LOS ANGELES -- Placement, placement, placement. It’s the most expensive machine on the line, and at Apex the OEMs showed once again why that’s the case.

Europlacer will debut the iieno, a 264 (!) 8-mm feeder placement machine that can handle boards up to 1.5 meters long. With the dual gantry option, the machine places a reported 28,000 cph. It is due on the market in about two months.

Ovation showed the Smart Stencil, which converts a conventional screen printer into a dispenser. The company will begin to offer its own dispensing valves this summer. It also showed a new squeegee blade holder, which uses a magnet to hold blades in place.

SonoTek has a dross reducer separates, via pressure and melting, oxidized solder. The machine is said to cut dross by 60 to 70% in a 10-minute cycle, and comes in capacities up to 20 kg. Celestica, Jabil and Solectron are said to be users.

On the test and inspection side, Everett Charles Technologies showed the Pogo Pb-free probes, which come with a proprietary coating that increases the hardness to over 500 knoop.

Thanks in large part to Christopher Associates, the NSpec line of AOI has given way to its OEM, Marantz (which has some 4,500 installations worldwide).

Inovaxe is working on a one-bay, MSD-capable version of its mobile parts storage carts.

Aqueous Technologies debuted the SMT 1000 Quad Defluxer, a four-chamber batch cleaner said to cut discharge to just 40 gal./hr. The machine has separate wash and rinse pumps for each chamber, and moves boards by about ¾” in each direction during the wash cycle to avoid shadowing.

The McDry component storage cabinet, marketed in North America by Seika Machinery, now holds up to 25 reels. The company has installed 400 units to date.

FineTech’s auto-rework machine now handles 01005s and comes a library of more than 400 component soldering profiles.

DEK’s Cyclone stencil cleaner can cut cleaning time up to 50%. The tool comes standard on the company’s Europa and Galaxy printers.

Pro-Mation Inc. showed a new label printer.

Direct Logix has built in Web-based revision control for part data to its Control Center software tool.

Soldering guru Dr. Laura Turbini is joining Research in Motion as chemistry lab manager and principal scientist.

Vitronics has topped 110 installations of its new XPM3 reflow oven.

Koh Young has sold 300 SPI machines worldwide, 60 in North America.

Mike Austin was named sales director, Americas, for Vitronics.

Juki is selling a reported 300 placement machines per month, 150 in China.

Tamura is opening a new factory in Kentucky, in part to service Denso, which has purchased several systems.