Jan 22, 2012 
Assembléon Introduced New iFlex Pick & Place Platform, Increasing PCBA Productivity by 30%
Assembléon is debuting iFlex at this year’s IPC APEX Expo in San Diego, CA (Booth 1407, February 28 - March 1) after its successful first showings in Europe. iFlex is a new innovative, intelligent and flexible SMT solution for electronics manufacturers. It is especially designed to increase productivity in high product mix environments by more than 30%. iFlex produces the highest board quality since it uses Assembléon’s unique single-pick/single-place technology, giving the industry’s highest First Pass Yield production levels with defect levels of less than 10 DPM.
The modular iFlex is not only easy to install, but supported by smart software tools also easy to program without hardware reconfiguration. Featuring dual transport lanes, dual sided feeding, internal buffer positions and feeder and trolley exchanges during production, iFlex has been designed for highest throughput. Assembléon’s unique ‘Independent Dual Lane’ concept allows manufacturers to produce in volume on one lane, while frequently and independently changing jobs on the second. That allows a great variety of PCBs to be assembled simultaneously on a single manufacturing line.
The flexibility built into iFlex allows manufacturers to assemble high-quality PCBs at any quantity, no matter how much variety. This makes iFlex ideal for the high product mix environments increasingly being demanded in the industry.
With three modules, iFlex can be configured to tailor assembly lines -from 1 to more than 8 modules- for any production need.
- iFlex T4 suits chip and small IC shooting (4 placement robots, placement speed of 51,000 cph, 128 twin tape feeder positions).
- iFlex T2 is aimed at flexible placements (2 placement robots, placement speeds of 24,000 cph, 128 twin tape feeder positions).
- iFlex H1 is for ICs and fine pitch placements (1 placement robot, placement speed of 7,100 cph, max 146 twin tape feeder positions/max 30 tray positions).
iFlex is a complete pick & place solution and supported by Mentor Graphics’ Valor software suites (both NPI and MES). These help plan, prepare and test the PCB assembly before production starts and control the actual assembly process from beginning to end, including detailed traceability data.
“Electronics manufacturers, especially in Europe and the Americas, are seeing a growth of their product mixes,” says Tonn van de Laar, CEO of Assembléon. “But a wider product variety also means a risk to productivity. Changing from product A to product B takes time, and therefore money. iFlex reduces this risk by offering a smart combination of flexible hardware and software solutions.”
As well as offering the flexibility to help manufacturers to produce more efficiently, Assembléon’s iFlex also excels in quality, remarks Van de Laar. And that ultimately gives electronics manufacturers a competitive advantage. “Assembléon uses single-pick/single-place for iFlex, just like we do in our A-Series. Together with our software, this ensures the highest quality products from every line. That is essential in today’s growing high mix environments, because when you are expected to deliver 5000 boards to your customer, you are expected to deliver 5000 good boards. iFlex guarantees this. So it’s no longer necessary to produce more than the requested quantity which saves time and costly waste. All this improves the reliability of electronics manufacturers, and gives them a head start when it comes to repeat orders, saving on production costs too.”
Assembléon is a world leader in surface-mount pick & place solutions for the electronics industry, designing and manufacturing equipment for the global market. Based in Veldhoven, The Netherlands, Assembléon has an extensive global sales and support network. The company was founded by Royal Philips Electronics.
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