Flexible soldering cells for small batch productions

The difficulties of maintaining and growing business for European small and medium sized electronics manufacturers have been multiplying in the recent years. This is mainly due to customer demands for small batch orders, new environmental legislation, and competition with giant international corporations. An innovative soldering unit that improves significantly the agility of the soldering processes by enabling rapid reconfiguration of the unit for mixed and small batches of printed circuit boards (PCBs) is discussed in this paper. The soldering unit is described briefly and its suitability for the electronics SMEs is evaluated.