Sep 05, 2013 
Essemtec’s high-speed Paraquda SMT pick-and-place system has recently been selected by Davlec Ltd, an electronics company based in Wales, specialising in the design and manufacture of control equipment for the dairy farming industry. Due to the nature of Davlec’s diversification over the years into other areas of sub contract manufacturing, the company wanted to fully optimize its flexibility to suit current and future business requirements by increasing production capacity and capability in terms of component size range. With the assistance of KPE Ltd, Davlec set about investigating the market in search of a solution for a flexible, high-speed placement platform that was designed for the Low Volume - High Mix market.
To speed up processes in order to expand their customer base, Davlec required a fast, accurate SMT system with the capacity to place both taller and finer pitch devices with intelligent feeders and the ability to hold a large number of feeders and a variety of waffle trays without compromise. During the decision making process Davlec considered a wide range of machines and KPE helped to shortlist and configure the best solution to meet their needs, ultimately leading to the selection of the Paraquda pick-and-place machine from Essemtec that can place 10,200 surface mounted parts an hour (IPC9850 rating).
Nia Davies, Managing Director of Davlec, said, “Since the installation of the Paraquda system, we have significantly increased throughput on existing work, typically by a factor of 4. Our requirements gave us a small short-list of suitable machines and the Paraquda platform offered improved software and ease of use over its direct rivals in a compact footprint, making planning for future investment far simpler. It also provided the fastest standalone platform option we considered and in addition, the Paraquda's multiple feeding and dispensing options allow for future capabilities to be retro fitted at a later date as and when required.”
Further feedback from Davlec regarding the impact the Paraquda system is having since installation, includes decreased component losses, increased first test pass rate, reduced Job setup and load time, enhanced ability to place 100% of parts by machine on the majority of products due to increased lane count and component compatibility and a vast improvement in building complex prototypes reliably due to "right first time" placement.
The installation has allowed Davlec to take on a larger range of printed circuit board work from concept and design, through prototyping onto full production. This means that Davlec now offers the complete Electronic Manufacturing Service in house, as well as the established design and manufacture of electronic parlour equipment. The company celebrates it’s 30th anniversary this year and has grown exponentially during that time using the latest technology to branch out into other areas such as metrology, the automotive industry, knitting machines, high-end audio, infra-red technology and environmental monitoring equipment.
Essemtec’s Paraquda SMT pick-and-place machine combines a large feeder capacity (up to 240 intelligent feeders), fast programming and changeover while the machine is running, with the ability to quickly place any component from 01005 up to 80x70 mm including fine-pitch, BGA, CSP or flip chips. Designed to fulfill the requirements of high-mix SMT production, the Paraquda’s placement head is equipped with four component placement spindles, each one with its own vertical and rotation drive system, which can be controlled individually. Essemtec also offers a fully featured dispensing option for its Paraquda, which extends the placement machine’s application range: In addition to placing 10,200 components per hour (IPC rating), the Paraquda now can dispense up to 20,000 glue or paste dots per hour. The new dispensing option provides the Paraquda pick-and-place with all the features of a modern dispensing machine, including a needle height calibration station and a fully automatic needle cleaning system.
For further information about Essemtec’s Paraquda system, please visit www.essemtec.com or www.kpeltd.co.uk and for more details about Davlec, please visit www.davlec.com.
The Swiss equipment manufacturer Essemtec is the market leader for flexible production systems for electronic assembly and packaging. Essemtec has been developing, manufacturing and marketing equipment for all processes in the electronics industry since 1991: such as printers, jet dispensers, pick-and-place and soldering systems. Manual, semiautomatic and fully automatic systems are available. The range of products also includes transportation and storage systems, as well as software solutions for planning, simulation optimization and documentation of manufacturing. All Essemtec systems are optimized for maximum flexibility. Users can switch from one product to another quickly, making maximum use of available production capacity.
Essemtec - Be more flexible.
