Assembléon’s Twin Placement Robot Extends to Semiconductor Backend Manufacturing

Royal Philips Electronics subsidiary Assembléon announces that its 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.

According to the company, the TPR fits on Assembléon’s A-Series pick-and-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 well-suited 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 added.

Assembléon 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.

The A-Series now has an accuracy of 25 microns and repeatability of 17 microns (both at 3 sigma, CpK>1), 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.

www.assembleon.com