Assemblers require radically new technologies on five-yearly basis, says DEK

DEK has set out a vision for the future that demands wafer level accuracy, six-sigma repeatability and first time print as fundamental capabilities for next generation screen printing in SMT and semiconductor assembly.

"Without each of these capabilities, assemblers will not succeed commercially," said Rich Heimsch. "There is no alternative route to achieving the very high resolution, high-speed and low levels of defects or rework necessary to win and retain customers and operate profitably. It is crucial as long as margins and product and technology lifecycles continue to rapidly diminish."

Explaining that around five years now represents a complete generation, in technology terms, Rich Heimsch, president of DEK International, described DEK's over-arching goal to deliver technologies for future generations, ahead of customer demand. "Tomorrow's EMS sector needs technology partners that can correctly identify coming trends, and perfect new solutions and techniques ahead of the curve. This will be the key to retaining existing customers and winning new business to consistently grow market share.

"We are continually evolving the tools of each new generation," continued Heimsch, who says process solutions providers must also use technology to streamline setup, optimisation and management of advanced processes, and to reduce the influence of operators' judgement on productivity and end of line yield. "Our sector must deliver, in this respect, to allow assemblers to quickly introduce new products and advanced processes including wafer level processes such as chip scale packaging, flip-chip assembly and direct chip attach."

One way in which DEK is achieving these goals is by innovating intuitive software residing between the user and the machine itself. DEK's Instinctiv(TM) and Interactiv(TM) software tools support remote monitoring and diagnostics, on-board error recovery and internet-based help, to enable faster setup, changeover and troubleshooting of complex, precision processes.