News
Mack Technologies (Westford, MA), a contract manufacturer, has partnered with Ovation Products (Bethlehem, PA) to standardize on Grid-Lok fully automatic tooling for all DEK Screen Printers at their Westford facility.
The installations have provided an automated tooling option on every printer and feature Stealth Mode for zero-time support tooling setup when changing from one product to another. In addition, compliancy issues are eliminated as the support pins reset for every circuit board.
Mack process engineer Bill Dampier said, "Since our tooling is now fully automatic, our operators and setup personnel have no concerns with support tooling issues and are able to focus on other aspects of the assembly process. In addition, virtually no training was required to operate the system since it is triggered automatically by the host machine."
Quality engineer Eric Wolf stated that their printing process quality has stabilized due to the repeatable support of the system compared to conventional methods: "Our operators are no longer concerned about the printer tooling setup even for the most densely populated double-sided PCBs."
Ovation Products, a division of Airline Hydraulics, is a manufacturer of automated tooling solutions for the electronics assembly industry.
Copyright 2004, UP Media Group. All rights reserved.
Elcoteq Network Corp. (Espoo, Finland), an electronics manufacturing services (EMS) provider for the communications technology industry, has added three surface-mount manufacturing production lines at Elcoteq America's facility in Monterrey, Mexico. The addition is a result of increased orders to manufacture mobile phones and similar wireless communications products. The addition brings the number of lines to 10 and increases capacity by 43%. Elcoteq will be expanding its work force by 200 employees.
The majority of the new equipment will be purchased from Siemens and Panasonic in keeping with Elcoteq's strategy to equip all its manufacturing plants with similar equipment so process transfer and supply chain management are facilitated and optimized. Plants are located in Europe, Asia, Mexico and the U.S.
The Monterrey plant was established in 1999 and has a production area of 18,300 m² and approximately 1,200 employees who manufacture electronic and electro-mechanical assemblies. The facility has ISO 9002, ISO 14001, QS 9000, ISO/TS 16949 and BS7799 (Information Security Management system) certificates. They practice six sigma methodology and have eleven black belts. The facility has achieved World-Class Quality Level status based on GE Quality Assessment guidelines and was awarded the 2003 Quality Award by the government of the state of Nuevo Leon, Mexico.
Joe Foster, director of operations, Elcoteq Americas, said, "This increased capacity is consistent with our long range plans of growing Elcoteq's presence in the Americas."
Copyright 2004, UP Media Group. All rights reserved.
Sanmina-SCI Corp. (San Jose, CA), an electronics contract manufacturer, announced that seven of its medical device manufacturing facilities have been certified for ISO 13485 or 13488 as well as for Canadian Medical Devices Conformity Assessment System (CMDCAS) by TUV Rheinland of North America Inc. (Newtown, CT), a compliance engineering and independent testing services provider. The TUV quality sanctions augment earlier facility registrations for all seven facilities by the United States Food and Drug Administration (USFDA).
According to John Hendrick, executive vice president of Sanmina-SCI's Medical Systems Division, ISO 13488 certifications have been granted to facilities located in Alabama, China, Ireland, Singapore and Sweden while ISO 13485 certifications have been granted to facilities in California and Israel. The Israel facility was granted ISO 13485 certification by the Standards Institute of Israel, which plans to transition its certification to TUV Rheinland later this year.
Hendrick said, "By the end of the third quarter 2004, we expect to earn two more TUV certifications—one for an additional facility in Alabama and another for a facility in Mexico—which will expand TUV quality certifications to nine Sanmina-SCI medical facilities worldwide."
According to TUV Rheinland, the ISO 13485/13488 quality standards are specific to medical device quality systems and supplement the more generic ISO 9001 and 9002 standards that apply to many industries. The company also notes that the European Union (EU) has issued a number of directives that set forth compliance criteria for medical devices destined for the European market. These directives apply to a number of medical products, including active implantable medical and in vitro diagnostics devices. With its recent certifications, Sanmina-SCI is positioned to comply with EU directives, since a significant portion of demonstrating EU compliance depends on the prior establishment and independent assessment of quality systems.
Copyright 2004, UP Media Group. All rights reserved.
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