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Automation Grows Silicon Valley Manufacturer
H
eadquartered in California’s Silicon Valley and with manufacturing facilities in Fremont, CA, and Phoenix, AZ, Essai Inc. designs and manufactures test equipment for the semiconductor, computer, and consumer electronics industries. These products and systems play a critical role in the testing function and have contributed to the rapid growth of his company, said Nasser Barabi.
“Essai was founded in 2003 and, since its inception, it has consistently averaged significant positive revenue growth every single year. This has been repeatedly recognized by ranking organizations such as Inc. magazine which has cited Essai as one of the fastest growing companies for three consecutive years,” said Barabi. “Key aspects contributing to our success are innovation, business systems, first-class team, and using technology to automate our entire operation in order to gain and maintain a competitive advantage.”
Essai’s Phoenix facility’s production line consists of four Hermle C22U five-axis machining centers serviced by the state-of-the-art EROWA Dynamic Linear robotic system.
Essai designs and manufactures test and validation hardware for the semiconductor, computer and consumer electronics industries. The equipment is used to test integrated circuits and systems for their functionality and reliability. Significant product categories include Interconnect, Thermal PCB, and Systems Test. Manufacturing of components for Essai’s products is done in a highly automated machining environment with material han- dling systems from EROWA Technology Inc. (Arlington Heights, IL), recommended by machine tool supplier Hermle Machine Co. (Franklin, WI). Initially, Essai’s production cells were configured with two Hermle C30U five-axis CNC machining centers serviced by an EROWA material-handling robot. Essai has five such cells in their California facility. “Our latest generation production cell in our Phoenix facility consists of four Hermle C22U five-axis machining centers serviced by the state-of-the-art EROWA Dynamic Linear robotic system, which has resulted in a significant improvement in production throughput,” said Barabi. The kinds of components being machined are typically under 8" (203 mm) and made from a variety of materi- als including aluminum, copper, stainless steel and engineering plastics. Materi- als are fixtured on pallets with an RFID chip attached. Raw materials which also have RFID chips attached are matched to manufacturing requirements for each component. “In this way, there is a mix of parts going into the cell for machin- ing with batch sizes ranging from one to 1000. “Typical batch size is between 30 and 50 parts,” says Barabi.
Putting the Hermle cell and EROWA automation into production took just a matter of weeks after the machines were
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ManufacturingEngineeringMedia.com | December 2013
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