Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1525368
72 PCB007 MAGAZINE I AUGUST 2024 Are companies coming to you to retrofit older equipment? Some fabricators are using 25-year-old equipment—an etcher, for example—but it generally does the job for them. How does a customer come in and understand what is possible? Yes. We have an engineering team who sup- ports those customers with their unique needs. It's one of the primary struggles and a primary reason we make the proof of concept center available for customers. It allows us to show- case the technologies we offer. It's really a mat- ter of understanding the customer's applica- tion to offer them a solution. It's not only that we try to understand the current challenges that customers are having but we're also trying to prevent other potential issues to sustain the future success of their business. Typically, when someone comes to you, what sort of problem are they trying to address? It varies. At times, the client's requirement is straightforward, such as, "We need to imple- ment a process for picking up and placing com- ponents. What is the most effective method to achieve this?" en, we continue to explore. Depending on where you need to pick it up, do you also need to turn it over? Which of our robots might be best for that? We will do a proof- of-concept where the customer sends us parts and we figure out the cycle time we can achieve. For example, one of our sensor engi- neers was recently working with a customer who needed to measure drops that are flowing through a tube. He tested which sensor tech- nology would be the best to detect these drops going through that tube. In addition to proof-of-concept projects, we have experienced field application engineers who work with our strategic account manag- ers to solve problems in the field. As situations become more complex, they are funneled to the more experienced technical engineers. In the PCB assembly process, I still see an operator at the end of the output conveyor handling the product. When I ask them what's stopping them from using automation, typi- cally, they say it's footprint. They don't have the space. Is there a solution for a small foot- print that would help address this in a way that's relatively easy for them to incorporate? at's an important question: Is there some- thing that is easy to incorporate and, if so, what is it? Are you willing to tear stuff out and put in a new infrastructure? Collaborative robots are great because they don't need a lot of hard guarding and can go into spaces where people are working. Collaborative robots, or cobots, come equipped with safety features when operating in collaborative mode, which signifi- cantly reduces safety concerns. But most fabricators don't want to tear things apart. They don't want to interrupt produc- tion. If a plug-and-play solution existed for Mark Skaer