Tooling Support

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What types of tooling support are available for my SMT equip... - Jul 30, 2001 by floydl OnBoard Forums

There are three types of tooling, on a continuous scale a. ... - Jul 30, 2001 by hinerman OnBoard Forums

I am planning to evaluate DEK's Formflex board support syste... - Jul 31, 2001 by Lex WW

I can only describe how the Grid Lok handles component varia... - Aug 03, 2001 by hinerman OnBoard Forums

Here is how the FormFlex system conforms to component variat... - Sep 20, 2001 by Mike O

floydl

#7461

Tooling Support | 30 July, 2001

What types of tooling support are available for my SMT equipment?

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hinerman

#7466

Tooling Support | 30 July, 2001

There are three types of tooling, on a continuous scale a. Manual b. Semi-Automatic c. Automatic

An example of a manual system is magnetic pins or a setup where pins drop into a fixed grid.

Semiauto would be a system that automatically sets the tooling, but operator/engineer intervention is required on programming or reseting to a ready state

Automatic systems do not rely on programming, but set themselves up to any particular product required.

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Lex WW

#7493

Tooling Support | 31 July, 2001

I am planning to evaluate DEK's Formflex board support system in our plant soon. Does anyone have experiences with this? I know that the grid of pins "locks on" to a particular product after the initial setup, but am curious to know how each individual pin adjusts to the dimensional tolerances of components from board to board, during the run?

Believe these type of auto-supports systems should be quite cost effective in the long run provided they work as claimed (no damaged components etc..) We are currently fabricating custom support blocks for each different product.

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hinerman

#7562

Tooling Support | 3 August, 2001

I can only describe how the Grid Lok handles component variability. The compliant caps have an annular ring that is very soft and can mold to different shapes. If a component shows up where there was no component before, the outside of the cap bends down and out of the way.

These systems are extremely cost effective. In fact one of our customers was able to justify it in 1.5 setups (they previously required pallets) By using a re-configurable system, they could do away with all of their other tooling and pallets. Most other customers can ammortize the cost over 10 - 20 products. Not bad.

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Mike O

#17657

Tooling Support | 20 September, 2001

Here is how the FormFlex system conforms to component variations. The FormFlex system utilizes an oil chamber that is common to ALL the pins once the system is set. Pushing down one pin will cause the displaced oil to be shared by all the others pins in that module. With the cut off valve closed this volume of fluid can not change so as a board is presented to the FormFlex modules the pins assume the shape of the boards landscape providing complete support. However, because the total volume of the fluid is unchanged the overall height of the board is maintained. It is this "Common fluid bed" concept that separates the DEKs FormFlex system from mechanically locking systems.

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