Continuing Growth in SMT assembly business leads JJS to further AOI investment

Leicestershire-based contract electronics manufacturer JJS Electronics has invested in new Automatic Optical Inspection equipment from Mirtec to further extend its AOI capability and meet increasing capacity demands from customers.

Installed at the company’s Lutterworth facility last week, the new Mirtec MV-3L system offers an advanced technology feature set including a 10-megapixel colour imaging camera with optical resolution below ten microns. Off-line programming and repair stations further boost productivity. In addition, and of paramount importance to the traceability requirements of most JJS customers, the system provides through-the-lens barcode reading.

During the selection process, the JJS engineering team benchmarked the Mirtec against competitive machines and existing AOI equipment in the Lutterworth factory. The trials demonstrated inspection throughputs of up to double that of the current JJS technology as well as faster programming and set up times. “We were impressed by many factors including the intuitive and user-friendly programming,” says Russell Poppe, Director of Group Engineering at JJS Electronics, adding: “but the convincing proof came in a significant reduction in false calls when comparing assembled boards with identical inspection criteria, both on other candidate systems and our existing in-house resources.”

“In addition to growth in our electromechanical, box build and cabinet assembly business, we are experiencing a significant increase in demand from both new and existing customers for our pcb assembly and test services. We therefore needed to augment our production capabilities to keep up with the escalating demand whilst maintaining our quality standards.” Russell Poppe sees the new Mirtec AOI playing a pivotal role: “It delivers the real-time inspection we need and provides empirical data for process control and refinement on the increasing volumes of SMT assemblies we’re dealing with,” he says.