Tabletop welders for PCBs, medical devices

Welding-equipment manufacturer Miyachi Unitek Corp.has introduced a versatile series of tabletop hot-bar reflow soldering systems for reflow soldering, heat-seal and/or ACF bonding, hot-bar bonding and heat-staking applications.

Miyachi's Desktop Bonders incorporate the company's Thermo-Plane thermodes, which reportedly facilitates ultrafast heating and cooling cycles.

The units incorporate pneumatic bonding heads that feature the company’s Quick Connect Blocks and Thermo-Plane thermodes. The exclusive thermode design offers ultrafast heating and cooling cycles, which minimize process times, says Miyachi. Forced air-cooling after the heating process further speeds the total bonding process. The thermode is designed to maintain co-planarity and withstand deformation that tends to occur in some bonding processes.

Another key design feature is the elimination of voltage drop as current flows from front-to-back instead of left-to-right, preventing damage to the parts when soldering.

The series includes a range of product-handling features to tailor the bonder for use in particular applications, including left-right and front-rear slides, as well as rotary tables. Left-right and rotary models are ideal for higher throughput or higher volume applications, including production of cell phone parts. Models with in-out slides facilitate loading and unloading and visual alignment of parts, with or without a camera. The slide modules operate either manually or pneumatically and have an option for three-stop positions, which is specially designed for two bonding locations on a single PCB.

Each of the desktop units in the series is connected to, and powered by, Miyachi Unitek’s powerful and flexible Uniflow3 power-supply system for pulse-heated, selective soldering, conductive adhesive bonding and thermocompression bonding. The Uniflow3 provides targeted heating and precision temperature control for such components as flex circuits, ribbon cables, wires, SMT components, single or dual sided edge connectors and thermocompression bonding of gold ribbon.

Besides welding equipment, Miyachi Unitek offers laser cutting, marking and engraving systems.