Feb 16, 2001 KIC has been awarded the 2000 SMT Vision Award in the software category for its KIC-Pilot automated reflow oven setup software. The Vision Award for the KIC-Pilot is KIC's second in three years. In 1998, KIC's Auto-Predict Software Option won the SMT Vision Award for software.
The Vision Awards, presented annually by SMT Magazine, recognize companies that have uniquely advanced surface mount technology or demonstrated "visionary" development of new products to meet the challenges facing the electronics assembly industry. KIC's winning entry, the KIC Pilot, is an automated reflow oven setup system that interfaces directly with the oven controller. The Pilot features an animation-based user interface which allows a low-skilled operator with one hour's training to setup the reflow process. The process engineer retains over-all control by defining the process parameters, but can delegate the actual setup tasks to the line operators. The Pilot guarantees error-free operations and determines the ONE BEST possible oven setup.
A key feature of the Pilot is the Process Window Index (PWI). The PWI is used to evaluate the quality of a profile by reducing all profile statistics to a single number. A PWI of 0% is optimum, less than 100% is in spec, above 100% is out of spec. The Pilot automatically finds the oven setup that provides the lowest PWI.
Until now, the operator has been responsible for controlling the oven. With the Pilot software, the oven has the intelligence to tell the operator how to set it up, and will not allow the operator to run product if the profile is out of spec. In effect, the KIC Pilot's intelligent system controls the operator.
Based in San Diego, KIC is the industry leader in automated thermal process tools and systems for reflow, wave, curing and semiconductor thermal processes. The company pioneered the development of oven profilers and process optimization tools, and then worked to create the next generation of thermal systems to help manufacturers improve the thermal process quality while reducing cost.
KIC products include the KIC X5, KICstart2, ProBot and the KIC RPI. With the introduction of cutting edge tools, the company continues to stay on the leading edge of process optimization and automatic thermal process systems, and has won numerous industry awards.
