TECHNOLOGY & INDUSTRY | PCB RAPID PROTOTYPING
2022/08/17 Commercial Times, Fu Ping-hsiang
The rapid PCB pilot-production manufacturing system for circuit processes developed by SynPower. Image courtesy of SynPower.In recent years, as market demand has become increasingly diverse, many small and medium-sized PCB manufacturers have responded by operating high-mix, low-volume product lines. The output value of small and medium-sized PCB manufacturers accounts for approximately 53% of global production value, representing a significant share and contribution. However, rapid changes in industrial and consumer products have greatly increased the proportion of high-mix, low-volume demand, leading to more frequent first-article testing and process-parameter adjustments during PCB product changeovers and significantly affecting production line utilization.
SynPower has PCB dry and wet process integration capabilities, along with more than 20 years of experience in circuit board processes, helping the industry move toward smart factories.Key Customer Requirements
1. Pilot-production Monitoring Challenges:In the current PCB pilot-production process, each station relies on manual monitoring for process control. When process abnormalities cause defects, real-time monitoring is not available, resulting in wasted production time and costs while limiting yield improvement.
2. Parameter Tuning Challenges:The PCB industry currently faces high-precision, high-mix, low-volume product lines, and each line change requires considerable time for process-parameter tuning. The current process optimization time for a single part number is more than 2.5 hours, which limits production efficiency. In addition, rapid prototyping of high-precision PCBs with line widths below 50 μm currently results in lower process yield.
With more than 20 years of experience in circuit board processes, SynPower provides comprehensive solutions for these requirements:
SynPower Technical Solutions
1. Rapid Pilot-production Manufacturing System:SynPower developed a rapid PCB pilot-production manufacturing system that includes an intelligent predictive parameter optimization system and a real-time monitoring system for every process station. Using intelligent parameter prediction and optimization technology, the system is expected to improve pilot-production process efficiency by more than 75%. Combined with real-time monitoring, it ensures that all process stations operate normally.
2. AVRIOT Digital Upgrade:This system integrates SynPower AVRIOT to digitally upgrade selected instrument panels on existing equipment. Through SynPower’s Edge PC / Server architecture, it enables communication, data collection, parameter feedback control, and abnormality alert functions.
3. Customized QR-code Traceability:To support customer product designs, SynPower provides a customized QR-code traceability system for circuit-section processes. Product QR-code information is linked with corresponding process parameters from each station, turning the data into analyzable information. By using data AI tools for analysis and modeling, the system provides predictive optimized parameters. During first-article pilot production for an individual part number, it can quickly achieve accurate parameters and significantly reduce the time experienced engineers spend on parameter adjustment and optimization.
