Intertronics at the Southern Manufacturing Show

The I&J7100 bench top Cartesian dispensing robot is an ideal choice when cost and bench space are important considerations.

With prices starting at circa £4K this brings robotic dispensing within reach of small assembly shops, specialist manufacturers and dedicated project cells within larger companies - ideal for subcon production. It will be of interest to producers of all kinds from instrumentation, electronics, sound systems to decorative and display industries where flexibility and cost are vital factors.

The I&J7100 handles a dispensing area of 200mm x 150mm and is capable of storing up to 100 different programs, but takes up less than ½ metre on the bench.

It is ideal for dispensing adhesives, coatings, gaskets, potting, filling and shielding materials to a resolution of 0.02mm. The I&J7100 offers 3 axis continuous path or point to point operation using dots, lines, arcs and circles, with full step and repeat copy functions and automatic offset calculations. Implementation is simple, as is 24/7 operation with quick fluid purge function and 100 program capacity - each with up to 4000 points.

Mixing and degassing of materials such as precious metal pastes, pharmaceuticals or optical adhesives is generally a two-part process taking a very significant amount of time, especially when product pot life can be measured in minutes - Intertronics have changed all that with the introduction of their Thinky ARE-250. This patented benchtop planetary mixer is proven in Japan and the US with many thousands installed in laboratories and electronics manufacturing facilities. The Thinky technology is now available CE marked - says Peter Swanson, MD at Intertronics - the ARE-250 mixes, disperses and degasses down to micron level without a vacuum and in the customer’s own pot. It is ideal for expensive material mixes such as filled epoxies for die attach and for materials of variable viscosities.

Indeed, the ARE-250 may be used to formulate and mix adhesives, sealants, molding compounds, lubricants, slurries, coatings, inks, paints, abrasives, bio chemicals, cements, medical compounds, cosmetics/personal care materials, detergents, conductive pastes, dental materials, foods, construction materials or any other materials which are hard-to-mix, hard-to-degass, or hard-to-wet.

Typical applications include epoxies and polyurethanes, especially where optical clarity or thermal conductivity must be maintained (by eliminating bubbles). The benefits of the ARE-250 can especially be seen in time critical situations such as two-part polyurethane with an isocyarate component and a pot life of around 10 minutes - single process mix and degassing relieves the pressure on the operative and the process by ensuring the adhesive is workable for maximum possible time. The whole mixing/degassing can be done in a much reduced time frame of seconds to minutes dependant on materials.

ARE-250 also mixes gold leaf particles, glass micro-spheres, aluminium oxides and nano-particles and provides 5 program memories, each with 5 process profiles available. These are operator determined and programmed in for instant access. It is found for example that some materials benefit from multiple mixing/degassing/mixing/degassing cycles with different timing and spin speeds at each stage. Further information regarding Intertronics’ products can be found at www.intertronics.co.uk