The new model Flexys 10 placer has now been ordered and delivery confirmed for the end of March. This has full on the fly vision centering, 8 heads from a bank of 32 dot coded nozzles. The unit can handle PCBs up to 500 x 480mm and has a feeder capacity of 128 lanes plus 10 matrix trays. 0201s, CSPs and flip chips are the machines lower size limits with 01005s as an option, 50mm components being the largest standard component that can be placed.

This affords another 400,000 component placements per week and will primarily be used for uBGA and flip chip work having specialist control of the Z axis movement. In full line mode, this now takes our achievable placement to 53,500 per hour or some 2.1 million devices per week on standard shifts.

Also just ordered are a further 82 feeders for tape / reel, all smart feeders with barcode recognition. These are usable on the new line as well as the primary high speed line. This takes our tape and reel feeder to in excess of 365 lanes. These can be moved 'on the fly' to optimise machine utilisation.

Additionally, we have just completed negotiations with Europlacer for two very high speed belt feeders for ICs where they are not available on tape and reel or we need to place less than 2500 devices. Each of these 10 lane devices can feed at up to 6 ICs per second per lane and can be used on the 24, 8 or 4 head machines. In addition to our vibratory feeders, we can now feed a total of 38 lanes of stick fed ICs onto 5 different placement;turrets with a total of 37 heads.

Finally, we have also ordered a further matrix tray feeder which increases our capacity from 12 to 22 different tray fed components. These can be combined to allow for in excess of 1000 devices to be held on the line before reloading in required.

All the additions will of course be integrated into our line optimisation software to ensure maximum throughput and optimisation of productivity.