SMT Trends & Technologies

April 02, 2014

SMT Trends and Technologies: What is Your Real Output?

Columnist Eric Klaver asks, "How should you define your output? Highest area productivity, lab speed, actual speed, optimum speed, IPC speed, or maximum speed? And is it speed or throughput we should be looking at? Neither is clearly defined, and we all have our rules of thumb."

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January 29, 2014

SMT Trends & Technologies: Goodbye to Trial and Error?

Trial-and-error runs take precious time away from your "real" production time. How do you minimize the entire trial-and-error process to ensure that, when a program starts up and feeders and toolbits are already on the system, the first board coming out of the machine is immediately good? Columnist Eric Klaver provides answers.

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December 04, 2013

SMT Trends and Technologies: Pick and Paste

Columnist Eric Klaver writes: "What defines a good electronic product coming from a production line? All process variables need to be 100% without any influence from outside, which means all machines producing in exactly the same way, in exactly the same environment."

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October 02, 2013

SMT Trends and Technologies: Doing More Than One Thing at a Time

With women being renowned for multitasking abilities, perhaps they should be designing production lines--it could make our processes more efficient. Look at maintenance. Although hardware can last for years, it will pick up dirt during production--with just how much varying from shift to shift. You can plan fixed maintenance slots per day, week, or other fixed period, but production goes down during those slots.

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August 06, 2013

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

Most assembly sectors are (or actually, were) defined by their own unique equipment, with equipment manufacturers competing only with manufacturers of similar equipment. 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 segments.

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January 29, 2014

Goodbye to Trial and Error?

Trial-and-error runs take precious time away from your "real" production time. How do you minimize the entire trial-and-error process to ensure that, when a program starts up and feeders and toolbits are already on the system, the first board coming out of the machine is immediately good? Columnist Eric Klaver provides answers.

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April 02, 2014

What is Your Real Output?

Columnist Eric Klaver asks, "How should you define your output? Highest area productivity, lab speed, actual speed, optimum speed, IPC speed, or maximum speed? And is it speed or throughput we should be looking at? Neither is clearly defined, and we all have our rules of thumb."

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