KIC has been awarded the SMT VISION Award in the category of Process Control Tools for its innovative KIC Vision, an automatic profiling system. The award will be presented during a ceremony that will take place on Monday, February 19, 2007 at the Wilshire Grand Hotel in Los Angeles before the start of APEX.

This low-cost system is designed for those customers that want to eliminate the manual tasks associated with periodic profiling for their reflow ovens.  Although such profiling has been important for production quality as well as process documentation, many electronics manufacturers are burdened by the negative effects of such manual tasks. These negatives include interruption to the production flow, expense in terms of labor and material (profilers, thermocouples, “golden boards,” etc.), error-prone measurements, and the fact that infrequent profiling makes for poor quality control.

Priced comparative to a manual profiler, the easy-to-use KIC Vision provides the best of both worlds - It runs in the background continuously and automatically, and it provides sought-after profiles as frequently as once an hour.  The system relies on embedded sensors in the reflow oven and the proven Virtual Profiling software to accurately measure the product profile. After a baseline profile, the product profile is automatically measured and logged in the computer without any further manual input.  The measured profile data includes all pertinent process data such as peak temperature, soak, fit to process window and more.  The user may select the frequency of the automatic profiling from one profile in per hour increments up to once a week time slots, in one-hour intervals.  KIC Vision reduces production downtime, recovers labor time resources and significantly improves product quality.

The extremely cost-effect KIC Vision now makes automatic profiling accessible to most electronics manufacturers large and small.  It is time to put Vision into the reflow oven.

Now in its 15th year, the SMT VISION Awards program is an annual celebration of product excellence in electronics surface mount assembly. Premier products based on the finest examples of creative advancement in technology in 22 key areas are chosen by a distinguished panel of industry experts. www.kicthermal.com