May 04, 2012 
Europlacer, a manufacturer of market-leading flexible SMT placement machines, announces that Hansatech, a leading UK-based contract manufacturer, has chosen Europlacer’s iineo-II pick-and-place for use in its facility.
Hansatech has been providing manufacturing solutions for more than 25 years. Based in Poole, Dorset, the operation uses 20,000 sq. ft. of production area and employs 100 people. The origins of Hansatech are steeped in SMT assembly, starting as one of the first volume producers of surface mount assemblies and moving on in more recent times to delivering a wide range of services as a contract manufacturer to its extensive and long-established customer base.
Greater capacity and capability demands from Hansatech’s clientele demanded that that the company look at equipment that was being used to produce evermore complex products. Hansatech’s Managing Director Paul Gill commented, “We have an excellent team at Hansatech and they have done a superb job of getting as much from our production equipment as was possible. However with PCBs becoming much more densely packed with increasingly smaller and smaller devices, it became abundantly clear that we needed to make an investment in new a pick-and-place system.” As a result, Gill instructed his engineering team to run an evaluation of machine vendors for a suitable solution.
Headed by Technical Manager Rex Waygood, the Hansatech team ran extensive tests on numerous machines and considered a large number of variations, with the aim of being able to cater to capability and capacity demands while looking to the future and making efficiency savings.
“Rex is well known within the SMT industry and adds a wealth of experience to us as an organization, in day-to-day matters,” added Gill. “Additionally, his vast experience in the SMT field provided us with the knowledge that if he and his team found a solution, we would be confident in their selection.”
The easiest solution would have been to stay with its current machine supplier; however, with the requirement for quick setup and changeovers coupled with high technology, this would not have been the wisest solution.
“We considered several machine vendors, all of whom offer great equipment. But after extensive tests with various machine types, we finally selected Europlacer as our partner going forward,” said Waygood. “Europlacer is based in Poole, which of course helps guarantee better service levels than some of the other suppliers, but this was not the key factor. During our trials, Europlacer proved to our team that it offers a very flexible and high-technology system in the iineo platform — this flexibility and technology was the driving factor for our business.”
Hansatech invested in a Europlacer iineo-II machine with a value of approximately £400,000. The system is equipped with two turret heads capable of running at speeds up to 28,000 components per hour, and can hold up to 264 x 8 mm fully intelligent feeders. It can handle devices from 01005 up to 70 x 70 mm and as tall as 35 mm in height.
Paul Gill concludes, “Europlacer ticked more boxes than the competitors’ equivalent machines — in fact I am not sure that there is a direct equivalent — and I hope that this unique approach will help to take our business to the next level in customer quality and delivery.”
For more information about Europlacer and its commitment to quality, visit www.europlacer.com
Europlacer has been developing machines for SMT electronics assembly since the 1970s and invented the intelligent feeder concept in the 1980s. After acquisition by Blakell Europlacer in 1991, the company moved away from split-axis to the inherently more capable X-Y architecture that underpins the company’s pick-and-place machines today.Europlacer’s policy has been to ensure wherever possible that technology purchased many years ago, especially feeders, remain compatible with the latest pick-and-place equipment. Europlacer designs and manufactures a comprehensive range of highly flexible SMT pick-and-place systems for the global electronics industry. For more information, visit Europlacer’s Web site at www.europlacer.com.
