The automation technology company Wenglor produces the electronic assemblies required for sensors, safety systems and machine vision products from its own portfolio on two SMD lines at the company's headquarters on Lake Constance. The company now uses LPKF's CuttingMaster laser depaneling machine for depaneling.
The gentle removal of the individual panels is a decisive factor for the service life of the products. Wenglor manufactures many different products in small batch sizes. The requirements for depaneling were therefore no material stress and a quickly programmable system that can be used variably. A panel cutter was not an option for these requirements: too narrow cutting channels, too high costs for support solutions, too much mechanical stress. Together with the sales company SmartRep, which distributes LPKF systems in German-speaking countries, the company developed a workflow that reduced personnel costs by 50%.
Tub solution that reacts flexibly to the high product variance
The prepared multiple blanks are placed in a tray before they are automatically fed into the systemThedepaneling unit is connected to a conveyor belt and integrated into a semi-automatic depaneling island. After the separation process, a tray automatically moves out of the depaneling unit. An employee removes the separated blanks, which rest on a polystyrene adapter plate, and reinserts a prepared adapter plate including the unseparated blanks. The separation process starts all over again, while the employee packs the separated blanks into appropriate molded parts and prepares the next adapter plate including multiple panels. The tray is designed to hold all the blanks. The polystyrene plates can also be produced with the CuttingMaster.
After cutting, the individual blanks have clean cut edges without any mechanical stress during the cutting process. This is achieved by the so-called clean-cut process, in which the laser passes over a cutting channel several times at low power. This prevents carbonization of the cut edge.
www.smartrep.de
www.wenglor.com/de
