Lean production concepts highlighted at SMT Hybrid Packaging

Electronic productions are increasingly facing new manufacturing challenges. Besides high quality requirements at low production costs, there is also an increasing number of product variants and flexible reactions to fluctuation in demand.

The LeanSelect is an innovative selective soldering system designed for lean production manufacturing environments. Loading and unloading of assemblies is done manually on two separate conveyor systems. The work stations, such as fluxing, pre-heating, soldering and cooling, are arranged in a counter-clockwise U-shape, thus consistently following the general lean production guidelines. This allows processing of up to five PCBs at the same time. Due to its unique concept, the system ensures high productivity in a small footprint of only 2.5m².

The process steps are completely automated and monitored. Like other selective soldering systems from SEHO, the LeanSelect also features outstanding solutions for automatic process control. It monitors the fluxing process, including the actual applied amount, provides automatic position correction and z-height correction, controls the wave height and traces the process completely. In doing so, the system provides uncompromising high accuracy and soldering quality.

Also suitable for lean production applications is the SEHO SelectLine. The machine concept is consistently modular, ensuring clear cost benefits. Additional fluxer, preheat and soldering modules can be integrated to respond to higher complexity of board layouts or increasing throughput requirements. The technological highlight of the SelectLine is the patented Synchro concept, an intelligent software feature that doubles the production volume. Therefore, costly dual conveyor systems are not necessary.

Innovations from SEHO focus on increasing system productivity, which includes a reduction in maintenance times. Maximum machine availability is ensured with the automatic ultrasonic cleaning for miniwave solder nozzles that are patented by SEHO.

Specific applications, such as wave soldering with masks, require selective flux applications that wet only the points to be soldered, not the entire mask. This prevents flux from running under the mask, reduces flux consumption and shortens the cleaning cycles for the masks. SEHO has developed the co-ordinate fluxer SelectFlux for this purpose, a high-speed system that precisely applies the flux at previously programmed points. No other assembly areas are wetted.