Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1088168
58 SMT007 MAGAZINE I MARCH 2019 tank plating to vertical continuous plating. When VGT built this factory, they focused on removing certain operations and streamlin- ing the process. For example, we match the deburr machine right to the permanganate desmear machine, and into electroless cop- per. We go through deburr, high-pressure wa- ter, ultrasonic rinse, and into permanganate, right-angle bend, and down the electroless copper line. There are absolutely no operators. One employee basically monitors the whole line. In a traditional board shop in the U.S., deburr would be a separate process, and then you would go to electroless copper—usually in tanks—and finally, plating lines, so there's a significant advantage here. We have a loader after PTH. At this point, the panels have electroless copper on them. We then have a loading mechanism that gets wheeled over manually, and then the robot takes over and starts feeding the VCP. One or two employees run this process, and then there are a handful of employees that ensure the robots are doing what they need to do and queuing up the next slot. In the new smart factory, this product transfer is done by auto- mated guided vehicles or AGVs; people simply monitor. We have automatic imaging for solder mask, and we also have LDI for solder mask. Further, we have cameras in every department here that we can monitor. In the new smart factory, we have data being integrated. We still have cam- eras, but we're also integrating the through- puts, panels, lots that are going through. We also specialize in hard gold fingers, and all of our gold plating is done in full panel form using VCPs. We do our masking with a laser cutter. Our CAM team opens the windows for gold plating, and then we have a hot-roll lami- nator laminate resist film. All of our gold plat- ing is done in full body platers—not tab platers. This allows us to easily do selective gold—gold with ENIG, mixed finish, etc. It gives us a lot of flexibility. I believe VGT has the largest gold plating capacity in the industry. All of our electrical testing is fully automat- ic, all of the testers are networked, and the throughputs are calculated on efficiency. We track how many test compressions we do, how many pseudo opens, and then calculate the final yield. Automatic off loaders sort boards into good, open, and short piles and eliminate pile management issues. In the new smart fac- tory, we also track first-pass and second-pass yield in real time. Automated Mason electrical testers.