Chinese success brings benefits to UK
07 May 2006
We are used to hearing how the runaway growth of Chinese manufacturing is hitting the UK's Contract Electronics Manufacturing (CEM) sector. It was therefore a pleasant surprise to be interviewing a company that has not only found a profitable niche in today's market but has also found a way of directly benefiting from China's success story.
Wycombe-based Microtech Electronics is a well established medium sized CEM who's business strategy is to provide UK companies with cost-effective, responsive batch manufacturing and high quality UK based support. The king-pin of this strategy has been to invest in manufacturing equipment that keeps the company ahead of technology and many of its competitors. The latest high tech acquisition from China is a Nousstar wave-soldering machine through the Altus Group, their distributors in the UK and Ireland.
We spoke recently to Adrian Bowen, Microtech's Marketing Director, to find out what he sees as the main challenges facing manufacturers such as Microtech and why they chose this particular machine to help overcome them.
"The obvious immediate challenge is the forthcoming RoHS legislation restricting the use of lead and other hazardous substances in manufacture. As a medium size CEM, Microtech has been able to compete successfully with the lower cost of off-shore manufacturing by keeping its costs as low as possible and by providing UK based service and support.
"Flexibility is the key to providing this competitive service. Since many of our customers are currently exempt from the RoHS legislation we have been running a "lead-free" manufacturing service in parallel with the traditional "leaded" process. To do this more efficiently we set out to enhance our Wave Soldering facility by specifying a machine that has interchangeable solder pots in addition to the tight temperature control and other features essential for use with the higher temperature RoHS compliant alloys.
"In the past year we have also invested in a Nousstar reflow oven and have been delighted both by its performance and by the level of service offered by The Altus Group. We were therefore very happy with the decision to buy a Nousstar wave solder machine. The quality and flexibility of the Chinese machine together with their aggressive pricing made them the ideal choice for a company of our size."
Adrian expanded in more detail on the decision to purchase this equipment. "As far as selecting these machines, over the last few years we have kept an eye on all the equipment suppliers and their latest technology. About 18 months ago we received useful information from an engineer who had spent time in China and he said that as well as considering US or European built machines, or indeed second hand equipment, we should look closely at Chinese manufacturers. He told us that there was some fantastic equipment being built in China at a fraction of the price elsewhere, these are not cheap imitations but are well built equipment. These manufacturers seem to have taken the best elements of regular market leading machines and packaged them all together. We then heard that Altus was the local distributor for the company Nousstar, whose machines are extremely well engineered. We have just installed the wave system whilst the reflow machine has been operational for some time. Our view is that this is not the Chinese following the leaders, they are taking the best solutions and adding a bit extra of their own, no corners have been cut.
"Support was always going to be a major issue, especially with the equipment manufacturer so far away. We were given significant assurances from Altus that support would be forthcoming from them, both in terms of location of engineers, training of those engineers and the fact this was a serious project for them as we are one of the first customers for Nousstar in the UK. There are certain elements of risk and we needed the assurances that we would not be left alone and to date our confidence has been well founded. Support has been excellent. The machine came with many first line spares and its comforting to see that the controls and all the sensors are European i.e. Siemens controllers, parts from Honeywell , even the computer is a Dell. It's good to see they haven't just fitted the cheapest!
"Of course value for money was a factor in our decision, we had to look very carefully at the balance between the investment and getting the very best technology to meet our customer's requirements both short and long term. One of the issues for soldering in a RoHS lead-free environment is temperature control. The components have to withstand the higher temperatures needed for soldering with lead-free alloys. We are particularly proud of our BGA facility, we therefore needed exceptional control and technology from the oven. It's not just adding zones, its ensuring that the heat dissipation is effective so you get heat into the board in an efficient way, but also for lead-free its getting heat out again efficiently, so the whole process of heating up and then cooling needs to be very efficient and that's the key to good solder joints.
"For reflow we did seriously consider vapour phase as one of the options. We know that VP was very strong in the early days of surface mount around the mid eighties. They have come on in leaps and bounds but we still think that the process isn't really suitable for volume manufacture.
"Our existing oven was adequate but due to the diversity of work we are doing and in particular as a medium size manufacturer with specialist BGA capabilities, we needed an oven that could match our customer's requirements, This was another major factor in machine selection. We needed a machine at the top end of technology.
"Our Nousstar King Reflow system has chain drive with centre board support, keypad is portable and can be stored away, 8 zones top & bottom and forced water cooling. It can also be configured for air or nitrogen.
"We recently installed the Nousstar Wave Soldering system and it can also be configured for air or nitrogen and has additional options such as centre board support, interchangeable solder pots, internal and external fluxer and internal refrigeration cooling or external water chilled assisted cooling. Because of space constraints and the need for lead and lead-free soldering we were particularly interested in the interchangeable turntable pot option. We currently have a smaller wave soldering system, so in the short term we could use two machines each with a different alloy, but the best solution is changing the pots over in ONE system. The wave has less utilisation than the reflow, so one machine is the best way forward.
"We have dual technology boards, the real estate is well utilised, surface mount on both sides, lots of pin in hole with connectors, so the wave has to be capable of everything we put through it. The jet wave is something we've never seen before, it Is extremely hi-tech and innovative. To sum up both the wave and reflow machines are proving excellent value for money, well designed and built to last".
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