In response to the request about component trends, my experience is based
being employed in contract manufacturing over the past 8 years. As far as
what I have observed regarding lead pitch, I have not seen as much high
volume use of components with lead pitches below 20-mils today as I would
have thought it would be 8 years ago. TAB & Tapepak was being talked about
quite a bit back then as the next BIG thing, but we all know what has
happened with those packages. BGA is another story, I've observed quite a
bit more use of the package at this early stage of it's evolution than I
did of TAB at the same stage...this tells me that BGA will probably replace
a great percentage of gullwing leaded packages in applications requiring
high I/O in the future. I base my opinion on the real fact of the explosive
growth in anything dealing with BGA technology.
So most definitely you will need a machine with the kind of vision
capability that can look beneath the component...and I would also opt for
Grayscale processing rather than binary vision processing.
I've recently ran into a problem concerning component weights. We've
have seen quite a few ceramic QFP's with metal heatsinks attached, with
consideration given in the design of the component to accomodate
automation, except for one area, weight. There have been some components
that were just too darn heavy for our machines!...QFP's weighing close to
an ounce! Bottomline, you will want a machine that really sucks....._GRIN_
*8^D
I agree with what Reed Hopkins said in his response, think about what
you're doing today, or what you will be doing down the road...whatever you
buy today, will still be used beyond 3-5 years and have plenty of work to
do.....THAT'S if it's taken care properly.
Steve Gregory
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As I've been informally surveying our customers I've seen two trends - the
first is that we're well away from bottoming out on the "smaller and
quicker" progress in component design. My impression is that there's at
least three to five years of known developments (existing designs to be
implemented) and an unknown number of years beyond that for the integration
of designs not existing yet. I don't believe anyone can predict the end to
the trend - there are too many unknowns.
The other trend that I've seen that's perhaps more relevant to the question
is that the older components and designs, and the products based on them,
are not always being discarded as newer designs come along to replace them.
There's still plenty of through-hole mnanufacturing going on, and there's
an active market for used processing machines as well. Stereophiles have
even brought back glass radio tubes.
The relevant quesion is not whether the equipment will be "obsolete" in
three or four years, but whether buying new equipment today will allow you
to enter markets you want to enter or keep those you have. It's a given
that the equipment will not be leading edge in that time. However, it
should still do the job it was designed for, and that job will probably
still be needed to be done by someone somewhere.
A good source for specific information on some pretty remarkable new
component designs are white papers from Micro SMT in San Jose, which is
developing leadless components that look like dust to the naked eye, as
well as leaded packages that replace common quads that are 10 times their
size. They can be reached at (408) 955-9180. Their white papers also list
manufacturers and models of machines that can handle their component
designs, though I doubt that includes the smallest of them. It's primarily
their white papers (most other developers I've contacted weren't as
forthcoming with information as Micro SMT was) that I base my estimate of
three to four years to fully integrate existing designs.
Reed Hopkins
User Development Manager
Metcal, Inc.
___________________________________________________________________________
____ Subject: COMPONENT TRENDS
From: [log in to unmask] at Internet-Mail Date: 5/25/95 7:49 AM
We are considering replacing our present pick and place machine (10 yrs
old) with a modern system. My management is concerned that whatever we
purchase today might be obsolete in 3-5 years. The system which I have in
mind has the capability of placing 15 mil pitch leaded components, 0402s,
and BGAs, pretty much the latest technologies.
My question is this, does anyone have a grasp on where component trends are
leading? Is component packaging going to be smaller still (than 0402s) or
a different technology altogether which will render my state-of-the-art
placement system obsolete? What does the future hold for components and
placement systems?
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