Customer Report NOTE
1,000th VERSAFLOW 3/45 delivered!
The VERSAFLOW 3/45 forms the solid foundation of the unique success story of Ersa selective soldering technology – at the end of October the 1000th machine from Ersa’s absolutely best seller series was delivered. It was shipped to the Swedish EMS service provider NOTE, one of the leading electronics manufacturers in Scandinavia.
The first chapter of the Ersa selective soldering success story was written with the VERSAFLOW 40/50 and 50/60 as well as the ECOSELECT 350 in the 1990s. Many of the first Ersa selective machines, of which more than 600 have been delivered to impressed customers, are still in successful use – after more than 25 years! “In order to maintain the continued production abilities of these machines, we had to develop new axis controllers in 2018 because the original control modules had long been discontinued by the supplier,” says Ersa General Sales Manager Rainer Krauss. Thus Ersa guarantees as a system supplier that these customers can continue to produce flat assemblies successfully on their machines.
More than 800 configuration options
Ersa now delivers the “bread-and-butter” machine VERSAFLOW 3/45 with more than 800 configuration options – all possible combinations are conceivable and can be delivered as a standard machine, whether with two flux modules, five preheater modules or three soldering modules (multi or mini-wave). Based on this, the VERSAFLOW 3/66 with and without dual conveyor system was developed – and was originally used for car cockpit displays. Since these have changed to digital units, the 3/66 is now used to produce printed circuit boards for air conditioning technology or white goods with cycle times of 10 s. The 3/66 is also excellent for customised applications, such as antennas up to maximum dimensions of 3,000 x 625 mm.
Flagship VERSAFLOW 4/55
The selective soldering machine series is crowned by the flagship VERSAFLOW 4/55 and VERSAFLOW 4 XL with far more than 1,000 configuration options – anything but a gimmick, rather an absolutely necessary spectrum to provide all customers with the best machine for their respective individual requirements. With the dual pot module VERSAFLEX for the VERSAFLOW 4 selective soldering platform, the market leader is raising the bar once again and has achieved a previously inconceivable flexibility with minimum cycle times and maximum solder quality.
The concept behind VERSAFLEX: the two solder pots in the innovative dual soldering module are installed on two mutually independent axes and can be moved separately in x/y/z-direction. This allows the selective soldering system to be moved in conventional parallel mode, as well as in asynchronous mode, so that both pots work completely independently of one another. VERSFLEX thus generates an enormous added value in production – by doubling throughput during panel processing or reducing cycle times when different solder alloys or nozzle geometries are used, for example – all economic advantages that pay off for the user. Combined with the printed circuit board monitoring systems VERSASCAN and VERSAEYE, this puts customers well on the way to a zero-fault strategy.
Processing PCBs up to 1,200 x 620 mm as standard
In the few months since market launch, significantly more than 200 soldering systems were delivered in this top segment and integrated smoothly into electronics manufacturing. The VERSAFLOW 4 XL opens up a completely new area of business, because it can be used to process printed circuit boards in formats up to 1,200 x 620 mm as standard. New applications – driven in part by the future 5G network that is to replace the current LTE mobile phone standard – require server boards, antennas and network PCBs for traffic engineering in sizes and layers that have been treated as exotic exceptions so far but will now be produced in series. “We not only recognised the trend in time but also managed to develop suitable machines – which is what distinguishes us as the market leaders from competitors on the market,” explains Ersa Sales Manager Rainer Krauss. Other machines from Ersa that round off the selective portfolio at the smaller end are also worth a mention here: SMARTFLOW 2020, ECOCELL, ECOSELECT 1, ECOSELECT 4 – despite their extremely compact design, the smaller machines from the selective family can rely on innovative no-compromise Ersa technologies – just like the larger members of the family!