Speed and flexibility was featured in new platforms from all high-speed placement machine suppliers.
Random access turret machines suffer from one significant design limitation - inconsistent placement rate over a range of board sizes and with varying amounts of part numbers. Most experts say the best you can ever achieve on a random-access turret chip-shooter in a �real world� environment is 75% of cycle rate. Having used four Fuji CP3 machines in production I would not disagree with that statement. For a machine that cycled at 14.4K CPH we would see boards range from 5K to 10K CPH. The industry wants a consistent placement rate. The Siemens Siplace S series is probably the best machine that achieves this. The Siplace S utilizes dual gantry and vertical turret heads.
Shall we now declare the turret chip-shooter dead and soon to be extinct? It was a tremendous 20-year run for a very successful design.