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SMT Trends & Technologies: Clash of Clans - The New Expansion of PCB Assembly Equipment

“Smaller, cheaper, faster, more accurate” are the traditional words used to describe new PCB pick-and-place machines. However, these words are mainly used to describe the placement of standard SMD components.

Miniaturization technology is very much driven by the mobile (smartphones, tablets) industry. Key factors are data processing speeds, lower cost prices, and thinner devices. Manufacturing and assembly of the phones themselves consists of several overlapping sectors.

Most assembly sectors are (or actually, were) pretty much defined by their own unique equipment, with equipment manufacturers competing only with manufacturers of similar equipment. Everybody kept to their own world. But the combined drive for speed, accuracy, reliability, and mounting complexity has opened up the other segments to traditional PCBA equipment, which is at the center of all these segments. Technology and standardization have made equipment more accurate and reliable, still serving a market that has low cost price as a main target. A large portion of the cost price is driven by the speed of the pick-and-place equipment, as it is typically a very high-volume market. Read the full column here.Editor's Note: This column originally appeared in the July 2013 issue of SMT Magazine.