Technology overview electronics production

The Swiss sales partner Hilpert electronics AG brought interested parties from the EMS sector in the neighboring country to Rehm Thermal Systems in Blaubeuren at the beginning of July. The Technology Days were also supported by ASM and Viscom.

Under the motto 'Cutting-edge technologies for electronics production', the Technology Days combined an impressive program of presentations with live demos and various workshops. "With this program, we were able to unite the cutting-edge technologies for soldering, assembly and inspection in one place and provide our customers and interested parties with a comprehensive range of services," summarizes Raphael Burkart, CEO Hilpert electronics AG.

Around 50 participants attended this first face-to-face event in Rehm's seminar rooms since the start of the pandemic. According to Rehm's General Sales Manager Michael Hanke, it was clear how important personal exchanges in direct contact between experts and participants are, despite all the technical possibilities for online events. "The discussions during the breaks, questions about the workshops and the presentation of a complete coating line with integrated Hermes interfaces are only possible in this form and high quality at face-to-face events," said Hanke.

After Managing Directors Johannes Rehm and Raphael Burkart welcomed the guests, the program on the first day began with a series of technological presentations. To begin with, Dr. Paul Wild, Head of Research & Development at Rehm, spoke on the topic of 'Innovative processes for the production of safe electronics'. In general, the trend and innovations in soldering systems are towards further automation, energy savings and improvements in energy efficiency and digitalization. At the same time, the requirements for the safety of electronics and their reliability are always in focus. Nowadays, around 90% of soldering is carried out using convection systems. As temperature cycles and environmental influences are the main causes of failure for electronics, other processes are increasingly being used - including vacuum soldering. Extended inspections/tests at high and low temperatures and the coating of electronics also play an important role. Dr. Wild presented the processes of different soldering methods and their optimization possibilities with regard to energy efficiency, the latest coating technologies and innovative drying systems. He also addressed the regeneration of solar cells. The main focus was always on the latest trends and the safety requirements for the electronics of today and tomorrow.

Prof. Dr.-Ing. Marco Huber during the keynote speechThis was followed bya presentation by Haithem Jeridi, ASM Assembly Systems, on the topic of 'Open Automation - The recipe for success for meaningful automation'. According to the speaker, automation takes place step by step, not least for economic reasons. Jeridi used practical examples to show how automation can be planned and implemented and how important standards are in this process. Simulation programs are extremely helpful here in order to run through the various scenarios in advance and make optimizations as early as the planning phase.

To conclude the series of lectures, Thomas Winkel, Viscom AG, spoke on the topic of 'High-performance X-ray inspection for battery cell inspection and void detection'. Winkel explained the requirements for the optical inspection of battery systems as well as the different inspection methods and the relevance of void detection due to the demands on the resilience of the cell contact systems caused by external influences such as oscillations, vibrations, heat, cold and chemical influences.

The second day was the application and practical part of the event. Visitors were led in groups to three different workshops and were able to find out about the latest solutions in the areas of soldering, assembly and coating using live demonstrations.

In the first workshop, Helmut Öttl, application specialist at Rehm, explained what the new profile monitoring tool ProMetrics can do. Based on product information, a special database and simulations, the Profile Creator tool is used to determine soldering temperature profiles in advance and derive the corresponding setting parameters for the soldering system. During the soldering process with the appropriately set system, ProMetrics records and documents the temperatures in the individual zones and the position of the assembly in the reflow soldering system in real time. This allows the soldering profile to be monitored, optimized and adjusted. The graphical output and documentation of the profile, including the envelope curves (limit values), makes it possible to track the assembly seamlessly at any time in terms of traceability.

The second workshop featured a live demonstration of a complete coating line by Rehm application specialists Gianfranco Sinistra and Markus Scheid. They showed not only the optimum coating application with the ProtectoXP and the curing of the coating on an RDS UV drying system, but also the inline inspection with a CCI from Viscom. The highlight of the line was the seamless integration of the Hermes interface. This was used to demonstrate the fully automated conversion of the entire process to different assemblies - making batch size 1 possible.

In the third workshop, Christoph Oeckl, ASM Assembly Systems, demonstrated his company's latest assembly solutions. The focus was on the possibility of assembling wired components (THT). This is done using special component feed units and grippers instead of vacuum pipettes for SMD. The grippers can be used to assemble THT components (odd shapes) in various formats and geometries. The amount of manual placement can thus be reduced. The placement machine can also be used to attach adhesive pads to the components or to passively clinch the connections using an optimum clinching tool.

Impressions from the Hilpert Technology Days at Rehm in BlaubeurenAt theend of the second day of the event, Prof. Dr.-Ing. Marco Huber, Head of the Center for Cyber Cognitive Intelligence (CCI) at the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation IPA in Stuttgart, gave a keynote speech. Under the title 'Artificial intelligence in industrial applications', he introduced the participants to the world of AI and its development stages. He also looked at the differences to humans. Humans are versatile and can, for example, react to completely new situations when driving a car. AI is not yet that advanced, as the development of autonomous driving shows. However, AI is already superior in many areas. "For example, it is better than humans at chess and GO. AI can use deep learning to make its own predictions based on large amounts of data." Using practical examples from the industry, including AOI verification, Huber explained the possibilities that already exist today for using AI in production processes and showed where the journey can still take us.

Hilpert CEO Burkart concluded: "This was certainly not the last event of this kind that we will hold with our partners ASM Assembly Systems, Rehm Thermal Systems and Viscom." Michael Hanke added: "We are delighted that face-to-face events are once again possible in such a setting and hope that this trend will continue and that we will be able to discuss technologies and trends in electronics production with participants in person at many more events."

www.asm-smt.com, www.hilpert.ch, www.rehm-group.com, www.viscom.com