Altus, a leading distributor of capital equipment for electronics assembly, has recently worked closely with their supplier, ATN Germany to offer full pre and post sales and engineering support for their range of bespoke designed desktop robots to address automated soldering which can grow with customers and their future requirements.
ATN Germany produce a range of soldering solutions to automate tasks which cannot be completed using SMT production techniques. The company design and manufacture a wide range of heads which can be supplied for OEM integration, or integrated by the company to address a specific application.
Tony Sweetman, Altus Sales Manager said: “We have supplied several ATN systems which have been successfully integrated into production lines, improving both quality and reliability.
“The process support from ATN has been excellent and has included trials and evaluations. The modular design of their products allows different heads to be integrated and the level of automation to be adjusted enabling us to offer solutions which meet specific technical and budgetary needs. In one case, our customer wanted an entry level solution which could grow with changing production needs. This was designed into the platform enabling us to upgrade the system on site as production volumes increased.”
The Economic 400 is just one entry level example of an integrated system from ATN. The system enables robotic soldering with a compact device.
In the case of automated soldering, the hot iron is placed on the soldering point with its pneumatic stroke. When the soldered joint is heated up to soldering temperature, the solder wire is fed with the automatic feeder. The soldering tip remains on the soldering point for a short time so that the solder runs correctly and forms a meniscus at the soldering point. The 150W soldering iron with digital control allows short cycle times and high precision.
The Economic A400 can also be equipped with Induction, Laser or LightBeam heads. The positioning is carried out by an XYZ system with a working range of 400x300x140mm. Optionally an additional rotation is also available. The programming with the Windows-based PC control is intuitive, simple and clear, and includes a camera simplifies process monitoring and teaches the soldering positions.
