Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1038326
OCTOBER 2018 I PCB007 MAGAZINE 53 Howard: Yes. An order of magnitude. The pico laser also has twin robots, so it's automatically loading the pan- el on each table. Traditional- ly, a laser drill has a single sta- tion. This is the first machine of its kind for Schmoll and— I believe—for anybody. This has a very powerful laser but then has the beam split, which means two optic paths directed to two different tables. Goldman: If there are two ta- bles, do they necessarily have to run the same job? Howard: You would have to be processing the same job on both tables, yes. Goldman: That certainly is a powerful laser be- cause you're getting double the throughput on this machine than you would normally get. Howard: The second laser that is coming is, in fact, a nanosecond laser—the Schmoll Combi- Drill—and it has two types of lasers, both a UV and a CO 2 laser source. It, too, has a split beam approach, to feed two tables. In the case of the Combi-laser you use both lasers simultaneous- ly most of the time. The UV beam is opening the copper and the CO 2 follows behind and re- moves the substrate. Jens Baensch: There is a laser source which is inside the cabinet with an optical path of mir- rors and lenses that bend and focus the output into two beams, 50% to each table. The differ- ence between this and the other Combi-laser yet to be delivered is that we're having two la- ser sources. One laser source is UV and is used to open the copper surface; the second laser source is a CO 2 laser, used to cut through res- in and the glass and stop at the copper surface. The CO 2 laser cannot cut copper. Goldman: So that must all happen fairly quickly and automatically? Baensch: Yes, you have two different optical paths inside the machine. One path is serv- ing the UV laser source directed to the cop- per surface, and the second optical path is cut- ting through the resin and the glass and stops at the copper. Goldman: What is this unit? Howard: This is the Optiflex, a post-etch punch. This particular unit is an eight-camera sys- tem, meaning you're looking at the registra- tion front to back and confirming the accura- cy front to back, and then as the name would suggest, you're optimizing the position of the tooling holes based on the cameras that are looking at the visual targets (Figure 3). Goldman: What goes through here, individual cores? And I presume the Optiflex is reading the panel barcodes that GreenSource puts on every core? Howard: Correct. Everything in the entire fac- tory is individually identified and tracked through the process. Goldman: I imagine this doesn't give much trouble as far as failures. Howard: No, these have been extremely reli- able. Figure 3: Optiflex post-etch punch.