Leading Contract Electronic Manufacturer Briton EMS Ltd has recently invested in a new high specification SMT facility; enabling Briton to double the size of its Caxton Park premises based in Bedford. The latest expansion accommodates an all new air conditioned low humidity SMT facility with a brand new high accuracy Mydata placement machine. The new MY19E machine is accompanied by Speedprint, Nutek and Heller equipment to form a high precision SMT line. Two further high feeder count placement machines complete the new facility.

           

Enlarging its site in Bedford increased total manufacturing area to 22,000 square feet; the company is now able to fulfil its ambitious plans for continued growth in the future. "At this point we had to make a crucial decision," said Manufacturing Director, Simon Naylor. "The easy option would probably have been to buy an additional machine of a similar type, however, we explored the possibility of broadening our equipment portfolio by investigating other equipment on offer and quickly realised that the Mydata, Nutek, Speedprint and Heller equipment was of good fit for our future requirements."

Since the company handles production runs of between one and a thousand boards, the time spent on changeovers is a major factor in determining job costs.  Briton’s production team was very impressed with the ability of the 2D inspection option on the automatic Speedprint stencil printer. The Mydata placement machine was also very impressive, with its accurate and repeatable placement of components, including problematic packages, such as QFN, DFN and microBGA devices, as well as tiny 01005 passives.

With the new facility in day to day use, Briton EMS is finding that productivity is boosted, not only by the efficiency of the in line equipment and the dependable high-speed operation but of the Mydata hydra head and its associated placement optimisation software. In addition, the Myplan scheduling software schedules jobs so that a minimum number of feeder changes are needed at each changeover, which once again is helping to increase the company’s overall productivity.