Selective soldering

Leader in robotic soldering

mta traces its origins to the watch-making industry in Switzerland over 50 years ago. We are a leader in robotic soldering because our rich history stems from a culture of precision and reliability. We started making soldering robots in the mid-‘80s. Our product development engineers leverage this culture to design machines that meet stringent uptime requirements. They design machines flexible enough to fulfill a wide range of applications. Then, they standardize the designs to keep costs down.

Similarly, our process development engineers have tested tens of thousands of solder joints on nearly every product imaginable. They use this wealth of experience to select technologies and develop processes optimized to provide the highest quality and solder joints and maximum yield.

Machine design

Customers have a wide range of production requirements. High-volume customers need inline machine cells. Hi-mix customer need a highly flexible platform. Budget-oriented customers might opt for semi-automated table-top robots. System integrators frequently install our robots inside their enclosure or mount our soldering head on their robot. mta has several standardized robot platforms suited to fulfill each of these production requirements. 

Each of these platforms can be outfitted with several of our standardized soldering heads. For example, electric vehicle wire terminals can be very large while high-speed communication components can be very small. Plastic assemblies are sensitive to heat, whereas heavy copper boards require a lot of heat. Lap joints might require contact to help hold the wire in place, conversely direct contact can dislodge other components. Therefore, our engineers developed heads that employ four soldering technologies: iron, laser, induction and microflame.

This combination of standard robot platforms and soldering technologies provides a broad range of solutions built from standard components. Of course, we design everything, so we can easily modify our technology when customers need a special solution. 

table-top soldering robot

Process development

Soldering laboratory for process validation

Solder joints have many characteristics: copper layers, ground planes, joining methods, pad sizes, pre-tinning, pin size, through-hole gap and the list goes on. These characteristics affect how joints solder and these characteristics frequently change from joint to joint. Our process engineers evaluate and adjust multiple variables at each joint: preheat time, wire feed time, wire feed speed, wire pullback distance, wetting time, etc. As a result, every solder joint is individually optimized for quality and troughput.

Our process development engineers have an extensive range of equipment in their soldering laboratory. They begin very new application by selecting the proper technology and testing the feasibility on the customers’ parts. Once they prove the process is proven, we send customers a report with valuable data such as process time, quality, video and photos. Whenever possible, our quotations include a process guarantee ensuring the process. Therefore, our customers select equipment based on actual results and have confidence it will function in production as well as it did in our lab. When the new machine is ready, our process engineers optimize the solder process. Finally, we invite the customer to the Factory Acceptance Test prior to delivery.  

mta leverages over 50 years of skill, culture and experience to be the leader in robotic soldering.