Under our TOOLS AND RESOURCES tab, we now have additional resources which will consist of various links to industry web sites and various white papers we have issued. For the moment, the two papers we have incorporated into the site cover

1) Return-on-investment issues (ROI determination for a given project) and
2) Process control through height measurement and needle tip calibration.

We are planning several additional articles, and as they are added, we will mention them in our newsletters.

    UV cure materials have many critical production floor advantages, but many UV cure materials are skin sensitizers and present contact dermatitus issues. In low cycle time, high volume applications, the newly formed gasket or dispensed conformal coat is passed on automatically to a UV cure lamp by either conveyor or index table. In low volume applications this additional automation can be cost prohibitive, causing many to opt for operator load and unload of uncured parts.

At New Precision Technology we have an alternative for low volume production: on-board uv cure. With this process, a gasket or coating is dispensed and then the part is driven to the back of the dispenser where a UV lamp exposes the material and the material then solidifies. As a result, the operator is not exposed to uncured material through part handling. As there are no handling steps between dispense and cure, there is no opportunity for accidental deformation due to handling. Gasket slumping is controlled as the interval between dispense and cure is strictly defined.

While this is not a new process for us - we have systems with on-board UV cure that have been in the field for more than ten years - our new graphical-user-interface tightly integrates a variety of differing UV manufacturer's systems with our controls. This tight integration allows better diagnostics, improved shutter control, and in many cases, more precise exposure control.

    Leveraging the advantages of pc platforms, New Precision Technology has incorporated a USB video interface into our DispenseLink software. This now enables us to offer video from directly within the DispenseLink interface. This video feed overlays an adaptive crosshair atop the image and also offers up to 8x digital magnification.
The camera is considered one of four possible heads on the platform, complete with its own offsets and built in calibration to relate the crosshair center with the dispense tip and other heads. This makes the camera an exquisite tool to update CAD coordinates with part as-molded variations.
Another interesting use of the camera is as a tip calibrator for angled tips that are theta rotated. The 8x magnification makes +/-0.001" repeatable tip location a production floor level reality. In one case, six different operators calibrated dispense tips using this system with no discernable variation in gasket quality.

    A new interface board adds scaleable capability to the entire line of New Precision Technology, Inc's robotic platforms. This addition now enables us to offer microstepping systems in either the traditional open loop format or in closed loop encoder feedback servo format. This board also includes a built-in CANbus interface, isolated IO, and stackable expansion.
The design allows the mounting of the axis drives directly to the board, saving valuable space, reducing wiring requirements, and ultimately giving New Precision Technology, Inc. a hedge against rising material costs.

    Our height measurement capability has been recently augmented with the addition of the Keyence GT2 tactile height sensor. When coupled with New Precision Technology's advanced calibration procedure, the sensor perfectly follows the motion of the Z axis of a dispenser. Jogging the machine 0.0001" and having the probe follow with excellent synchronisity is causing us to re-evaluate whether the 0.002" accuracy we advertise in Z is a bit too conservative!
The new probe also has an excellent bearing for the contact rod and as a result there is no ambiguity as to what point is actually being measured. In the past with loose fitting LVDT rods, measurement of points with small areas or slopes in Z (such as circular cutouts in the XZ or YZ planes) was cause for concern as the probe could slip in the XY plane. With the new GT2, the probe is not prone to this slippage and the measurements are more accurate.
Finally the data rate out of the new probe is higher than in the past, allowing for better measurement rates and even better accuracy as more stability samples can be collected in less time.