Multitasking platforms are becoming the standard.

While productivity – manufacturing more product, more efficiently in less time – has been center stage in electronics assembly for decades, today’s razor-thin margins, coupled with the requirement for limited human intervention, have put an exclamation point on managing output proficiency. (This is especially true as the world restricts building access and maintains safe personal distances.) An optimized stencil printing process, as I’ve said many times, comes down to depositing the right volume in the right place at the right time. These are the three pillars of the print operation. Ultimately, for maximum productivity, a manufacturing operation needs a stencil printer that is always available and, when it is available, efficient and reliable.

It wasn’t long ago the bottleneck on the production line was usually the placement machine, so the stencil printer was generally available and had plenty of time to run the print routine. With recent modular approaches to manufacturing line setups, however, this is no longer the case. Placement platforms have exponentially improved speed. The printer now must maintain a much faster pace; this starts with mechanics and cycle time. In mass production settings, getting a printer down to a core cycle time of five seconds has become a necessity.

With no standard in sight, emerging alloys require unique fluxes and processes.

Soldering in nitrogen or vapor phase environments can increase the likelihood.

Subtle component lifting can be an issue to find during inspection. Most modern AOI systems should be able to detect drawbridging on small passive and active parts. Old systems may struggle with defects like the two shown in FIGURE 1.

We must retain our new agility even after the pandemic ends.  

Nothing makes you flexible like a crisis. Yet, as rough as it can be for a person to quickly shift gears, it is significantly more daunting for a corporation to do so.

The entirety of my working career, the mantra of any good business consultant or culture guru has been be flexible and embrace change. Whether an organization is implementing a TQM (total quality management) plan or struggling with financial survival because “plan A” no longer works, embracing flexibility and rapid change is never easy – and often unsuccessful. The larger the organization, the harder it can be. Embracing change and becoming flexible often only occurs when no other option remains, or in short, extinction awaits.