South African EMS provider expands capacity with ASM

The addition of the machines has resulted in improved quality and rapid product changeovers. While one of the machines is designed for high performance with two SpeedStar placement heads, the second delivers lots of flexibility and capacity for larger components and OSCs due to its SIPLACE MultiStar and SIPLACE TwinStar heads. In its first seven months of operation, the new ASM line has already processed more than 30 million components and improved the first pass yield rate to more than 99%, a press release reads.. “Jemstech has grown continuously for many years. New customers, new products and growing deadline pressures due to many new orders made it necessary for us to invest in more performance and functional flexibility,” says Jemstech Technical Director, Jacques Klopper in the press release.. “Jemstech has for many years had a very close relationship with ASM. In two of our lines, we depend on DEK Horizon8 stencil printers, which have never disappointed us in terms of performance and quality, both of which were critical factors when we decided to invest in new equipment.” Jemstech has been operating since 2005 and is today located centrally between Johannesburg and Pretoria in Centurion. More than 50 employees work and produce in a space of roughly 4,500 square meters for customers from sectors like industrial electronics, telecommunications, aerospace, and defense. Jemstech took their time before arriving at their decision. For more than one year, they visited trade fairs in Singapore, India and Germany to compare the machines of international vendors in extensive benchmarking. “After discussions at the ASM’s Center of Competence in Singapore in 2019, we decided in favor of systems from ASM. The extensive demonstrations of the SIPLACE SX2 confirmed what we had already learned. The high-speed placement and its precision, the high-tech vision system, the rapid product changeovers and the uncomplicated offline programming convinced us across the board,” says Jacques Klopper. The decision was made, the contracts were signed, and the machines were ready – after which the world plunged into the coronavirus crisis. The question was: Can the project be carried out successfully if ASM experts cannot support the installation and commissioning of the new machines due to travel restrictions? That's where ASM's sales partner Priben in Johannesburg came into play and overcame this obstacle. Since no ASM service technician was able to travel to South Africa, Priben handled the entire hardware installation at Jemstech. The systems were then connected to ASM’s global service network via ASM Remote Smart Factory. The ASM specialists could access the Jemstech systems and carry out all installation and setup steps. The two SIPLACE SX2 placement machines has opend up new opportunities for Jemstech’s SMT production. The two SIPLACE SpeedStar heads in the first machine offer placement capacities of up to 86,500 components per hour with a component spectrum ranging from the smallest 0201m form factor to sizes of 8.2 by 8.2 millimeters. In the second SIPLACE SX2, the SIPLACE MultiStar switches between collect-and-place, pick-and-place and mixed placement modes as needed based on software commands. With the SIPLACE TwinStar as the second head in the second machine, Jemstech places large components and OSCs that are up to 200 x 125 millimeters large and up to 50 millimeters tall – and it does so with impressive precision. “We produce with a level of speed and quality that used to be unachievable for us. More than 30 million components placed speak for themselves. The high-performance vision system of the SIPLACE SX allows us to inspect components and processes with exceptional precision, which is particularly critical for the smallest 0201 components, which we place in large quantities,” adds Jacques Klopper. “As an EMS provider, we manufacture a high mix of products. The quick and easy product changeovers made it possible with the new machines to eliminate many of our previous bottlenecks with flying colors.”