-
- News
- Books
Featured Books
- smt007 Magazine
Latest Issues
Current IssueBox Build
One trend is to add box build and final assembly to your product offering. In this issue, we explore the opportunities and risks of adding system assembly to your service portfolio.
IPC APEX EXPO 2024 Pre-show
This month’s issue devotes its pages to a comprehensive preview of the IPC APEX EXPO 2024 event. Whether your role is technical or business, if you're new-to-the-industry or seasoned veteran, you'll find value throughout this program.
Boost Your Sales
Every part of your business can be evaluated as a process, including your sales funnel. Optimizing your selling process requires a coordinated effort between marketing and sales. In this issue, industry experts in marketing and sales offer their best advice on how to boost your sales efforts.
- Articles
- Columns
Search Console
- Links
- Events
||| MENU - smt007 Magazine
Dymax SpeedMask: Process Automation Shortens Throughput Times and Reduces Costs
July 25, 2022 | DymaxEstimated reading time: 2 minutes
Dymax has helped MTU Aero Engines, Germany’s leading engine manufacturer in Munich, to successfully use Dymax SpeedMask® temporary maskants for its engine components. While in the past special areas of the components still had to be masked off manually to partially prepare them for e.g., thermal or abrasive surface treatments, now fully automatic dispensers apply the light-curing material to the component in the shortest possible time with high precision.
Surface treatment, for example thermal spraying, is a key manufacturing process used on aero engine parts. In this process, certain surfaces must be temporarily masked with millimeter precision to protect them from inadvertent treatment during the process. For a long time, maskants were manually applied by affixing adhesive tapes, silicone rings, masks, or metal covers, all of which required a great deal of time and care. Growing product demand and increasingly complex shapes made it challenging for MTU to provide a precise and cost-effective temporary protection for sensitive component surfaces. When Thomas Kaltenecker, production planner at MTU Aero Engines, became acquainted with Dymax's light-curable maskants, he was certain the material would reduce challenges and improve the overall process. Dymax SpeedMask® maskants are easy to apply even to the most complex shapes and geometries and offer excellent properties to withstand high temperatures during finishing processes. Moreover, Dymax maskants can be seamlessly integrated into automated dispense and curing systems – in other words, exactly what MTU was looking for.
Programmable robotic arms, together with the Dymax SpeedMask®, perform this difficult task with ease. With various dispensers, the gel-like material is applied fully automatic with high precision to the surface or even sprayed to cover a larger area of the component. A brief exposure to UV light at the proper intensity and wavelength ensures that the material cures within seconds. The masking can be removed just as quickly after going through the various surface treatments without leaving any residue. This not only saves manufacturing time and production costs, but also has a positive effect on the sustainability of the process, as the error rate is reduced to nearly zero tolerance levels.
Thomas Kaltenecker enthusiastically stated, "Several hundred components in our portfolio undergo various surface treatment processes during their production, such as thermal coating, shot peening, electroplating, etc. The respective Dymax SpeedMask® masking processes can be adapted quickly and easily for this, resulting in significant time savings in our production process."
Virginia Hogan, Senior Global Business Development Manager at Dymax, added, "We are delighted that Dymax was able to support a total solution for MTU Aero Engines. Our application engineers, system integration, and internal sales teams worked together to not only provide a great maskant but deliver a fully automated dispense and curing machine. We are happy to continue to support MTU in making them more capable and their process more efficient."
Suggested Items
Designer’s Notebook: What Designers Need to Know About Manufacturing, Part 2
04/24/2024 | Vern Solberg -- Column: Designer's NotebookThe printed circuit board (PCB) is the primary base element for providing the interconnect platform for mounting and electrically joining electronic components. When assessing PCB design complexity, first consider the component area and board area ratio. If the surface area for the component interface is restricted, it may justify adopting multilayer or multilayer sequential buildup (SBU) PCB fabrication to enable a more efficient sub-surface circuit interconnect.
Real Time with... IPC APEX EXPO 2024: Advancements in Laser Depaneling with LPKF
04/24/2024 | Real Time with...IPC APEX EXPOJake Benz, LPKF sales manager for North America, discusses the company's advancements in laser depaneling. LPKF has introduced a green wavelength laser for processing rigid FR-4 circuit boards, bringing significant gains in processing speeds to market. The company transitioned from IR CO2 to UV wavelength due to heat and burning issues.
KYZEN to Focus on AQUANOX A4618 at SMTA Wisconsin Expo & Tech Forum
04/22/2024 | KYZEN'KYZEN, the global leader in innovative environmentally friendly cleaning chemistries, will exhibit at the SMTA Wisconsin Expo & Tech Forum, scheduled to take place Tuesday, May 7, 2024 at the Four Poins by Sheraton, Milwaukee Airport in Milwaukee, WI.
AIM Solder’s Dillon Zhu to Present on Ultraminiature Soldering at SMTA China East
04/22/2024 | AIMAIM Solder, a leading global manufacturer of solder assembly materials for the electronics industry, is pleased to announce that Dillon Zhu will present on the topic: Ultraminiature Soldering: Techniques, Technologies, and Standards at SMTA China East. This event is being held at the Shanghai World Expo Exhibition & Convention Center from April 24-25.
Intel Gaudi, Xeon and AI PC Accelerate Meta Llama 3 GenAI Workloads
04/22/2024 | Intel CorporationMeta launched Meta Llama 3, its next-generation large language model (LLM). Effective on launch day, Intel has validated its AI product portfolio for the first Llama 3 8B and 70B models across Intel® Gaudi® accelerators, Intel® Xeon® processors, Intel® Core™ Ultra processors and Intel® Arc™ graphics.