best buy? (printers)

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we are looking at buying an screen printer and are curretly ... - Oct 31, 2002 by davidweir

Cannot comment on "best buy". You'll have to determine what ... - Nov 04, 2002 by PeteC

davidweir

#22213

best buy? (printers) | 31 October, 2002

we are looking at buying an screen printer and are curretly have an mpm up1500 and dek ela on the shortlist both silimar spec's except mpm has automatic tooling. being a cem having to change set up a number of time a week quick change over is a consideration athough no a deciding factor. both have 2d vision dek has volume prediction. vision inspection systems seem to be the same although dek looks at screen to check for blockages? has any one out the compaired mpm and dek machines? had experiance of both machines? or could enlighten me any other differeces?

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PeteC

#22262

best buy? (printers) | 4 November, 2002

Cannot comment on "best buy". You'll have to determine what the better machine is for your application and duration of planned use. I suggest taking a field trip to each vendor's nearest demo facility with a few of your most hi-tech boards and stencils. Compare the machines from a structural standpoint by having the vendor remove all the skins and have a good look at the guts. This speaks to durability. Compare the machine GUIs and which is easier to create a printing recipe, record and retrieve printing SPC data, has networkability for off-line programming. Try to bring boards that are very different in size and shape to compare setup and changeover ease/difficulty. Machines vary in how the under board support tooling works. Also, board clamping can be an issue. Some systems use over-the-top board clamping while others use edge clamping for true on-contact printing. Over-the-top tooling is a problem if you have solder lands to print that are right up to the board edge. Bring your paste and print boards over and over again to check repeatability. Find out how each vendor measures repeatability during their QA checking procedures after each new machine is built. Hopefully you've got boards with 0.4mm or 0.3mm fine-pitch devices because that's where you may see a difference in repeatability. Check the post print vision systems to see how many paste formations can be inspected in a given period of time. Some systems are faster than others, therefore providing more inspections per board. Compare the stencil wiping methods too. Machines vary in types of stencil wipers they use. Compare how "smart" the machine is, meaning how much closed-loop feedback there is for various functions. This speaks to how aware the machine is of what its doing- in terms of process control. Be sure each vendor has a solderpaste measurement tool of some sort in the demo facility, such as a CyberOptics LSM, SE 200 or 300 or equivalent and a microscope to view the formations. Watch out for the "blue light specials". Happy shopping!

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