and basically sold itself. Over the past six months, CEM has added two more Euro-
placer iineo-II placement machines in addition to that first one purchased in 2012. Compared to the old placement systems, these new systems have helped decrease the time setting up the SMT pro- duction lines by about 50 percent, which is a direct increase in machine run time. The machines also deliver a significant sav-
ings in production time, about 25 to 30 percent. Having the three production lines provides the benefit of running any job on any line, for a better balance among the SMT lines. The Europlacer’s iineo-II machines clearly provide improved effi- ciency, quality, and capacity for CEM’s SMT pro- duction lines, and have proven to be wise equip- ment additions to the company. Contact: Colonial Electronic Manufacturers,
Inc., 1 Chestnut St., Nashua, NH 03060 % 603-881-8244 Web:
www.ceminc.net r
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