App works – smart hand soldering with Ersa i-CON TRACE
With the i-CON TRACE, soldering pioneer Ersa reinvents hand soldering for the digital age – the world´s best-networked IoT soldering station incorporates more than 100 years of soldering experience from electronics production. A true highlight: The i-CON TRACE is the first soldering station that can be controlled via smartphone or mobile device. Featuring 150 watts of heating power, i-CON TRACE offers all-round strong soldering performance including high-precision temperature control. And, for the first time, this soldering station enables seamless traceability for hand soldering.
Having WLAN, Bluetooth and a network card on board, the state-of-the-art soldering station enables 100% connectivity in digitally networked production processes ex works. This means that soldering tasks that were previously reserved for machine processing can now also be performed manually.
i-CON TRACE is controlled via the Ersa TRACE Mobile App, which is available as a free download for Android and iOS. You won’t find nested menus and complicated button operation here – all functions, data and parameters can be controlled intuitively and in real time. The operating concept of the IoT station is extremely simple and safe – with an on/off switch and three LEDs: The red diode indicates the heating process, the yellow one the standby mode. The station shows a green light when all set values are correct, and soldering is allowed – or in other words: GREEN MEANS GO!
Using the Ersa TRACE Cockpit software, it is possible for the supervisor to centrally specify all relevant parameters and materials for the electronic assembly to be soldered and assign them to a specific specialist. This means that a soldering task is completely “traced”, and it can only be completed once the component, the specified soldering tip, solder wire and flux have been successfully captured by means of a scanner, and the correct target temperature has been reached. This approach allows the soldering station to be integrated into manufacturing execution system-(MES)-controlled production processes via mobile company network terminals such as PCs, tablets or smartphones – using common web browsers such as Google Chrome, Firefox or Microsoft Edge. Firmware updates and calibration intervals can also be performed centrally. Server-based communication between the individual soldering stations and the customer´s MES facilitates the management of individual soldering stations. In addition, it is possible to retrieve the data stored by the software for all manual soldering stations used in the production area via a central PC. The process data of the soldering processes, which is recorded and fully documented by the system, is then available as visual reports. The data can be exported into PDF, Excel and CSV files. Furthermore, XML data exchange is possible in real time. This means that the hand soldering station, which was specially developed for use in a digitally networked environment, can automatically provide all process data to the customer´s MES for further processing and save it in a higher-level control system.
With Ersa i-CON TRACE, the hand soldering process now also becomes completely transparent and traceable. This finally closes the gap regarding traceability in hand soldering in industrial electronics production!
Experience the i-CON TRACE as well as other hand soldering stations and hybrid rework systems LIVE in Nuremberg from May 09 to 11 at the Ersa SMTconnect booth 115 in hall 4.
