Collect and pick for balanced lines
16 April 2009
A hybrid placement head from Siemens is claimed to bring users multiple benefits and well balanced SMT lines.
Today’s electronics manufacturers are faced with declining lot sizes, more frequent product changeovers and rising component diversity. Previously, placement machine manufacturers responded to these trends by steadily increasing the number of specialised placement heads in smaller modules. Some even tried to adapt their machines to these more complex requirements, with up to ten different head models. When the product changes, however, line performance often drops significantly, because the heads no longer match the product. The result is time-consuming head changeovers, set-up changeovers and module reconfigurations.
The engineers at Siplace have come up with a new and much simpler solution. The Siplace MultiStar is the first placement process that can operate in the previously strictly separate Collect & Place and Pick & Place modes – and in Mixed mode it can even combine them.
What sounds so easy will, claims Siemens, open the door to a world of opportunities for electronics manufacturers. The Siplace MultiStar covers a broad spectrum of components so that users can now optimise their lines automatically and instantly for the most diverse spectrum of products. It can adapt to process lots of small components in Collect & Place mode, place mid-sized components in Mixed mode, or function as an end-of-line head to place large components in Pick & Place mode. No set-up changeovers or line modifications are needed – within seconds the software re-balances the line itself.
One head for all components
The CPP head operates as three heads in one. In Collect & Place mode, the new head picks up a total of twelve components in sizes ranging from 01005 to 27mm x 27mm and up to 8.5mm high. In Mixed mode, it is additionally capable of handling components up to 32mm x 32mm and 11.5mm high. In Pick & Place mode, the CPP head can pick up and place components up to 50mm x 40mm, which means that it can process many components that previously could only be handled by the Siplace TwinHead.
The new, multi-functional CPP is thus capable of handling everything that the proven Siplace 12-nozzle and 6-nozzles Collect & Place heads used to handle – only it does it a lot faster and with a broader component spectrum. A Siplace X4, equipped with four 12-nozzle Collect & Place heads can place about 53,000 components per hour (cph). Equipped with four CPP heads, the same machine manages to place in excess of 80,000cph. Much more important than the performance improvement for individual machines, however, is the efficiency gain that the Siplace CPP head can deliver for entire line configurations.
Unchanged line configuration
To analyse the resulting line configuration capabilities, let’s take a look at various production scenarios. The first describes a mid-sized production environment that is quite typical for manufacturers in Central Europe. The product mix makes it difficult to optimally balance the lines for each individual product, and constant reconfigurations take up a lot of time.
Contract manufacturers, in particular, are often forced to compromise between flexibility and performance. The Siplace CPP head will change all of this. In most cases, manufacturers will be able to produce their entire product spectrum on one or more standardised lines. Depending on the product, they will be able to rebalance the line for each product by simply adjusting the sequence of the three CPP modes; no set-up changeover is required. A few odd-shaped components may still require one or more TwinHeads at the end of the line. The result is lines that are much more productive, while being able to handle a much broader component and product spectrum.
More feeder positions
This set-up concept, with its improved line balance, also becomes apparent in smaller production environments. For example, the single line of a Siplace reference customer consisted of a Siplace X4 with four 20-nozzle C&P heads and one Siplace X3 as an end-of-line station with one 12-nozzle head, one 6-nozzle head and a TwinHead. The TwinHead was usually the one causing problems, because there simply weren’t enough feeder positions for permanent set-ups.
After replacing the two 12-nozzle and 6-nozzle C&P heads with two Siplace CPP heads, the situation looks completely different. Components with dimensions of up to 50mm x 40mm x 11.5mm can now be picked up from the additionally available feeder positions by the CPP heads, instead of by the TwinHead. This results in the TwinHead bottleneck being eliminated, set-up changeovers are no longer needed and the line's overall productivity is up.
More productivity, same footprint
The scenario is similar for applications with large numbers of small and medium-sized components. In the automotive field, for example, only a few products require a Pick & Place head, which means that this head would be an unnecessarily expensive line extension for most lots, forcing the manufacturer to choose between less productivity per square foot, or high configuration costs. Whichever option they pick, the line productivity will drop. The CPP head puts an end to this painful choice. All products without P&P processes will always be produced with the highest level of performance. For all other products, a CPP head at the end of the line can be used in P&P mode without any reconfiguration. Another benefit of the simplified line configuration is that when production volumes change, jobs can be transferred much more easily from one line to another without taking a performance hit.
The CPP head also improves the line performance in high-volume production environments, for example, for mobile phones or consumer electronics. In such applications, most components measure no more than 6mm x 6mm and can be placed with the 20-nozzle C&P head. The remaining components such as CSPs, larger ICs, connectors or shields are usually placed with highly flexible P&P heads or multifunction heads at the end of the line. Since the ratio of these component types varies from product to product, so does the end-of-line bottleneck, which makes balancing the line for each product quite difficult. The resulting performance shortfalls must be compensated for, with time-consuming head and/or module changes. The CPP head delivers more performance and flexibility for such scenarios as well. Since CPP heads can be used for high-speed C&P and demanding P&P tasks alike, eliminating the respective bottlenecks and balancing the line for each job is easy.
These scenarios show, since the CPP head makes it possible to distribute the components and their corresponding feeders much more effectively and flexibly across the entire placement line, the CPP head does a lot more than just deliver more placement speed. Instead, it improves the output of the entire line, which can now be balanced much more easily and flexibly for most products.
The elimination of the need to reconfigure the line for product changeovers generates additional productivity gains. All that is needed now is to reconfigure the CPP heads via the intelligent Siplace Pro software. Lower maintenance costs also make a difference in cost of ownership, particularly in large manufacturing environments, because, at most, three different placement head types (Siplace Collect & Place head, Siplace CPP head and Siplace TwinHead) need to be maintained and supplied with spare parts.
The new CPP head has been available for Siplace X-Series machines since March 2009. Together with the Siplace 20-nozzle C&P head and the Siplace TwinHead, the CPP aims to raise efficiency and flexibility to new levels without compromising precision and robustness.
Information supplied by Siemens Electronics Assembly Systems
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