Embedded Design Show 2014 - Press Release

Embedded Design Show - Press Release

Stand H30

Gemini Tec Ltd will once again be exhibiting at the Electronics and Embedded Design show in 2014, to talk about more leading edge technology being used for rapid and complex PCB hardware manufacturing.

The company has recently installed the UK’s first MY600 solder jet printer and is currently the only UK CEM operating with two Mycronic solder jet printers, enabling it to provide exceptionally high throughput for SMT boards that incorporate challenging components.

This latest investment brings extra production capacity to meet the needs of new customers who are designing PCB hardware using the latest array of components. Solder jet paste printing technology removes the limitations of screen printing with traditional stencils and delivers new levels of quality and reliability for flexible substrates, board cavities, package-on-package, QFNs and new components with small process windows.

One of the major advantages with the latest MY600 platform is the ability to increase paste printing speeds by up to 50%, allowing Gemini Tec to increase its ability to support higher volume orders to the same exacting standards as its current MY500 jet printer.

To ensure Gemini Tec can exceed the requirements of new customers, additional investment has been made into new placement and reflow equipment. A new fully automated SMT line with the latest MY200SX14 and MY200LX14 machines from Mycronic, provides more high mix SMT capability with a 40,000 components per hour capability. 

In its 37^th year, Gemini Tec provide rapid delivery prototypes and production orders for batch sizes of 1 to 1000 units. A full turnkey service includes a dedicated PCB Altium PCB layout service and contract manufacturing service, all conducted from its secure Hampshire based facility.  

Gemini Tec will be on stand H30, joined by its long-standing partner DSL, who provide hardware design services to the embedded computing market. Rory Dear of DSL will be on the stand to talk about their collaborative ‘Functional Building Block’ design approach, where we make the investment in designing and building an all-encompassing platform and our customers select the required ‘functional building blocks’ which are then transplanted into a preferred form factor – greatly reducing cost, risk and time to market.

Gemini Tec Ltd

1 The Brook Trading Estate

Deadbrook Lane

Aldershot

Hampshire

GU12 4XU

United Kingdom

+44 (0) 1252 333 444

www.geminitec.co.uk

DSL Ltd

Aylesford Court

Works Road

Letchworth Garden City

Hertfordshire

SG6 1LP

United Kingdom

+44 (0) 1462 675530

www.dsl-ltd.co.uk

Surface mount machine upgrades - first phase now complete...

Fully automated SMT line, including solder jet printing at Gemini Tec Ltd

The first phase of our SMT  upgrade has been completed this week. 2014 will see a major investment program to increase capacity and efficiency within the SMT production area.

With many new customer wins and increasing volumes of SMT assemblies from our loyal customer base, August sees the completion of the first phase. We have now installed our MY500 solder jet printer in-line with our MYCRONIC MY100 Synergy line, and added extra speed functionality to the placement lines, added additional Agilis feeders.

Blank boards are loaded via our Nutek loaders, along a conveyor into the MY500 solder jet printer. The solder jet printer places small dots of paste to make up the exact volume required, without the need to use a stencil. The process is quick, accurate and checked with on board cameras.

The solder jet printing really helps eliminate the problems with traditional screen printers, such as over paste, leading to shorts or blocked stencil aperture's which left open circuits. If you type 'solder paste defects' into goggle, you'll discover a high number of examples of this common problem.

Using stencils created us alot of solder paste defects, resulting in excessive SMT re-work. The effect of too many solder defects added a significant cost to the PCB assembly process - that ultimately needs to be recovered, setting aside the production delays and onward impact to customer's. Thankfully we are able to use solder jet printing to avoid such problems.

The boards are then run along more conveyors into the first SMT machine, where a selection of component parts are placed with 8 fast placement heads. Clever software works out which components should be loaded. to each machine in the Synergy line to balance the run time, thus by using 2 SMT machines simultaneously, we can half the placement time per board.When we are running NPI and prototype boards, we are able to use each machine as a stand alone placement machine, each building a different customer order.. very clever.

Both machines have electrical verification on-board, this has proved to be very useful when parts are supplied incorrectly, or if the wrong component value is ever presented to the machine, this avoids putting incorrect resistors and capacitors on to the board.

Once all the parts are machine placed, the boards then travel to a inspection conveyor, at this point we are able to add on any SMT parts. This is useful when building 1 or 2 offs, as we do not need to buy reels, tapes or take on large MOQ's etc.

The conveyor takes the PCBs directly into the oven. Our MYCRONIC Synergy 100 line uses a BTU VIP98, with 7 reflow zones. 7 zones allows us to create an accurate thermal profile, for any PCB, regardless of the types of components on board. We spend time engineering a profile for each board, using our knowledge and slim-kic technology.

The boards are automatically unloaded back onto a Nutek de-stacker, and can wait until cooled. The boards are then transferred into our AOI department for 100% inspection. Including 3D X-ray and ERSA camera inspection. This allows us to confirm our process is correct and detect any issues that may need further investigation. Our combination of solder jet printing, placement and reflow ensure the minimal amount of errors.

The process of how we get blank boards to fully populated assemblies is highly important for a contract manufacture to provide customers with high yield products and quick deliveries.We invested in MYRONIC technology, for its speed of set up and accuracy. The solder jet printing technology in amongst the best technologies available in the world.

We have been asked many times, 'why doesn't everyone have solder jet printing?'

The answer to this question has many points. Initially the investment deters traditional CEM's, who make higher volume or less product mix with more simple types of PCB assemblies. Gemini can produce complex boards, in low to medium volume.

Before the days of solder jet printing Gemini would order over 700 stencil's a year (due the the mix of assembly orders) so this made a substantial cost contribution, which has also been passed back to our customer's.

Managing the stencil process from procurements to storage and cleaning, added hidden costs. The quality problems that had risen from stencil printing often led to high amounts of re-work and un-happy customers! Gemini aim for a lean approach to its CEM business which helps optimise its costs to customer's.

Gemini Tec are among a range of leading suppliers in Europe, who have invested into solder jet printing to avoid traditional solder defects and gain many technical advantages, Companies who have also invested include Thales, Halin BV, Netherlands, Appel-Elektronik GmbH, Germany and Page (Belgium) to name a few.

UK & European customers can all benefit from rapid prototype to small and medium volume production with solder jet printing, which provides higher quality products at optimised prices points.

Next month we install the UK's first MY600 solder jet printer and new MY200 SX Synergy line, so more news to follow.

If you wish to know more about us, click our website or get in touch with us by phone.

http://www.geminitec.co.uk

Gemini Tec Ltd

1 The Brook Trading Estate

Deadbrook Lane

Aldershot

Hampshire

GU12 4XU

Tel: +44 (0) 1252 333 444