Union Four Electronics Ltd. Invests in Europlacer’s Targarno Magnus

DORSET, UNITED KINGDOM - October 2009 - Blakell Europlacer Ltd., a designer and manufacturer of comprehensive SMT placement systems for the global electronics industry, announces that Union Four Electronics Ltd., a contract electronics manufacturer, has invested in its Tagarno Magnus inspection tool, following a recent demonstration at its Process/Productivity Improvement Week. Union Four Electronics purchased the inspection tool for its Cambridgeshire plant because it felt that the Magnus could complement its services by offering a more detailed level of customer feedback.

“We went to the Europlacer Technology Day in order to see what tips and tricks we could glean, and when we saw the Tagarno Magnus tool being used to inspect Europlacer’s demonstration PCBs I was impressed with the clarity of the image, and the ability to grab screen shots to use internally, or for our customers,” said Andrew Shakeshaft, Production Engineer at Union Four Electronics Ltd.

The Tagarno Magnus essentially is a camera-based tool that displays a crystal clear image of the object on a high definition display. A capture card allows exactly what is being viewed to be saved to a PC. This image then can be appended with information to assist the user to see critical areas of inspection.

“We are using the Magnus machine to improve our internal processes and to report visually to our customers any issues that we see on their PCBs, allowing us to further improve the service we offer. We have found that the viewing position compared to traditional ‘binocular’ type systems is much more comfortable on the eyes, and allows several people to see a particular fault at the same time. With binocular systems, this is really difficult because the focus is always wrong from person to person,” said Andrew. “Being able to zoom in to such great levels of magnification and to grab screen shots with such detail has been really useful to us, and will prove invaluable for feedback to our customers.”

Using a combination of different lenses, it is possible to have magnification from 1.6-105X, allowing very detailed inspection of devices such as 01005 and fine-pitch devices.

The Tagarno Magnus is available exclusively in the UK via Blakell Europlacer. For more information, visit http://www.europlacer.com.

About Europlacer

Europlacer has been developing machines for electronics assembly since the 1970s and invented the intelligent feeder concept in the 1980s. After acquisition by Blakell Europlacer in 1991, the company moved away from split-axis to the inherently more capable X-Y architecture that underpins the company’s machines today. Europlacer’s policy has been to ensure wherever possible that technology purchased many years ago, especially feeders, remain compatible with the latest equipment. Europlacer designs and manufactures a comprehensive range of highly flexible SMT placement systems for the global electronics industry. For more information, visit Europlacer’s Web site at http://www.europlacer.com.