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SMT007-Dec2018

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30 SMT007 MAGAZINE I DECEMBER 2018 for that. I would expect current machines will be fitted with CFX. Even those under support should be very easy to extend the support back. But some old machines are 10–20 years old and had no idea there was going to be this kind of revolution. If we look beyond elec- tronics to even robot and mechanical assem- bly, again, the interfaces are nowhere near as developed as the modern surface mount area. So, we have to have a strategy to expand CFX to those machines. Now, when any factory becomes smart, people will try to look for solutions that they can apply off the shelf. To get a 100% solution, no matter what anybody may claim, it's not going to happen. You'll always end up with a load of machines that are kind of in blackout as far as visibility is concerned. The nice thing about CFX is that customers themselves can take that software development—the IT people who are the ones wanting to take responsibil- ity for the factory but don't want to develop everything themselves. They can take CFX and apply it to the machines that they created within the factory. They can equip them with a CFX interface. Now, there may be some very old machines where you might think, "How on earth do we get information out of these?" It's going to be necessary to put in some sensors to inter- rupt some lines of communication within the machine to try and get out some status. We see that at least three or four hardware vendors are coming along and saying they can retro- fit some kind of hardware interface onto these machines, which is not a real expensive thing. This is like a Raspberry Pi computer that costs $30 or this system-on-a-chip that we see in soldering irons that costs $14, and you have a CFX client on that. You connect through sensors into the machines. They may not be the cleverest machines in the world, but they are machines that work adequately and are part of this digital factory. Let's not forget people who are at their manual workstations accepting products in and out—doing, recording, and noticing things, and acting. Their activities have to be recorded as well. CFX extends into user interfaces that may be present in the factory. There's something here for everybody to do. It means getting to 100% visibility without resorting to a custom- ization that is going to be very, very difficult to sustain. It's all going to be based on this one standard and work together seamlessly. That's what CFX is all about. Matties: You're giving an opportunity for DIY- ers all the way to buying new equipment that's ready to go. Ford: Absolutely. Nolan Johnson: Gentlemen, I just wanted to circle back to what you're doing at the demo at IPC APEX EXPO 2019. I heard you say that you will be able to monitor some of the param- eters from the machinery in real time on the show floor with a smartphone. Did I hear that correctly? Bergman: Correct. Johnson: Is that something where that appli- cation can be downloadable by visitors at the

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