The under-girding principle of the Europlacer concept is that of Integrated IntelligenceTM. Many SMT placement manufacturers are today adding features (such as intelligent feeders) to their machines in an attempt to make them more attractive to a market which cannot be certain about its future needs. This is too little too late! Simply “bolting on” an intelligent feeder will not make a machine flexible if it has not been designed to be used that way. The flexibility may appear to be there in theory but this is not generally usable in practice.
Europlacer’s Integrated IntelligenceTM is defined by the fact that the machines have been designed to be flexible from the outset. All aspects of the machine architecture (axis configuration, feeder inventory, turret head technology, software control, programming system, etc) have been designed to work together with intelligent feeders in a changing environment - this is truly Integrated IntelligenceTM. As a result, Europlacer machines release usable productivity in day-to-day performance.
One example is the limitation of pipette-head machines. These rely on “simultaneous picking” and “simultaneous placement” for maximum specified speed; even against the benchmark IPC test these machines can (and do) use “simultaneous picking” to achieve their rates. However, in practice users do not have 5, 6 or 8 identical feeders/reels for every part number so simultaneous picking is unrealistic and these rates cannot be achieved in sub-optimised conditions. Europlacer machines on the other hand have an architecture designed to provide productive output with only a single feeder/reel for each part number if necessary and/or feeders at different ends of the feeder bank. Using designed-in Integrated IntelligenceTM Europlacer machines remain productive and enable random feeder set-ups in support of quick changeovers.
The world is constantly changing and the only real certainty for businesses is that they will have to continue to adapt. Europlacer’s goal is to continue to provide increasingly capable SMT assembly machines (Adaptable Business Platforms) to support this increasing need for adaptability by our customers. We will do this by applying new technologies in our machines wherever these can aid performance and reliability and by continuing to develop additional tools for increased productivity. Our current drive in software development has led to a number of unique features for programme optimisation, line monitoring, product/component traceability and user-friendly interface. Future developments will concentrate on improving these tools further and on releasing additional machine models with increased capability.