High-Tech Printer Features Low Operation Costs

Tucano's predecessor SP900 had already proved excellent results in 2008 Benchmark at SMT Nuremberg. Essemtec, the Swiss manufacturer of production machines, has made something good even better and presented the new Tucano at SMT Nuremberg. The most important process improvements are: Higher printing speed, lower cycle time, additional traceability functionality, larger print area and higher precision.

The most significant mechanical modification is, that ball screw drives were replaced by belt drives, which Essemtec also builds into SMD pick and place machines. By this, the printer gained precision and productivity. Repeatability is now at 10 µm, printing speed measures 250 mm/s at its maximum and the cycle time is below 15 seconds. Belt drives also need less maintenance which reduces operating costs.

Operating cost are lower with Tucano anyway, because it requires less motors and motor controls. Modules such as stencil cleaning system, 2d inspection, PCB stopper and the conveyor width adjustment need no individual drive systems but are moved by a single common module the vision. Therefore energy consumption and failure probability are reduced what minimizes the requirements for maintenance and spare parts.

The vision system itself was left unchanged, but the camera resolution is higher. The programmable illumination colour has proven itself very well in practice as well as the dual camera system that requires neither mirrors nor moving parts. The size of the printer also remains the same. Compared to the SP900, the printing size has increased to 600x580 mm, but the footprint stayed the same, 1.3 m2.

The stencil cleaning system USC was improved too. The refilling of the cleaning solvent and the paper were simplified. The efficiency of the vacuum and the humidification has been increased.
Tucano features new traceability functions. Product, process and user data are automatically stored and made available for production traceability. Also, data from the 2d inspection system are recorded. This unit inspects the print result and the state of the stencil in definable intervals and triggers a cleaning cycle if required.

Tucano is a robust, economical and extremely reliable in-line-machine for precision stencil printing. The transport direction can be chosen; therefore the machine can be used as in-line as well as batch production machine in combination with automatic loading/unloading systems. All good features form its predecessor SP900 were reused or even improved, also the software: Tucano now offers even more auto-set-up functions and allows a quicker first-time-set-up.