Royal Philips Electronics subsidiary Assembléon’s recently released Twin Placement Robot (TPR) is reducing the cost of placement for memory module assembly, and will soon be doing the same for semiconductor backend manufacturing. The TPR fits on the A-Series pick & place equipment to give a single platform that can place up to 110,000 ICs and chip components per hour – eliminating the need for a separate line balancing machine. That makes the A-Series ideal for populating pc boards with high IC count, including Solid-State Drives and Flash and DRAM modules. The TPR will also assemble semiconductor dies in their packages, and so soon also promises to revolutionize semiconductor manufacture. The company is already seeing strong interest from DRAM manufacturers for the TPR, which allows the company’s AX-301 and AX-501 chip shooters to work as IC shooters, too. A major memory module manufacturer in Malaysia has recently taken delivery of several new machines, and reports that the TPR has given it a real competitive manufacturing advantage by placing Flash memories and DRAMs at near 0402 speeds with higher accuracy and shorter changeover times than its previous equipment.
A single TPR places ICs at up to 16,000 cph and can assemble all the major types including naked dies, flip chips, stacked chips, PiP (Package-in-Package) and SIP (System in Package) devices. With the other A-Series robots placing up to 94,000 cph, the TPR helps match chip and IC placement rates to significantly reduce the overall cost of placement. Placing chips and ICs with the same machine saves labor, energy, maintenance and other operational costs of a separate line balancing machine. The A-Series suits high volume and high mix production, with fast New Product Introductions and batch sizes right down to one. The machines can pick ICs from a range of carriers including Jedec tray stackers and tape on reel.
The A-Series now has an accuracy of 25 microns and repeatability of 17 microns, essential for reliable assembly of micro-miniature chip components and fine-pitch devices. Adding multiple TPRs and reducing the individual robot speeds to increase the settling time will soon also improve placement accuracy enough for A-Series machines to be used for encapsulating semiconductors at a much higher rate than is now possible.
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