Given the relative abundance of Speedline and DEK machines in use today, it would be easy to overlook just how many other printers are available. Wednesday at Productronica proved that in spades.

We saw four today, including a new stencil-free model that had the crowds buzzing. EKRA showed the X6, a high-end, dual lane printer capable of increased speeds and full inspection. Essemtec, best known for its placement machines, offers a full-line configuration including printer, dispenser, reflow and wave machines. Managing director/CEO Martin Ziehbrunner said most orders are for the full line. And Speedprint premiered the SP880avi large area printer, capable of handling panels up to about 21 sq. in.

Then there was Mydata. The placement company made its highly anticipated debut in the printer business with MY500, a jet printer whose nozzle is reportedly capable of 1.8 million droplets per hour. A test board containing 159 parts including 65 0201s, 1 BGA and 1 QFP was printed in 17 sec. A laser measures the height profile of the PCB before printing, and unlike an inkjet that moves back and forth, the linear-motor driven head scans the PCB at 3 to 4G acceleration and looks for the best strip on which to shoot paste. The cassette includes a holder and syringe (with a standard 100 g tube). Solder is fed to an inlet via a screw pump, and a piezo hits the piston, which ejects the solder. (Mydata declined to disclose what drives the head.) Another plus: The opening reportedly doesn’t need to be cleaned. The flux content is 15% and the powder size is type 5. The machine isn’t ready for high volume operations yet, Mydata said. The machine is priced at about 295,000 euros.

Vitronics debuted “My Selective 6745,” a selective soldering machine for high mix, low volume operations that can be integrated with other Vitronics selective soldering gear. It also showed a slick concealed tunnel system on its wave machine, said to use less oxygen during preheat, soldering and cooldown. The first machine is in place in Germany. The company is opening a tech center in Germany and adding a new demo center in Southeast Asia.

Juki has expanded its factory in North Carolina, and now has a capacity of 250 machines per month. According to president Bob Black, the monthly output is more than 200 per month, of which 100 or more are shipped to China. According to the trade group JARA, Juki is the second leading vendor of placement machines worldwide in terms of units sold. Black said “quite a few” new machines are in line for debuting in 2006, with an emphasis on improving speed. Juki expects a first-half rush on its selective soldering line; the firm installed 11 in the last four months and expects around 30 installs by mid February.

Kester debuted a new bar solder, Kester K, a SnCu alloy for low-cost consumer applications. VP Dave Torp said 30% of the company’s global production is lead-free alloy and they expect that to reach 50 to 60% by Jan. 1. Henkel’s customers have been slower to transition; the materials company says sales are currently 80% SnPb and they expect 30 to 40% to be Pb-free by April. Henkel is constantly adding capacity, and more materials are being produced in the same region as they are consumed. The firm has closed on its JV with Huawei, giving them capacity and a foothold in the China market while offering Huawei access to a larger and global customer base.

Machine Vision Products rolled out a packaging inspection machine, the 850G, capable of die placement inspection within 10 microns at 3 Sigma.

BP Microsystems showed a component programmer with a single length feeder option for handling small parts (4 x 4 mm). Its new “10 series” of concurrent programmers uses USB instead of parallel ports and supports up to 4 GB.

New RVSI president Kevin Maddy has 10 years of turnaround experience. He said the company is moving to Lean manufacturing, shorter lead times (by 80%) and outsourcing of some machine build to Asia. They doubled their Q3 sales sequentially and are looking for 65% growth next year.

ASYS, the other half of EKRA, showed a pair of modular automatic depanelers, the ADS 01F and ADS 01FR. The former features changeover time of 6 sec. and is designed for cellphones and similar sized boards, while the latter operates 70% faster.

Among FineTech’s line of benchtop rework stations was the Fineplacer Pico line for 01005 rework at 10 microns accuracy, and Fineplacer Jumbo, for large parts and with 156 micron accuracy.

Two other pieces of equipment stood out among those we saw today. The accuracy of the fully automatic 3-D solder paste inspection from Koh Young Technology has been much improved over the past two years, and is poised to make serious inroads in 2006.

Transition Automation's Permalex squeegee has caught the attention of Siemens.

Also, Transition Automation’s Permalex metal squeegee is infused with a polymer lubricant that reduces friction and stencil wear. The novel wiping system is retrofitable and has already been proven for lead-free pastes – no flux adjustment is necessary – and has reportedly caught the attention of Siemens, which is already trying it out on its DEK printers in Germany. “It’s a mechanical solution that doesn’t require chemistry change,” TA's president Mark Curtin told PCB UPdate.

Mimot (mimot.com) showed a six-head inline positive displacement dispenser said to be capable of 40,000 dph. The machine can put down paste, adhesive, epoxy or underfill.

Fresh off its wildly successful TraceExpert manufacturing execution system, Valor (valor.com) is looking to expand into manual assembly and box-build. “We want to create meaningful data for customers, and help them turn SPC databases into knowledge,” Europe president David Bengal told PCB UPdate. “We want to create a ‘dashboard’ for the manufacturing manager who sits outside the floor and helps with decision-making based on real-time and historical data.” Stay tuned for that.

One observation we made this week is how much more aesthetically pleasing the equipment is. Rounded corners, splashy colors and sleek shapes are all adding up to machines that look as cool as they function.

Ed.: This report was first published Nov. 16.

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