Record attendance at Essemtec’s SMT Nuremberg booth

SMT Nuremberg has announced three percent more visitors compared to last year. How did Essemtec do?
We were overwhelmed this year and we counted the most visitors ever at an SMT exhibition. In the afternoon of the first day, I even had to request more booth personnel from Switzerland.

What were visitors looking for?
We offer a wide range of products and services. The requests were for complete turnkey solutions and for single machines such as the Tucano printer or RO400FC reflow oven. Many customers are planning to expand their production capacity. Others are currently using other brands of machines and are looking for more flexibility, quality and/or support. However, there were many start-up enterprises, too, and many requests for special projects.

What kind of projects?
There were very different requests such as for special dispensing systems, reflow ovens, customer-specific printers or inspection systems. Many customers are now looking for assembly technology for 3D-MID and for machines to manufacture LED illumination.

Siemens was opposite your booth. Do you view this as an advantage or a disadvantage?
I do not think it played a role because people that are interested are getting to us directly. For some visitors, the direct product comparison was certainly interesting. For example, Siemens featured intelligent feeders as a novelty, which may be true for customers in their segment. On our pick-and-place systems, however, intelligent feeders have been a standard for many years, so we hardly talk about it anymore. Customers have realized this and are perceiving us differently than before.

What has changed?
With the new Paraquda and Cobra systems, we are targeting a different customer segment who expects higher placement rates, higher repeatability and more advanced support services than before. Within a very short time, we have been able to sell more than 40 of these machines. Customers trust that we are taking this business seriously and as a result we are respected as a manufacturer of machines with higher throughput. Customers have realized that Essemtec offers the most modern, advanced products, especially now that we have introduced the new Cobra Feeder.

What is special about the Cobra Feeder?
It feeds components so accurately that the machine can pick up four components simultaneously from different feeders. The feeding is smooth and takes less than 60 ms. The Cobra Feeder can increase throughput by up to 25 percent. Its construction is simple, reliable and above all compact: A double-8-mm feeder only requires 19 mm space on the feeder rack. Within the feeder there even can be a tape cutter. This feeder convinced many of the visitors.

What were other highlights on Essemtec's booth?
We introduced many small innovations such as the exchangeable vacuum table and the inline system for the Paraquda pick-and-place. A special attraction was the redesigned Tucano automatic printer. With an accuracy of 12 µm it now belongs to the top products of the printer market. Correspondingly, visitor interest was high.

So you would say the show was a complete success?
Absolutely. The SMT 2011 reflected the situation in Germany and Europe since beginning of the year: Customers are investing again and Essemtec is playing an increasingly important role in the market.