It’s a week since the 2021 Productronica exhibition closed its doors and we’ve now had chance to unpack, review our leads and reflect on the event.
Here’s quick look at Mek at the Productronica show 2021 during the set up and days of the event.
The Covid pandemic brought global gatherings such as Productronica to a sudden halt, emptying convention centers and shuttering hotels. More than a year later, in-person meetings and shows are back on the agenda. The bi-annual exhibition returned to Munich focusing on state-of-the-art technologies and solutions for surface-mount & THT technology, testing technologies, equipment, and supporting industries for electronics manufacturing.
A total of 894 exhibitors from 36 countries and about 20,000 visitors from nearly 70 countries attended this year’s trade fair and in spite of all the restrictions on travel, and against all expectations, around 60 percent of the visitors were from outside Germany.
For Mek the show was indeed far better than expected. Although our visitor numbers were down by about 30% on two years ago, we still received a good number of leads.
As well as relishing the opportunity to reconnect with customers in person, we successfully launched two new products; We introduced visitors to the ISO-Spector M2 3D AOI machine featuring extremely high-end specifications, artificial intelligence and programmer-independent programming of solder joints.
And then at the other end of the spectrum we unveiled VeriSpector, a low cost assembly station AOI which, using a very high quality camera, captures the entire PCB in one shot for inspecting manual assemblies. The low cost of VeriSpector allows manufacturers to purchase multiple AOI machines to cover all assembly work stations. These revolutionary systems use exactly the same software as our more sophisticated AOI systems, the same interfacing and the same industry 4.0 communication. Of course resolution is lower because the complete PCB is captured in one shot.
With the electrification of energy, power and transport, THT assemblies are having a resurgence and THT Inspection is booming. We are currently the leader in THT inspection but that has historically been for the inspection of solder joints. Now, more and more manufacturers also want to perform preventative inspection from the top so that any errors can be caught before the boards even reach the soldering ovens. The VeriSpector fulfils this demand and interest at the show has been amazing.
All in all, Productronica 2021 has been a great success for Mek and everything seems to be pointing towards our products being in high demand in the coming months. We look forward to a great couple of years before the next Productronica!
Thank you to everyone who visited our booth and for those who did not get the opportunity to travel to the show, you can take a look at our show highlights here.
Watch the video of the interview of Henk Biemans with Whats New In Electronics magazine at the show: