Escaping the selective soldering process bottleneck with VERSAFLOW 4/55

In terms of the range of services, the Wildmoser philosophy is to consistently augment the company with the addition of services which will advance the customer and Wildmoser equally. This includes having the necessary equipment and know-how within the company and being able to offer them all from one source. One example is the company’s own two EMC chambers for checking electromagnetic compatibility. These made the company independent of external service providers – and saved time and costs, which benefited not only the customers. A further example from 2005: the development of prototype manufacturing. In the beginning it was just between one and three prototypes, initially assembled by hand. Demand grew – and so did the Wildmoser level of frustration at the search for suppliers willing to produce mini-series of between five and 15 units. This led to the decision in favour of the company developing its own prototype manufacturing with pick-and-place machines, stencil printers, soldering systems, 3D printers, a flying probe system and AOI.

It was the prototype manufacturing which ultimately led to the entry into series production in 2017. A customer approached Wildmoser electronic with the request that they take on the manufacturing of his project, having already been responsible for its development. Stefan Wildmoser was initially hesitant, but came around to the idea. “The challenge is in keeping a company like Wildmoser electronic running into the future. The entry into series production was actually the logical advancement from a development team to a full-service company, although our main focus will continue to be on development with linked manufacturing. We do not see ourselves as a purely EMS manufacturer,” explains Stefan Wildmoser.

Today, four SMD production lines are located in the Wildmoser electronic premises. In the soldering process, the emphasis has been placed on vapour phase and selective soldering. The latter led to a bottleneck in series production in manufacturing a customer order, a control device with two 64-pole plugs. At present, Wildmoser is producing 120,000 of these control devices per year. At one minute each, the cycle times for a module were significantly too long, and no satisfactory soldering quality was achieved. There were considerable problems with bridge formation and missing joints. A solution had to be found.

The beginning of 2018 saw the initial contact with the system supplier Ersa GmbH from Wertheim, worldwide market leader in this sector with 3,000 selective soldering machines installed worldwide. During a site visit by the responsible Ersa Area Sales Managers to Puchheim near Munich, company owner, Stefan Wildmoser, and Michael Trapp, responsible for production, discussed the machine project. The current setup featuring individual modules in a soldering frame was to be retained. Therefore, Ersa initially chose the ECOSELECT 4 with y-variable dual solder module for parallel processing of the two components for this project. The special thing about this system: If required, it can be expanded with just a few flicks of the wrist and a moderate investment volume to a full VERSAFLOW 4/55. In addition, both systems can run on the same software platform so that that the operator does not have to be familiarised with new machine controls after the conversion. Even subsequent expansion with a second or third soldering module would be possible without difficulty. All interesting features for Wildmoser in the installation of a well-thought out in-house selective soldering base. If, at a later date, capacity needs to be increased, production readiness could quickly be reinstated following machinery expansion.