Contract manufacturer Groupe Syselec, based near Toulouse in France, is the first Europlacer customer in Europe to install a placement machine from the award-winning new atom platform range. Having placed its order for an atom3 machine last summer, while the platform was still in the final stage of development, Syselec was in fact the first customer on Europlacer’s worldwide atom order book.

To deliver the productivity improvements Syselec quite rightly anticipated from its atom machine acquisition before the platform’s global launch last November, Europlacer provided the company with a stop gap: an XPii machine to sit in front of its existing iineo machine. This gave the performance needed to meet Syselec’s high-volume production targets.

Now that Europe’s first atom3 machine has been delivered and installed, Syselec has been able to compare its live productivity data from the new platform against the combination of two machines in line to reveal an impressive 15% uplift in throughput. Using the iineo II and XPii II in combination, featuring a total of 40 placement nozzles across four high-flexibility turret heads, the placement cycle time for a Syselec board was 84 seconds. In contrast, the new atom3, which can run at placement speed up to 65,000cph and features eight nozzles on its turret head and 16 nozzles on its pair of high-speed Pulsar pipette heads, completed the same board in just 72 seconds.

“The conclusion is clear,” says Fabrice Castes, CEO of Groupe Syselec. “The single atom3 machine with just three heads outperforms a pair of highly-regarded Europlacer platforms with four heads – and all in a less floorspace. We are delighted with the outcome. Our early adoption of the atom platform is proving to be a great strategic business decision. It has exceeded our expectations.”

Groupe Syselec specialises in electronics and electromechanical contract manufacturing, with surface mount assembly a core service in addressing the needs of customers in the industrial, automotive, aeronautics, lifting, automation and waste recycling sectors. The company now operates three SMT assembly lines in parallel: a high-volume line featuring the new atom3, a medium-volume line deploying the iineo, and a prototyping line centred on a Europlacer iico upcycled placement machine.


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