A catalogue machine can be quoted from a model number. A custom station cannot. The station is built around your part and your process, so the quote is only as good as the brief behind it. In practice twelve inputs decide everything: station count, takt, footprint, and therefore price.
The twelve inputs
- Part information — size range in millimetres, weight in kilograms, material, and how the part arrives (loose, arrayed, in a carrier).
- Process target — which operations the station performs (labeling, assembly, inspection, handling) and in what order.
- Takt and uptime — pieces per minute or seconds per piece, plus the availability figure you need the line to reach.
- Accuracy — positioning accuracy and repeat positioning accuracy in millimetres.
- Station count and layout constraints — how many stations, and how they may be arranged.
- Loading and line interface — manual, magazine, or SMEMA interface to the upstream and downstream conveyor.
- Vision and inspection — what is inspected, the accept/reject criteria, and whether a record must be kept.
- Data and software — whether the station talks to your MES, and which fields it must upload.
- Building constraints — available floor area, ceiling height, floor loading.
- Utilities — power (voltage, phases, rating), compressed air (MPa, consumption), extraction requirements.
- Safety and compliance — CE, national standards, or the customer’s own plant safety rules.
- Acceptance criteria — what is accepted, how it is measured, and in what environment.
Anything not covered here can be settled later. These twelve cannot: a missing takt or part size means the station is being designed against a guess.
Where these briefs come from
Most custom requests in this industry arrive from four places.
On FPC and flexible board work, the flat parts that have to be attached — stiffener steel sheets, mylar patches, dust mesh — are often placed one by one by hand after the board has been through reflow, because FPC process guides recommend attaching stiffeners after SMT so the added thickness does not disturb solder paste printing. A station that presents them from tape removes that manual step without changing the process order.
On packaging and new-energy electronics lines, the operation is a label on a housing, on a cell or on a module, and the constraint is usually orientation and repeatability rather than speed. On metal, film and PSA parts, the material is not board-mounted at all and a bench platform fits better. And where the work already runs on an SMT line, the placement machine itself can do the job through a feeder slot.
The four routes differ in station count, so the brief has to say which one you are on.
Two routes worth comparing before you brief
If the work is labeling on carriers, metal parts, film, tape, foam or PSA material, there are two ways to get it done, and the brief is not the same for both.
| Route | What it is | Model example |
|---|---|---|
| Standalone machine | Purpose-built labeling platform, one workpiece at a time | LM402 multi-head vision, 1×1 to 50×50 mm |
| Station with a feeder | A label feeder feeding a pick-and-place machine or a custom cell | LFSID-100S feeding a custom line |
The standalone route suits work that is not tied to a placement machine — odd geometry, mixed materials, low volumes handled at a bench. The feeder route suits work that already happens on an SMT line: the feeder is built to strip labels for a nozzle, and it is also used for stripping in non-standard equipment. If your process mixes both, say so in the brief; the split decides how many stations are needed.
There is no fixed model table for the non-standard line. What is fixed is this input list — see the non-standard automation page for the scope of the line.
Filling the brief
Write the twelve items down with the numbers you have and mark the rest as open. Where a figure is genuinely unknown — often the takt on a new product — say that it is unknown and give the target instead. An open item is workable; an assumed number is not.
Send the list to us with a part drawing or photo, and we will come back with the station concept, the feeder models involved if any, and the questions that are still blocking a price.