Jan 30, 2013 After a record year, the SIPLACE team of ASM Assembly Systems wants to keep expanding its market position in North and South America. The official start of this campaign will be the APEX Expo 2013 show in San Diego (Feb. 19-21, 2013, Booth 215). At the center of the company’s show agenda will be the highly flexible SIPLACE SX placement platform with its many efficiency-enhancing hardware and software options. Under the motto “Simplify Your Manufacturing Challenges”, visitors will experience in live demonstrations how planning, NPI, setup and production run processes can be significantly simplified and accelerated with the SIPLACE SX. A highlight will be the demonstration of SIPLACE’s Random Setup concept: An SX feeder will be removed while the SIPLACE SX line keeps running and re-inserted and re-optimized in any slot with no production interruption whatsoever (“True Feeder Anywhere”). Other innovations to be shown at the booth include the SIPLACE Smart Pin Support, the SIPLACE Glue Feeder and the SIPLACE Smart GUI.
“As the first placement platform featuring capacity-on-demand, the SIPLACE SX is setting new standards worldwide. As a result, we have gained many new customers and increased our market share in North and South America in 2012. We will continue this success story at the 2013 APEX show. The SIPLACE SX saves money because it is easy to configure, operate and maintain while featuring exceptional accuracy. It’s not just SIPLACE making this claim, but our customers all over North and South America,” says Mark Ogden, Head of Marketing at SIPLACE Americas.
True “feeder anywhere”
The SIPLACE SX lets users remove and/or add feeders virtually anywhere without having to stop the line. The reason: The SIPLACE MultiStar CPP head is able to switch instantly and place each component in whichever mode works best: Collect & Place, Pick & Place, or a special Mixed mode. Where other equipment makers employ many special heads, thus limiting the setup flexibility considerably, the SIPLACE MultiStar is able to place standard components ranging in size from 01005 to 50 x 40 mm. This broad spectrum and the capabilities of the SIPLACE MultiStar reduce the need for head changes and line reconfigurations. Maintenance becomes a lot easier, too. In short: the entire electronics production becomes easier, faster and more efficient.
Shift performance via replaceable gantries
Demand volatility and changing economic conditions can cause significant fluctuation in the capacity utilization of SMT lines. As a result, electronics manufacturers frequently experience bottlenecks on some lines while others run below capacity. The SIPLACE SX features an entirely new approach to resolving this problem: The machines are equipped with replaceable gantries (including the placement head), which can be removed and/or added in just a few minutes. This makes it easy to shift placement capacity between SIPLACE SX lines as demand requires. Producers can even rent gantries from SIPLACE to quickly add capacity on a temporary basis.
Many hardware options
With Smart Pin Support, SIPLACE is introducing an automated way to support particularly heavy or sensitive PCBs. The transport pins and their locations can be defined as part of the placement program and placed automatically by the machine. For affixing heavy components in dual-sided applications, the SIPLACE Glue Feeder provides an intelligent and flexible solution. It features a highly accurate gluing unit in the form of a feeder. And just like a feeder, the SIPLACE Glue Feeder can be easily moved from line to line depending or where it is needed. For many applications, this makes it far superior to gluing stations which are permanently installed in lines.
Software makes the difference
The SIPLACE team also wants to use this year’s APEX show to demonstrate its competitive advantage in software development. Besides setup concepts like Random Setup, Constant Table or Split Table, the company will present tracking-and-tracing solutions as well as special functions such as SIPLACE Alternative Components, which makes it possible to specify alternative components in the placement program. In addition, show visitors will see the SIPLACE Smart GUI and special line monitoring solutions. For LED placement applications, the company offers with its SIPLACE LED Pairing an automated system for brightness class management that allows users to specify different LED components and their associated resistors for the top and bottom of the PCB.
More information about SIPLACE’s show program is available at www.siplace.com/apex2013.
Amongst other things, the SIPLACE team is going to present the highly flexible SIPLACE SX at APEX 2013, booth 215.
More information is available online at www.siplace.com.
ASM Assembly Systems
At the beginning of 2011, the SIPLACE team (formerly Siemens Electronics Assembly Systems) became a business unit of ASM Pacific Technology and operates now as ASM Assembly Systems. With its SIPLACE machines and innovative manufacturing concepts, ASM Assembly Systems GmbH & Co. KG is the world’s leading manufacturer of surface mount technology (SMT) placement machines and solutions. Since its beginnings in 1985, the company has installed almost 35,000 placement machines at over 3,500 customers all over the world. Electronics manufacturers in all industries such as telecommunications, automotive, IT, consumer electronics and automation use and depend on SIPLACE’s broad portfolio of solutions and services.
For more information about ASM Assembly Systems (SIPLACE), visit www.siplace.com.
ASM Pacific Technology
As a subsidiary of ASM International, which has its headquarters in Almere, Netherlands, ASM Pacific Technology (ASMPT), Singapore, has developed in only a few years into the world’s leading supplier of chip assembly, bonding and packaging systems and solutions. The ASMPT Group produces and markets machines for front-end and back-end chip assembly and semiconductor packaging. The company has plants in Hong Kong, China, Singapore and Malaysia, and since January 1, 2011 in Germany. ASMPT has been listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange since 1989.
ASMPT is one of the stocks in the Hang Seng HK MidCap Index under the Hang Seng Composite Index, the Hang Seng Information Technology Industry Index, and the Hang Seng Hong Kong 35 Index.
For more information about ASMPT, visit www.asmpacific.com
