Spanning almost 12 metres in length and 1.8 metres in width, and weighing approximately 9 tonnes, the unit comprises preheating zones, a peak zone, the very large vacuum chamber – which offers space for products measuring 71 cm by 85 cm – and five cooling zones.
„Demanding cycle times, which enable a very high product throughput, and the sizes of the components to be produced by the customer have meant that the dimensions of the convection-based soldering oven with vacuum function now exceed even the standard dimensions of our V-series.“ says Florian Graf, Head of Sales & Marketing at SMT Thermal Discoveries.
„We know the market very well and, of course, monitor it very closely. To our knowledge, no facility of this kind and on this scale has appeared on the market to date,“,Graf continued.
At present, it can therefore be assumed that this model is probably the world’s largest reflow soldering system with a vacuum function currently in operation.
Reflow soldering systems, based on convection technology, have been the core business of the Wertheim-based company SMT since its foundation in 1987. Reflow vacuum soldering systems have been part of the product range since 2009. „Existing, established and reliable technology has now been scaled up here.”.
„In theory, it would be possible to build even larger plants“ According to Graf. „You do need a bit of space, then. However, with the different models – the V290, V350, V450 and V580 – we can also cater for customers who don’t have that space.“.