YPN visited Kulicke & Soffa in Eindhoven

After a warm welcome with beverages and some sweets, Jef Horijon started the afternoon with an insightful overview of Kulicke & Soffa (formerly recognized as Assembléon). The presentation encompassed a comprehensive review of K&S’s products and services, shedding light on the company’s operations in Eindhoven. Kulicke & Soffa stands at the forefront as a prominent supplier of semiconductor and electronic assembly equipment, with a particular focus on the development of pick-and-place systems and die-bonders in the Netherlands.

This presentation was followed by more technical oriented presentations. The development of the new SF tape feeder platform was presented by Remke Wielinga. This feeder is used in pick & place machines to feed SMD components to the placement head. The focus of this new development was to make the feeder more reliable, accurate, cost efficient and slimmer. It was impressive to see that the outcome resulted in a feeder width below 10 mm, capable of feeding component tapes from 4 mm and wider.

Hereafter Bram Slaats continued with discussing the development of two new camera modules for the pick & place systems. These cameras are used to correctly pick-up components and place them on the PCBs. One camera has a telecentric lens in combination with a liquid lens. This allows for variable focus without changing the magnification. The other camera system can take an image in only 10 microseconds allowing the imaging of components when they are in motion. Compared to the previous situation, that required the placement head to come to a complete stop above the camera, this new camera system improves production yield.

The last presentation was about die transfer for advanced displays in Eindhoven given by Rene Bouman. With these machines dies are transferred from a foil to a substrate. This was previously done mechanically (PIXALUX), but the latest development (LUMINEX) consists of a contactless laser based transfer process, which was impressive to see.

After the presentation, we continued with demonstrations. In these demonstrations, the previously discussed die-bonder and pick & place machine were shown in action. In addition, an example of a complete packing line was shown, which provided a good insight.

The afternoon was concluded with a nice drink with plenty of opportunity to get to know each other. Our great appreciation goes out to Kulicke & Soffa for the great organization of the visit, and to Menno van Tongeren in particular.

Hope to see you all next time,

Matthijs van Gastel, Maurits van den Hurk and Marc Gritter

DSPE Young Precision Network