In order to reduce the PCB Assembly process cost and improve product quality, the PCB industry manufacturers has been introduced in recent years, computer integrated manufacturing (CIM) technology between the CAD design system and the PCB assembly lines to establish an organic information integration and sharing, reduce the conversion time from design to manufacturing, to realize the integration of the electronic product manufacturing process control, Thus, the electronic products with low cost, high quality and high reliability can be obtained quickly.

Assemble CIM and PCB

In PCBA industry, CIM is a paperless manufacturing information system based on computer network and database, which can improve the quality, capacity and output of circuit assembly. It can control and monitor assembly line equipment such as screen printing machine, dispensing machine, SMT machine, insert machine, test equipment and repair workstation. It mainly has the following functions:

1. The most basic function of CIM is the integration of CAD/CAM to realize the automatic conversion of CAD data to manufacturing data required by production equipment, that is, to realize automatic programming and easily realize product conversion. Changes to the product are automatically reflected in machine programs, test data, and documentation without having to program each device, which means that product transformations that used to take hours or even days can now be implemented in minutes.

2, provides the manufacturability and testability analysis tools, through to the design department to CAD file for manufacturability analysis, will be in violation of the rules of SMT problem feedback to the design of the system, promote the concurrent engineering design and manufacturing system, enhance the success rate design, testability analysis tools can provide the designer with a complete rate of measurable analysis report, Assist development engineer to complete necessary pre-production corrections.

3. Arrange production schedule and maximize production and assembly efficiency through comprehensive analysis and consideration of parameters such as products to be assembled, machine occupancy rate and delivery cycle requirements. CIM can be used for immediate short-term scheduling or for long-term strategic consideration of plant capacity.

4. Balance and process optimization of production line. A major feature of CIM is to achieve the optimization of assembly by automatically balancing product loading, sorting, distribution and mounting of components, and equipment speed, which can reasonably allocate parts to appropriate machines or adopt manual assembly process.

In summary, THE CIM can monitor the entire assembly process and quality status of a product. In case of a problem, the CIM can feedback information to the operator or process engineer and indicate the exact location of the problem. Statistical analysis tools capture and analyze data during production in real time, rather than waiting for a report to be generated. It can be said that CIM is a key part of CIMS, which can provide the required data for the entire production planning, timing and plant management. The fundamental goal of CIM, which is still evolving, is to achieve fully integrated production control.

Accelerate the application of CIM in PCBA industry in China

Under the promotion of the national “863” CIMS special project group, China has established many typical CIMS application projects in the machinery manufacturing industry. Beijing Machine Tool Works and Huazhong University of Science and Technology have won the International CIMS Promotion and Application Award successively, indicating that China has entered the international leading level in the research and development of CIMS. However, there is no real implementation of CIMS project in the electronic product manufacturing industry.

Recently, SMT technology is being rapidly adopted in PBCA industry in China. In recent years, thousands of advanced SMT automation production lines have been introduced. These production line equipment are basically computer-controlled automation equipment, which creates favorable conditions for PCBA industry to implement CIMS project.

In view of the specific situation of PCBA industry in China, the experience and lessons of CIMS implementation in machinery industry in recent years are accepted, and the implementation of CIMS project in PCBA industry is not necessarily a mask, but the key is the application of CIM. The application of CIM technology in PCBA industry enables enterprises to have the characteristics of multi-variety and variable batch production, improves the ability of enterprises to respond to market changes quickly, and thus improves the competitiveness of enterprises in global large-scale production.

This section describes the popular CIM software

The world famous CIM software mainly includes CIMBridge of Mitron Company, CAE Technologies’ C-Link, Unicam’s Unicam, Fabmaster’s Fabmaster, Fuji’s F4G, and Panasonic’s Pamacim all have roughly the same basic functions. Among them, Mitron and Fabmaster have stronger strength and higher market share, Unicam and C-Link take second place, F4G and Pamacim have fewer functions, mainly to achieve CAD/CAM data conversion and production line balance, which are developed by equipment manufacturers for their equipment, but not many applications.

Mitron has the most complete functions, mainly including seven modules: CB/EXPORT, manufacturability analysis; CB/PLAN, production PLAN; CB/PRO, production evaluation, production optimization, production data file generation; CB/TEST/INSPECTION; CB/TRACE, production process tracking; CB/PQM, production quality management; CB/DOC, production report generation and production document management.

Fabmaster has advantages in testing, including measuability analysis, SMD manufacturing time balance, manual plug-in job file generation, needle bed fixture design, failure parts display and line tracking.

Unicam is functionally similar to Mitron, although it is a smaller company and does not advertise its products as much as Mitron. Its main functional modules are: UNICAM, UNIDOC, U/TEST, FACTORY ADVISOR, PROCESS TOOLS.

Overview of CIM software applications at home and abroad

Although CIM is still under development and improvement, it has been widely used in Europe and the United States, most PCBA manufacturers have introduced computer integrated manufacturing. Universal and Philips, world-renowned assembly equipment manufacturers, use Mitron’s software for system integration. Dovatron factory, a contract manufacturer in the United States, has a total of 9 SMT production lines, in addition to semi-automatic, manual insert production lines, using Unicam and Mitron software for system information integration and control. The PCB assembly line of Fuji USA adopts Unicam CIM software to realize computer integration and control production.

In Asia, Fabmaster has the highest market share, and its market share in Taiwan is more than 80%. Tescon, a Japanese company we are familiar with, has successfully used Fabmaster’s software to realize information integration of PCB assembly line.

In mainland China, CIM software is hardly introduced into PCB assembly line. The research on CIM application in PCBA has just begun. System Department of Fiberhome Communication Company takes the lead in introducing CAD/CAM integrated system into its SMT line, realizing automatic conversion from CAD data to CAM and automatic programming of SMT machine. And can automatically generate test program.