DEK, a leading provider of equipment and processes for the mass imaging of electronic materials, has set out a vision for the future that demands wafer level accuracy, six-sigma repeatability and first time print, as fundamental capabilities for next-generation screen printing in SMT and semiconductor assembly.
"Without each of these capabilities, assemblers will not succeed commercially," says Rich Heimsch, president of DEK International. "There is no alternative route to achieving the very high resolution, high-speed and low levels of defects or rework necessary to win and retain customers and operate profitably. It is crucial as long as margins and product and technology lifecycles continue to rapidly diminish."
Explaining that around five years represents a complete generation now in technology terms, Heimsch describes DEK's over-arching goal to deliver technologies for future generations, ahead of customer demand. "Tomorrow's EMS sector needs technology partners that can correctly identify coming trends, and perfect new solutions and techniques ahead of the curve."
"We are continually evolving the tools of each new generation," continues Heimsch, who says process solutions providers must also use technology to streamline set-up, optimisation and management of advanced processes, and to reduce the influence of operators' judgement on productivity and end of line yield.
"Our sector must deliver, in this respect, to allow assemblers to quickly introduce new products and advanced processes, including wafer level processes such as chip scale packaging, flip-chip assembly and direct chip attach."
Intuitive software
One way in which DEK is achieving these goals is by innovating intuitive software residing between the user and the machine itself.
DEK's Instinctiv and Interactiv software tools support remote monitoring and diagnostics, on-board error recovery and Internet-based help, to enable faster set-up, changeover and troubleshooting of complex, precision processes.
In practice, users are finding that this function-rich software layer enables first time print when setting up a new process. By reducing the set-up process to a series of menu selections requiring minimal operator experience, Instinctiv allows operators to set up complex processes that traditionally require the experience and confidence of senior technical staff. This allows assemblers to introduce new products more quickly and ensure faster turnaround, while also reducing the cost per unit produced.
According to DEK, future progress will also require solution providers to challenge accepted wisdom on aspects such as motion control and inspection, and to innovate radically new solutions. Heimsch outlines another example where this approach has directly influenced product development at DEK. "By distilling the inspection process down to the purest quality objective, that of isolating defective units implementing high-speed verification, we created the new DEK Hawkeye system. Hawkeye secures powerful savings in cycle time for our customers, while preventing faulty boards from passing through to downstream processes."
Hawkeye provides a rapid pass-fail indication much faster than a full quantitative inspection routine, which minimises the time overhead to scan each board. This affords a high degree of control over the cycle time for individual processes and allows all boards to be screened effectively within a pre-calculated line beat rate.
DEK has also introduced cutting edge techniques to its motion control systems. New position encoding techniques and motor drives can maximise excursion speeds without setting-up excessive vibrations within the machine chassis. Large vibrations due to inertia and motor rotation can easily impair accuracy and repeatability at fine resolutions, leading to large numbers of defects in advanced processes.
"It is important to already have the resources and the technology to support customers' evolving process requirements for the coming generation," says Heimsch. "This requires organisations such as our own to look forward at least five years, which is a generation in industry terms. That is easy to say, and few will argue. But the way enterprises maintain the expertise and soft skills that make it happen, will mark out the leaders from the followers, and those who will thrive from those who will struggle to survive."
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