Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1038326
OCTOBER 2018 I PCB007 MAGAZINE 75 cage is removable from the dispenser machine, a cart or trolley will transfer the whole storage thing to another dispenser in the lay-up sta- tion. This defines a faster, cleaning and manip- ulation-less process. The automated lay-up station will have an- other two of those dispensers. We offered to make those trolleys with self-guided or self- driving technology, but there's not much room for having automatic vehicles inside. Instead, we decided to move those trolleys manually. An operator will detach that cage of 20 draw- ers from the first dispenser and will be loading that cage of 20 drawers into the lay-up station. This lay-up station will have the capability of 40 total drawers, and each drawer can have a capacity of more than 200 cores per drawer, depending on the thickness of the cores. You can have a lot of material inside. Not only that, but you can also have the pre- pregs there. While the loader is loading, it's creating a database of the content of each drawer of each cage, so there is an intercon- nection from the first dispenser to all the oth- er dispensers. Everything is on the database. It will need just one operator on the lay-up station. Then you have a lay-up table and on the oth- er side of this automated lay-up station, which will have an automated dispenser of our tool- ing plates. What the operator does is build up panels in an ergonomic and automated way. The only thing the operator does is pick up core or prepreg and lay it down over the tool- ing plate. That's it. Matties: Everything GreenSource needs arrives from these cages right when they need it. Lázaro: Exactly, because these dispensers will be delivering in the correct order the sequence of the stackup of a given job number. The tooling plates will be stored in racks on this automated lay-up station. The tooling plates are very precise, mechanically speaking, and will have a long life because they are not going to the press; after the bonding process, the panel is removed from that tooling plate because we're talking about pinless lamina- tion. Those tooling plates will always be in the same good condition. They will be also num- bered, so every stackup will have some pro- cess parameters. This is also new in the indus- try, tracking registration! The other feature for the automated lay-up station is that this reduces handling by oper- ators, so no scratches or mistakes, but it also provides control. Each time the operator is lay- ing down a core or the prepreg, there is a sys- tem that accurately measures the differential between the previous and the next to quanti- fy the thickness. Because the database knows associated stackup details and the theoretical thickness of each material at the right time, it will be checking to confirm an accurate stack- up. If the operator makes a mistake, for ex- ample, putting more prepreg sheets than there needs to be, the system will warn. Or if the core is not matching what is expected in terms of copper or substrate thickness, you will get an alarm, and there is a protocol to remove that or put it aside. That is not going to pass through or around stackup. Matties: That will certainly cut down on the scrap and increase yield because that's a costly step to have a mistake after you have so much invested in the panel. Lázaro: Yes. Once an operator loads that rack with 20 plates on each side of the InduBond RFX tandem machine, everything that hap- pens afterward is fully automated. Another machine will pick up the plate with the ma- terials and drop it off over at the bonding ma- chine. The bonding machine will scan the bar- code to know the bonding recipe and bonding locations for loading the right Gerber file and then the machine will start bonding. The bonding machine is also a new tandem machine—one table is inside the bonding area, and the other table is outside. While one panel is being bonded, the table on the outside will be unloading the previous one and loading the next one. The automation will be picking up the bonded stackup, which will be dropped off onto a flat conveyor at the exit of the machine. That conveyor will transport the bonded panel