Soldering with special gripper

The selective soldering of assemblies in panels is not really a challenge. However, if large panels with towering components are to be soldered, specialists like those from Eutect have to get to work. The experts for selective soldering automation have developed a complex special gripper on behalf of a customer that reliably meets this challenge.

"In this particular case, it was a relatively large PCB that was divided into four panels. Two THT capacitors had to be soldered to each individual panel, which were not allowed to bend during the process. As these were very large and high, they were quite unstable when unsoldered," recalls Matthias Fehrenbach, Managing Director of Eutect. The challenge was to prevent the large circuit board from bending and to keep the capacitors in position. "A standard inline mini-wave process was therefore out of the question," says Fehrenbach.

The specialists therefore developed a special gripper that both holds the components in position and prevents the PCB from bending. "Our customer specified that no bending force should act on the components. It was therefore necessary to feed the assembly absolutely straight to the respective processes," recalls Lars Iwers, sales representative at Eutect, and continues: "The special feature here is that the panel arrived on the belt in the process cell without a workpiece carrier. However, as the component spacing was positioned too close to the belt, we could not solder directly under the belt. The panel therefore had to be picked up from the belt." During pick-up, the PCB is pressed against spacers from below and thus held straight in the gripper. The upright capacitors were also pressed against component-specific hold-down devices. The gripper then moves to the mini wave soldering module by means of an axis system.

"Because we had to move a PCB panel without a workpiece carrier in this project, the gripper has to have a special configuration. After all, a panel like the one in this case is relatively unstable, which is not very helpful for a reproducible soldering process," says Fehrenbach. For this reason, care was taken to ensure that the gripper feeds the PCB panel into the soldering process in an absolutely stable and horizontal position. In addition, the gripper developed meant that there was no need for a soldering frame, which in other cases stabilizes the panel during the soldering process. "This enabled us to fully meet the customer's specifications. Thanks to the special gripper, it is now possible to guarantee a reproducible and cycle time-optimized process," says Fehrenbach.

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Eutect, http://www.eutect.de