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upgrading pnp

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kpm

#53526

upgrading pnp | 1 February, 2008

I work for a small electronic contract manufacture and we are currently evaluating pick and place equipement hoping to improve the quality of our build and increase our cappacity to boot. We are a high mix/low volume shop and I'd say our average builds quantities are no more that 100 to 200 boards top and we quite often build lots 25 to 50 maybe even less. We are constantly battling with tiny strips of parts and small bags of loose parts that are common to any small ecm. In the process of looking at machines the CEO has seemed to have fell in love with the idea of a Fuji CP7 series and a Fuji QP series machine. Specifically a CP742e and a QP341. Everything my fellow engineers and I have researched seems to indicate that this would be great for a low mix/high volume environment but that we would not be able to get the most efficient use out of the machines at our shop. We have all presented this information to the CEO along with other excellent machines that would fit our format better but the gentleman continues to present us with more quotes for the Fuji machines. My question is this: are we wrong that Fuji's would not be the best fit given the environment described? Also floor space could be a problem for us. And I'm curious what the opinions are out there of the best machine for a company looking to grow a little but still maintain the high mix capabilities. Thanks all

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#53541

upgrading pnp | 4 February, 2008

Fuji's (CP's and QP's) are probably not the best fit for what you are talking about. However, it can be done.You will just need to become creative on how you are doing changeovers. You need to incorporate the "pit crew" mentality. Also, if you are looking at CP7's make sure you have someone credible inspect it for you before you purchase it. One more word on the CP's...be advised : The loaders on CP643's and CP7's can be a little hairy if you are not experienced with them.

We use Mydata's on a lot of our low volume proto type jobs.They are very quick to set up and they handle little strips of parts like a charm.

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#53551

upgrading pnp | 4 February, 2008

Although Mydata is probably your best choice they are hard to come by used. If you have the budget for a CP7 you could easily get a refurb from MyData. What ever you do don't buy a Fuji for low volume! Although many might disagree with me a Siemens S20/F4 combo would be choice 2. I have been using S15/F3 for years for this and have done quite well with them in a high mix operation. They are tough to use short strips on but all machines short of MyData have that issue.

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kpm

#53557

upgrading pnp | 4 February, 2008

Thank you very much for the input. The Siemens route is actually one we have looked into but I guess our CEO had a bad experience with some Siemens machines some years back and is now rather turned off towards them. I myself have looked at the new Universal machines and have been fairly impressed. Has anyone out there used the new Advantis or Genesis systems with thier lightning head technology? I went to a demo on these machines and the head technology was impressive and the software seemed very intuitive and easy to use.

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#53559

upgrading pnp | 4 February, 2008

We have an Advantis and it's great for low volume, high mix (flexjet head). If you have good CAD data to upload, it takes little time to program as you can update vision on parts and placements while you are actually building boards ("NPI mode"). If you have polarities correctly marked in your component database, NPI will step you through each placement (graphic outline over each pad set) and you can change rotations if needed. You can also "force" a placement if the vision system is having trouble with a part so it at least ends up on the board and not in the dump bucket. If you are an experienced programmer, you can learn the software easily after a few builds. The precision pro feeders are very trouble-free. These feeders work pretty good for short qty. tape parts as well. I'm not sure if any companies really have a feeder that is killer for the cut-tape realm that comes with low-volume but prec. pro's are not too bad for it.

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#53560

upgrading pnp | 5 February, 2008

Look into the used market for the XP module as well. It is not a bad machine at all.

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GEM

#53561

upgrading pnp | 5 February, 2008

Yes i'm 100% agree with SWAG .

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#53583

upgrading pnp | 7 February, 2008

If there is a budget available, rather than looking at a Fuji CP7. Being issued with small strips of components would prove to be a nightmare with this style of placement machine. I would try to consider the Fuji AIM machine for use as the chipshooter, can also be used for Oddform and Fine pitch placment with the right combination of heads etc. I would tread carefully also regarding the QP3 machine, I think Fuji took a step back with this machine, the QP2 or indeed IP3 were far superior, in my humble opinion.

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#53603

upgrading pnp | 8 February, 2008

This is the same machine that we use. The thing that I like about it is the user friendly software. Operators do not have to be engineers to use this software. The "NPI" mode is a life saver for those first time jobs. I would highly recommend this machine.

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#53701

upgrading pnp | 18 February, 2008

The Contact C5 is designed for your needs. I can supply references if need be. Go to http://www.contactsystems.com for more details.

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#53796

upgrading pnp | 25 February, 2008

If your CEO is stuck on Fuji, why not look at the NXT's instead of the CP's and QP's. More modular setup, interchangeable heads and small footprint per CPH.

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#53800

upgrading pnp | 25 February, 2008

MyData machines are probably your best choice for low volume/high mix applications. Change over times can be minimal when you are loading your extra magazines/feeders for the next job while the previous job is running on the machine. Component placement times of 5,000-10,000 cph can be reached with the hydra head option. Cut tape strips are fairly easy to use. Customer service/technical support has been very good for us as well.

I'll admit I have no experience with the other brands discussed in this thread. However, as our OEM and EMS business grows, our plan is to stick with MyData for our PNP needs.

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#53825

upgrading pnp | 28 February, 2008

We actually ran production boards on Mydata and Universal Advantis. The Mydata machines software was very command line oriented which I thought was strange but they said they had no intention of upgrading it. The Mydata placement accuracy was superb. The Agilis feeders are pretty slick but the tape goes out the back and as the machine moves the air disturbance seems to make the tape lift up and trigger an E-stop, at which point, all the parts get dropped off the head potentially onto the board being built. If the Mydata can not do gang picks it is really slow. The Advantis machine which we ended up buying, have been great. The lightning head works fantastic and requires little maintanace. I think in almost three years we have replaced 3 modules in the head and they are like $200 to $400. The lightning can do auto pick correction and not slow down at all and since it does not rely on gang picks for speed it works great with a fixed feeder setup. We figured out our most kitted parts and put 32 fixed feeders on the back of the machine and optimize all the programs around them. The software is great, the Precision Pro feeders are great (we were concerned about the length of them at first and thought the opperators would dammage them but no issues). These machines have absolutely been perfect for us. We do high mix and some pretty good volume jobs. Support from Universal has been really good too. I dont think you can go wrong with this equipment. We bought a second line a year after the first. I have a video of the lightning head running on our website. http://www.adltech.com. Keep in mind we did the video the first day we ran the machine and the program was not optimzed very well.

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