A good many companies now use the current economic situation for both cost reductions on the shop floor and for improvements of manufactured product quality. For example, Siplace™ equipment will be increasingly employed for the automated placement of relays and connectors in bigger sizes. These components, delivered in stick magazines, have to be supplied into the placement machines through special feeder mechanisms.

The automation experts of IPTE Factory Automation have designed such cost-efficient stick-feeder systems including the entire Siplace™ interface. Also the docking procedure on placement equipment of other makes has been made trouble-free. Moreover, the new IPTE stick-feeder system can be employed in combination with the extended X-table on the Siplace™ equipment. IPTE Factory Automation is the market leader with this feeder product and has been awarded as preferred supplier.

In order to design this special stick feeder, the IPTE engineers have utilized their profound expertise in the field of component feeding, so a high-quality and efficient system has been realized. Minimum cycle times of 0.75 sec for a placement operation help to avoid bottlenecks in the placement process. The innovative design by inspired engineers provide for high reliability and very high technical avail-ability of the feeder system. A capable control allows for the simple and intuitive human operation via just four keys. Status messages on the two-line display also support the easy handling of the system.

As the system provides special features such as “secondary feeding”, idle times reducing throughput during the placement process can be avoided in the case of stick-feeder exchange. With such features IPTE has been able to further enhance its market position.

The IPTE feeder systems are a high-quality product “Made in Europe”. Here, everything relevant in the engineering and manufacturing process derives from one source, be it construction, mechanics, controls, up to the production and support. The feeder systems are provided turnkey-ready, which means all component-specific application tools and adaptations are included. The IPTE feeder systems are designed with utmost ease-of-use in mind; therefore, the customers can usually put them into operation on their own.