I was at Assembly Expo in Rosemont, IL today to see what was new these days in electronics assembly, factory automation and I think plastics was the other theme.
The new pick and place equipment moves so fast as to clearly be really dangerous if you run it with the covers off and interlocks tricked.
I didn't check too carefully, but I think it was yamaha that had the fastest machine at something insane like 130k components per hour.
Lots of the new production technologies were developed by or for the "big
3" automakers. They may not know how to actually sell cars, but there's some pretty brilliant components and assemblies going into these vehicles. Some of the stuff they'll do to save 1 cent is amazing, and doesn't even mean you end up with some shoddy piece of junk.One of the more interesting items was an ultrasonic soldering system from "Japan Unix" and sold here in the US by Fancort Industries. I have no idea who they are other than that.
You basically have a soldering gun, with an ultrasonic vibrator attached.
I was able to solder onto glass, with no flux, at all. It was quite amazing actually. It wet the glass like a marker on paper. I did check to see what solder they had at the play-with-me table and it was cero solder.
There was no rubbing and scratching type nonsense at all.
In general, ultrasonic welding of metals and plastics seesm to be a big deal these past few years.
It was pretty hard to find samples of lead based solder this time, but one of the assembly lines was using real lead solder, and quite proud of if. It's always nice to see streams of molten solder.
Apparently the new marketing speak is stuff isn't "lead free" or "tin solder" but "silver solder". Good one.
Nikon had some big deal stereo microscope with a telecentric lense, so I finally had a chance to see just how weird those optics really are. It's peculiar to have to focus on an object that appears to have no depth.
Overall this trade show looked pretty healthy (for the first time in years) and most people I spoke to reported that business was picking up.