Rexxam Co., Ltd. offers diverse businesses, including printed circuit board assembly (PCBA) automated optical inspection (AOI) systems business, electronic manufacturing services (EMS), and semiconductor-related equipment business. While bolstering its production system not only in Japan but also overseas, the company has been expanding the models mainly of PCBA AOI systems, including a model with an artificial intelligence (AI) function.

Hiroyuki Sumida, Vice President, Rexxam Co., Ltd. said the company was not quite optimistic to expect growth because of the U.S.-China trade tensions since 2019 and then the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic in 2020, which both have impacted the global economy.

“Nonetheless, the air conditioning equipment industry, which is our company’s main domain, saw an increase in demand for air conditioners despite some temporary drop in sales initially. This was because of the prolonged heat wave in some parts of the world and the increased hours people spent at home because of the pandemic. The demand for air conditioners is recovering to usual year’s level,” said Sumida.

Invests in Mounting Lines

In Japan, Rexxam has production bases in Kagawa and Ehime Prefectures and in Suzhou, Shenzhen, Dongguan, Anning, and Kunming in China. It also maintains factories in Thailand and Czech Republic.

The company has been installing a leading-edge mounter, which supports small surface mount components, in particular, multilayer ceramic capacitors (MLCCs), in its mounting lines in Suzhou and Shenzhen plants, which are its main production bases outside Japan. Early 2020, its Thailand facility also started operations.

Rexxam has also been actively investing in mounting lines of main plants in Japan. The company has been gearing up for further production increase by actively making new investments in plants and equipment to concentrate mounting lines to a factory with a floor area of 86,000sq.m in Saijo-shi, Ehime Prefecture.

3D PCBA AOI Gathers Steam

Sumida said, “While the demand (for PCBA AOI systems) dropped in 2020 as investments in plants and equipment slumped amid the deterioration of global economy, inquiries for three-dimensional (3D) AOI systems have been increasing since the second half of last year, complementing the trend of miniaturization of mounting components.”

Data consumption, Sumida noted, has significantly increased with the growth of demand in the use of communications equipment as more people have to stay, attend class or work at home, pulling the demand as well of traceability devices for communications equipment.

Inquiries on the Watson QR-800 laser marking system, Sumida said, which was released last year, have been increasing.

Rexxam’s Sherlock Series AOI systems provide functionality and operability that concentrate know-how the company has nurtured on its factory lines in Japan and abroad.

The Sherlock-3D-1100S 3D AOI system has achieved measurements with height resolution of 12μm adopting the company’s original intelligence camera and line laser. Inspection data creation algorithm incorporates an automatic component setting function, which applies deep learning technology.

The Sherlock-300R backside inspection system, which is specialized for the inspection of flow soldering surface, incorporates a whole surface inspection mode for foreign matters and solder balls.

Sherlock-300I and 300F 2D inspection systems for M-size substrates support 0603 components at standard magnification and 0402 components at high magnification, and are achieving inspection speed of 5,000mm²/sec.

Recently, in the board mounting, the scaling down of components, higher density, weather resistance, and longer life are required. Against this backdrop, Rexxam premiered Sherlock-SP-700 solder paste inspection system and Pegasus-600I substrate coating system at NEPCON Japan held in January. The systems will be put on the market in 2021.