We promised incremental improvements during this industry down time, but our latest improvement for the 3K Series goes way beyond incremental in the results produced. We can now assure exquisite accuracy over the wide range of a moving head gantry automatic.

Our automatics have always moved to position by executing counts calculated by software with stepper motors driving the tightest hardware connections we could construct. New optical encoders with glass scales and compact laser sensors now provide feedback to gage those motions. With the lead screws already placed outside the ways, the encoders are mounted centrally in protected positions within the way assemblies. Target locations are stored in memory in encoder units, and are read in those units at bonding, and corrected if necessary. The errors revealed, while small, were of increasing concern for today’s ever-smaller devices and closer bond-pitch.

Some competitors will say that’s nothing new, servos have always had feedback. Well, they had to, to work at all. It is quite a simpler task to execute a few stepper motor micro-steps directly than to manage the fine degree of current control to dither a servomotor into position. So our machines remain simpler overall, and with lower costs, have lower price.

But now this accuracy is real – it is what is stated in our Specifications -- and there is nothing lower about its degree, compared to anyone.