The Demands on Automated Fluid Dispensing

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

I-Connect007's Barry Matties speaks with Brad Perkins, general business manager, Americas, of Nordson ASYMTEK, about the current demands put on dispensing equipment. Perkins discusses the benefits of investing in a high-end dispenser and coating system.

Barry Matties: Why don't you just talk a little bit first about what ASYMTEK does?

Brad Perkins: Nordson ASYMTEK is a manufacturer of automated fluid dispensing and coating equipment. We supply primarily high-volume customers. That's really where our niche is: supporting those 24/7 manufacturing environments across the world. We have a global footprint and have the ability to support large multinational customers with any of their requirements worldwide.

Matties: What sort of demands are customers putting on you these days?

Perkins: The general industry demand that we’re seeing is for lower cost of ownership of the equipment in the manufacturing process, so that as you look at the floor space associated with a piece of equipment you ask, how may a customer generate more revenue out of that floor space? Higher yields and faster throughputs are associated with that, as well.

Matties: What strategies do you look at to reduce your process time or their overall cycle time?

Perkins: There are two aspects that really come into the process time and the cycle time aspects of it: The first is utilization of the equipment. We’re a manufacturer of fluid dispensing equipment, so the more time that the part is able to spend in the equipment actually being dispensed on is going to be advantageous for us.

We've done things to reduce our load time and our fiducial find time or pattern recognition, and reducing the general overhead processes associated with that. Sometimes that comes through technological advantages and sometimes it comes through multi-conveyor systems so that we can load one lane while dispensing on another. We’re really trying to utilize as much of the time the parts are in the machine as possible.

The second aspect that comes into that is faster dispensing. One way that’s done is through multiple heads on the system at a time, so that we’re dispensing parts in parallel rather than in a series. The other way would be through faster applicator dispensing techniques—jets that are firing from 100Hz or 200Hz to 500Hz to non-jetted solutions that have higher flow rates through higher flow augers or similar technologies.

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Editor's Note: This article originally appeared in the September 2015 issue of SMT Magazine.