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Solving application issues and process setups

Pierre de Villeméjane, president/CEO of Speedline Technologies on the company’s identity and targets
Solving application issues and process setups

“With the printer platform Accela, we are strengthening our process capabilities and, at the same time, strengthening the application side. This machine is definitely going to be the cornerstone of our portfolio in high-end stencil printing”, according to Pierre de Villeméjane, CEO of Speedline since May 2001, “when the downturn really comes rolling in”. Before, he was senior VP marketing at Cookson Electronics.

What strategic importance and purpose does 2005 have for you?

It’s twofold. First, we are focusing on our new stencil printer, the Accela. The reference is acceleration, throughput and the concept of speed. Accela is a high-end printer, providing the next performance standard. The other theme is to continue demonstrating our capabilities as process experts. Last year, we modified our strategy to confirm our position as process leaders and focus on our core technologies: printing, dispensing, wave and reflow soldering, cleaning. This year, we continue to emphasize our identity that we established last year.
Printing is in the foreground?
Yes. We are strengthening our process capabilities and, at the same time, strengthening the application side. The Accela is definitely going to be the cornerstone of our portfolio in high-end stencil printing. In Europe, the launch will be in April at the SMT show in Nuremberg. It’s a breakthrough for us, more than just a new printer – it’s a new concept in paste printing. This platform is designed around parallel processing. You can print, inspect and clean stencils at the same time. This provides a sub-5.5 sec cycle time – the fastest in the industry. During printing, other functions are simultaneously performed. That’s how we achieve at least 20% throughput improvement over our closest competitors.
Are you only concerned with lead-free or with the full gamut of RoHS?
Our customers are asking Speedline to help solve their application issues and take care of their process setups, especially in lead-free manufacturing. Mostly with the transition to Pb-free manufacturing, managing this transition to non-lead soldering materials. We have dedicated many seminars and webinars to this topic and will continue to focus on this process expertise.
Dwelling on the technical issues?
We have assessed the impact of the RoHS legislation to ensure that our equipment will be compliant. But our focus is really on the transition to lead-free. Unfortunately, the directives, once you dig into them, are not very clear. There are a lot of grey areas that can be difficult to interpret. The rest is up to the supply chain.
Especially small and medium manufacturers may need education and help?
Everybody needs that. Our customers understand the coming changes in reflow and wave soldering, but few of them realize that even in printing there is significant impact. Lead-free pastes are much less forgiving than tin-lead solders. With lead-free, you need much higher accuracies in paste printing.
Any specifics in doing business in Europe?
It follows the very same principles as in the rest of the world. In Europe, we are putting our effort in on further strengthening our process expertise. We are concentrating on a number of high-growth markets. Hungary is very strong, Romania is very promising. Russia and Ukraine are also interesting for us.
How about the worldwide markets?
Asia is our largest region. In 2000, it was about 20% of our business and now it’s close to 50%. Europe is about 15 to 20%, the balance being in the Americas.
Design and product definition are still being done in the U.S.?
Our core engineering capabilities are in the U.S. But we do have engineering expertise in Asia as well through our subcontractors that provide turnkey solutions. We manufacture a printer line in China and a reflow product series in Malaysia. Business was extremely good last year. For us, it was the turning point in terms of profitability. After all, Speedline has a complex history since it was created in 1998. (Editors note: before, these activities were part of Cookson Electronics for decades.) We have a clear corporate strategy and we are excited about the future of our company and our product brands Accel, Camalot, Electrovert and MPM.
Interview recorded by Werner Schulz
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Titelbild EPP EUROPE Electronics Production and Test 11
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11.2023
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