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40 DESIGN007 MAGAZINE I JULY 2024 Surface mount technology (SMT) is a manu- facturing process that, through the application of a wide range of small outline components, provides capability to design a printed circuit with higher component density. e assembly process offers the user a means of efficiently pro- ducing electronic products in high volume with robotic assembly processing. e circuit board designer can serve a vital role in developing a surface mount configured product that will be prepared for efficient assembly processing. e thing is, we may not know whether the product will be produced in low or high vol- ume, so the best suggestion is to "think posi- tive" and anticipate a design ready for assem- bly automation, one that will conceivably be processed on an in-line system using convey- ors to shuttle the board from one machine to the other. Surface mount assembly processing is a sequence of events that involves a wide range of component types (passive and active, coarse- pitch, fine-pitch, BGA, CSP), many requiring specialized systems and strict process con- PCB Design and IPC-CFX for Assembly Automation trols. Looking from the top, Figure 1 furnishes the basic "print-place-solder reflow" process sequence for a conveyor-linked surface mount assembly line. Planning for Robotic Assembly Processing e robotic systems developed for SMT applications are very efficient for the tasks they were designed to do, but getting them to function as a unified system when setting up the assembly line with equipment from mul- tiple sources was a very complex task. is was because many companies developing these systems relied on different programming methods, oen soware that was proprietary to only the equipment they produced. To streamline the process for integrating all functions of the assembly process, users needed to have a plug-and-play solution that simplified and standardized machine-to-machine com- munication. With the cooperation between the equipment developers and IPC member companies using these systems, the Connected Designers Notebook Feature Column by Vern Solberg, CONSULTANT Figure 1: Basic process flow for SMT assembly.