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86 SMT Magazine • December 2016 by Stephen Las Marias I-CONNECT007 At the recent NEPCON South China trade show in Shenzhen, I spoke with Thomas Bre- din, area sales manager at Mycronic, about the latest developments in jet printing technology, and their recent acquisition of Shenzhen Axxon Automation Co. Ltd—one of the leading pro- viders of dispensing equipment for the electron- ics manufacturing and SMT industry in China. Stephen Las Marias: So far, Thomas, how has business been for Mycronic this year? Thomas Bredin: From a global perspective, it's been up to our expectations. Here in China, we have seen a better performance than last year, but of course, expectation was also higher. Even here, we are on track with our forecast and we see a lot of interest with the jet printers. Hope- fully we should be able to over-shoot expecta- tions this year. Las Marias: What are the challenges you're seeing? Bredin: Of course, not being one of the big play- ers, it's still a matter of awareness. Get our tech- nology well understood, especially with the jet printer. Pick-and-place is fairly easy, but the jet printer part, we still have a lot of marketing and transferring of the machine's capabilities to make sure that everyone knows what the ma- chine can do and really understands the differ- ences between this touchless printing technol- ogy compared to traditional screen printing or dispensing. Also now we have this dispenser add-on to the MY600 open up to even more opportuni- ties, and that, of course, for us is also a chal- lenge to also to reach out with this message, that the jet printer is not only a solder-based printer but also a jet dispenser. That's why we're adding the second head. Las Marias: Are you seeing a higher level of inter- est for this technology? Bredin: Absolutely. It can be utilized in so many different ways. If, for technology reasons, there are volume variances needs within the board, then it is an obvious choice, but we see more and more interest in the add-on area, where stencils have to become thinner and thinner, but there is still a corner on the board where you need more volume than what you get from the thin sensors. Actually, during these first two days of exhibition, we have had a lot of inter- est and a lot of requests. Because it seems like people or potential customers are becoming INTERVIEW