Novatech Technologies Invests in 2 Europlacer’s iineo II

In recent years, high volume manufacturing of mass-market products gravitated to low-cost locations such as Asia and Eastern Europe, leaving behind an intensely competitive EMS industry in Western Europe. Novatech has since established itself as a prominent EMS provider specializing in hi-tech, complex, value-added services to a predominantly French customer base. The company is one of only four EMS providers in France to offer PoP (Package on Package) technology, a next generation packaging solution for smart mobile handset applications, as well as digital cameras, PDAs and MP3 players.

To continue to provide high technology markets with reactive, top quality manufacturing standards, Novatech makes significant investments in cutting edge solutions to improve flexibility and due to the nature of Novatech’s hi-tech capability and diversity of prototypes, the company wanted to fully optimize its flexibility to suit current and future business requirements. A decision was made to upgrade Novatech’s SMT systems and the company set about investigating the market in search of a solution.

Alwyn Rea, Managing Director of Novatech Technologies comments, “We were looking for equipment that would update our production line for the next generation of PCBs and have the capacity to place every type of component available on the market including 01005, CSPs, µBGAs and exotic components. After evaluating a number of equipment vendors, we made the decision to select Europlacer in December last year. The company’s iineos platform ticked all the boxes to increase our flexibility through faster changeovers, a limitless component range and the quality of service support on offer.”

During the second week in January 2010, Novatech installed 2 new production lines, consisting of Europlacer’s iineo II featuring additional fix cameras, glue dispensers, special nozzle magazines and large grippers. One of the lines is now in full production and the other will shortly follow, once training has completed.

Commenting on the feedback from the line operators, Rea comments, “The Line Operators have been extremely positive about the new Europlacer system and have been highly impressed with the ease of use of the machine and the quality is delivers.”

The iineo II, part of the IINEO platform, is a highly flexible, dual-gantry SMT assembler featuring many improvements to the Europlacer machine range such as a higher feeder count, increased board size and increased maximum component height. The platform uses Europlacer’s proven core features, which include turret heads, intelligent feeders, powerful software while introducing new technologies with linear motors and digital cameras.

When asked how the new line is impacting on flexibility, Alwyn replied, “We are very pleased with our investment and it’s having a big impact on our flexibility in a short space of time. In particular, we have noticed a rapid decrease in changeover time and with ease, which is imperative when we are changing 5 to 6 batches a day. In conjunction with the vast amount of components available and a good range of different accessories, one thing that really stands out for us and is a key factor for increasing our flexibility is the level of technical support service from Europlacer,”

Commenting further, Alwyn added, “The technical people at Europlacer are extremely helpful in a difficult environment. At Novatech we push machines hard even though they are state-of-the-art and in a high pressure environment, if anything goes wrong and we don’t deliver, it will result in our customers not delivering and we can not allow that. If we have any problem, the support is there for us and quickly, unlike the big machine manufacturers. This is a very important factor in increasing Novatech’s flexibility.”

http://www.novatech-groupe.com/