Clean potting is the key — manual and serial

Per­for­mance is not always the only focus in pro­duc­tion – it is not uncom­mon for more flex­i­bil­i­ty to be added. The machine man­u­fac­tur­er Fichter Maschi­nen, for exam­ple, was look­ing for a one com­po­nent and two com­po­nent dos­ing solu­tion for a new­ly devel­oped appli­ca­tion with which, for exam­ple, pot­ting com­pounds can be dis­pensed both man­u­al­ly and automatically.

Such machines are used for the pot­ting of elec­tron­ic com­po­nents, for exam­ple, which are assem­bled from a large num­ber of small com­po­nents and then pot­ted or encap­su­lat­ed to pro­tect them against exter­nal influ­ences. The solu­tion designed by Fichter Maschi­nen is par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ing for com­pa­nies that want to pot more flex­i­bly, but not nec­es­sar­i­ly faster, as Mar­tin Bau­mann from Fichter Maschi­nen points out.

As the engi­neer explains, this occurs, for exam­ple, with man­u­fac­tur­ers with the need to be able to switch between ser­i­al and man­u­al oper­a­tion for pro­to­type pro­duc­tion on a sys­tem. A Vis­cotec Vis­co-Duo-VM mix­ing sys­tem and a so-called man­u­al manip­u­la­tor are cen­tral to the sys­tem, now built by Fichter Maschi­nen. The Vis­coTec pot­ting head, which is fit­ted on this manip­u­la­tor, pre­cise­ly dis­pens­es and mix­es the two com­po­nents of a stan­dard two com­po­nent cast­ing com­pound. In addi­tion, buffer tanks and a mate­r­i­al degassing sys­tem for both com­po­nents can be installed in order to achieve an option­al degassing com­pound for bub­ble-free pot­ting. Fur­ther acces­sories, such as air-dry­ing units or inert gas load­ing and, if nec­es­sary, a cir­cu­la­tion line for return­ing the mate­r­i­al to the stir­ring ves­sel to avoid sed­i­men­ta­tion of the fillers in the sys­tem, are also available.

Manual work does not have to be exhausting

The force of the weight on the manip­u­la­tor is bal­anced by a rope pull bal­ancer – so that an oper­a­tor can posi­tion the mix­ing sys­tem in any axis with min­i­mal effort and pot the desired elec­tron­ic com­po­nents. The auto­mat­ed ver­sion uses a col­lab­o­rat­ing 6‑axis robot and a pal­let stor­age sys­tem. In a first process step, the robot retrieves a pal­let from the stor­age. In the sec­ond process step, the robot picks up the Vis­coTec pot­ting head and then moves along the grid until the pre-pro­grammed num­ber of com­po­nents to be pot­ted has been processed. Once this is com­plet­ed, the robot push­es the processed pal­let back into the stor­age and then retrieves the next pal­let from the stor­age and the process restarts.

When asked about his deci­sion to opt for a Vis­cotec dis­pens­ing and mix­ing sys­tem, Bau­mann looks back on his 15 years of expe­ri­ence in the field of encap­su­la­tion and bond­ing. He first came into con­tact with Vis­coTec dur­ing the course of his research. He was impressed by the prin­ci­ple of the pro­gres­sive cav­i­ty pump for tech­ni­cal imple­men­ta­tion in dis­pens­ing and pot­ting appli­ca­tions. Vis­cotec’s tech­nol­o­gy offers a fur­ther advan­tage in addi­tion to clean mate­r­i­al break­age: The com­pact design of the mix­ing sys­tem allows it to be attached direct­ly to the pot­ting head – in such sys­tems, this saves a lot of valves and pipes and there­fore makes automa­tion much eas­i­er. The vol­u­met­ric dis­pens­ing sys­tems are pul­sa­tion-free and repeat­able. The adjustable suck-back ensures that the mate­r­i­al is bro­ken off – drip­ping or even accu­mu­la­tion of prod­uct can be avoid­ed reli­ably. The Vis­cotec mix­ing sys­tem has been spe­cial­ly designed to meet the require­ments of Fichter Maschi­nen. In addi­tion to var­i­ous cast­ing com­pounds (polyurethanes, sil­i­cones, epox­ies), it can also be used for mois­ture-sen­si­tive or light-sen­si­tive mate­ri­als that can be cured with addi­tion­al UV lamps. Vis­cotec is also known for its abil­i­ty to process dif­fer­ent vis­cosi­ties with wide­ly spread mix­ing ratios and under­lines the flex­i­bil­i­ty demand­ed by Fichter Maschinen.