Dispense Technology

OFF-LINE PROGRAMMING HYBRID COATING MACHINE

Being the first supplier of Conformal Coating systems with a standard integrated camera for fiducial alignment and process control, DIMA Dispense Technology has even taken the Hybrid Conformal Coating System to a next step. By releasing the latest version of Hybrid Coating software we have created the possibility to fully off-line program a coating process in the most optimal way.

The standard integrated camera of the HC-series coating and dispensing machines was already being used for fiducials alignment, inspection of the boards and easy programming of the machine. This prevented the operator to stick its head inside the machine in order to find the correct coating positions, or to see if the coating was applied in the correct areas. The camera could also be used to easy program the machine. 

At DIMA we belief that a machine should be used for production, not for programming. Therefore DIMA is again ahead of the industry by being the first supplier to enable true off-line programming. At DIMA it is not only a promise, it is the only one that really works!.

Off-line programming starts with taking a picture of the board to be coated. Us-ing the fiducial XY co-ordinates from a CAD-file enables to size the picture inside the software to its true size. After doing this programming becomes Childs play. Within the camera image shown in the software we indicate the size of the selected nozzle used to coat the board together with the selected width of where the coating material will be applied. (Picture 1, nozzle size (purple) and material width indication (black & white)) This makes it extremely easy to determine whether the selected nozzle would interfere with high components and furthermore you can exactly specify where the coating material will be applied on the board. When a line is being programmed this line is being drawn on top of the picture. This line that represents the coating material on the board is drawn transparent in order to still see which components are being covered and which are not. (Picture 2, transparant coating layers with 2 different colours) If different materials or different viscosities are being used, you can even specify this by using different colours. By indicating where the coating material will be applied, programming mistakes are also being limited. Furthermore it also helps to avoid that areas are being coated twice. Within each program you can select up to 4 different nozzles and 4 different materials. When choosing a different nozzle, automatically the nozzle indication in the camera image is being adjusted as well. All parameters to create a required line width and thickness are taken from a library within the soft-ware. All data per line created in the software can easily be changed in order to fine tune the coating program. Well known features within the electronics industry like creating a multiple board out of a single board, bad marking a panel within a multiple board and creating a variant are also available within the Hybrid Coater software. When creating a multiple from a single board provides the advantage that if something needs to be changed on the single panel, this change automatically is being transferred to all other panels of the multiple board. (picture 3, multiple boards) Like it should be, Dima is the first oneto provide the opportunity to coat boards on a coating machine while at the same time new boards can accurately be programmed off-line, without the need to use the machine and therefore having to stop the pro-duction. Again DIMA is leading the market and it is our goal to stay ahead of the market.