February, 2020
www.us-
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Page 33 Factory-Wide Automation in Electronics Assembly Continued from previous page
systems and looking to deliver “smart” products. In essence, Factory 4.0 is about digitizing the manu- facturing process. Achieving that can take many forms, but a key factor is for manufacturers to know what is happening in the factory and be able to respond to changes quickly. A pick-and-place machine — Europlacer’s
core product — is often at the heart of an assembly line. To maintain efficiency and productivity, process managers must understand what happens in and around that machine at any given time. Like every other equipment manufacturer, Euro- placer has been providing this information for years, but in a proprietary format. It suited the Europlacer machine yet is generally unreadable by other systems, and so it needed to change if data collaboration along the assembly line and between lines was to work. CFX makes that change rela-
tively straightforward. A great deal of expertise and resource has already been deployed by Aegis, the IPC’s Technical Review Board and partici- pants in the CFX program to create a valid standard. Equipment R&D teams can use the simple instructions and methods provided within the CFX protocol to create test code that streams to a remote server, then de- velop final code that is processed and returned accurately — from experi- ence, sometimes in a matter of hours.
Making CFX Adoption Easy A key part of a test for any stan-
dard is the speed with which it can be embraced and implemented. On that measure, experiences with CFX re- ported by equipment vendors are en- couraging. In more than one case, R&D teams have gone from a position of zero knowledge to a fully opera- tional CFX model in a month. It is prudent to state that CFX is
not the only vehicle that purports to resolve the cross-platform data com- patibility issue in electronics manu- facturing. Other standards exist that claim to achieve the same goal. Some cite the wisdom of industry experience from Aegis as making the difference to the speed with which CFX has been accepted. Adoption is more likely if it is easy for manufacturers to get on the first rung of the ladder, and the Aegis resource pool, including its SDK and well-thought-out documentation, ap- pears to help with that.
The Automation Mindset With a few notable exceptions,
this kind of broad automation is not always at the forefront of minds in the industry. Reactions to live CFX demos have been muted. There is not much visible excitement. Equipment suppliers speculate that with the demonstrations appearing so seam- less, exhibition visitors may not have realized that the stream of live pro- duction data they witnessed on their smartphones could be the beginning of the next industrial revolution. To many, Industry 4.0 is still a
buzzword — a future promise with no visible manifestation. For now, equipment suppliers remain more ex- cited than potential end users. CFX collaborators need to promote the benefits rather than the technology. As a contributor to effective Fac-
tory 4.0 automation, CFX represents a great opportunity for equipment in- tegrators. It will eliminate the need to develop proprietary interface pro- tocols. A common, agreed protocol makes seamless integration between every process in a surface mount as- sembly line a reality — from screen
We simplify the entire process, and do it all under one roof!
printing through to final product testing, encom- passing intelligent lineside storage and robotic
handling on the way. But this data compatibility reaches further,
beyond one assembly line, with its ability to be im- mediately collated and analyzed on portable pro- ductivity dashboards. That gives process engineers and operations managers in a manufacturing envi- ronment the timely information they need to make production-wide or factory-wide decisions. That is the true power of real-time data. In a world where mass customization persists and time-to-market is everything, it could decide the future prosperity of electronics manufacturers. Contact: Europlacer, 519 US Highway 301
A typical CFX information screen example,
showing the placement process paused on an atom 4 pick-and-place machine.
South, Tampa, FL 33619 % 813-246-9500 E-mail:
john.perrotta@
europlacer.com Web:
www.europlacer.com r
See at IPC APEX, Booth 1910
1.888.228.9440 |
Sales@eProtos.com
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