| I am examining cut & form PTH component prep equipment to help in our manual PTH insertion process. We need the ability to process both axial & radial with snap-in and stand-off capability. Low volume with the ability to feed bulk, T&R, or Stick. | Any suggestions greatly appreciated. | Regards... | George,
I know the fun your going to have, done that in the place I work in oh the fun trying to get the format's sorted out and convincing the buyer's that they want to buy taped and not loose..It really pay's in the long run...oh well.
So your got 3 basic type right ?, Radial, Axial ( which could be converted to radial or hairpin types) and also the DIL's...
I looked at a few, you've got Loupot, these thing's are massive and expensive (about 30-40K!) but man they just churn out the axial component's, fairly easy to set up and built like a tank, more for Hi volume's i would say. Nest up is a german company Streckfass ( probably not how to spell it) they have a good range that will do eveything, e.g. the CO43 will do all the axial components and do hair pins and crip's the tooling is interchangeble and the speed / pich feed method are all adjuctable. The repeatibility of this machine is great but you can get witness marking on the lead's and it wont do thing's over about a .8mm lead diameter. They also do the Dil lead cropper's that will also straighten them so the operator can just drop them nicely into the board and nopt waist time rolling them on line to the right pitch. Another good one is ebsomate, again they have one's that will do both. They have one an ebsomate 400 that will do the axial, it'll also do the hairpin and criping and they can make you specialist form tool's as required ( the tooling for this is slightly less than the Streckfass). It'll also handle loose feed by a rather ingenious step feeder that alway's get them into the machine straight , after all loose feeder's 99% of the time get jammed because a part has missfeed, the step feeder stop's it and it uses a transport wheel to move them through the machine and does the cutting and forming seperatly, it also uses roller's to form the lead's so no danger of the witness mark's ( these can cause load's of problem's later in life, most folk's and IPC have std's for the max % of the diameter the mark can be but as soon as you see copper your in trouble from those intermetalic's..). Basically it's horses for courses.. if your churning out thousand's upon thousand's and need load's of repeatability and reliabilty and your not going to change get a Luopot..if not then it's a tie between the Streckfas and the ebsomate, but if I had to pick a fav..I guess it's the streckfas, but get a hold of them and run them for a while and decide your self..most vendor's have machines you can trial, if they don't..then do you wanna work with them and also make sure your maintenance guy's get shown how to service them cos they will stop a line as quick as a bit of SMT equipement. Com,pare the spare's pricing and what the vendor is willing to hold for you and also what on site training you'll get for the operator's or the traininer's in the factory rolled into the price.
Hope this helps
JohnW
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