Volume push for energy technology

 

An internationally active mechatronics developer has pushed its electronics production to the current market level virtually overnight. Together with the special machine and plant manufacturer haprotec GmbH from Kreuzwertheim, the project team developed a concept to meet the modern requirements of a THT production line with manual workstations and to enable fast, uncomplicated expansions

The market for energy technology, charging equipment for e-mobility in particular, experienced unprecedented growth in German-speaking countries in the period from 2021 to 2023. For companies that supply directly to this market as mechatronics manufacturers, forecasting sales and the associated planning of the required operating resources is no easy matter.
The customer's project manager summarised his company's situation briefly and succinctly: "Only those who can deliver quickly and with high quality will generate sales with end customers."

The challenge in developing a suitable automation solution was not only the modular expandability but also achieving the required quality monitoring. For the project team, the integration of a solution for placement inspection as well as for solder joint inspection was a requirement set from the outset.

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Peter Helmstetter, the responsible sales employee, explains the choice of AOI solution as follows.
"It quickly became clear to us that the required communication depth of the two AOI solutions would make it difficult to use solder joint AOI and placement AOI from two different suppliers. haprotec, as a system integrator, is generally able to offer all combinations of AOIs and integrate them into our systems. In this special and very complex case, we decided together with the customer to rely on Modus Hightech's solutions. Not least because the employees of the haprotec application department can offer comprehensive training and service for Modus AOIs and have already realised many individual developments together with Modus in the past."

The special thing about the combination of placement AOI at the individual workstations and the inline soldering point AOI is the data exchange. Each workstation automatically receives the results of the placement test and solder joint inspection for the product in question. This means that each workstation can also be used as a repair workstation in the event of a fault. In addition, all test results are retained as a data record in the MES for traceability.

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During production, the customer decided to utilise the modular expandability of the system and ordered three additional placement workstations to meet the high market requirements at the time.

Once the preliminary acceptance test at haprotec had been successfully completed on schedule, it was immediately agreed to duplicate the system. The resulting sister system was also realised and delivered within the scheduled time.