Amada Miyachi America

Amada Miyachi America, a subsidiary of Amada Miyachi Co., Ltd, is a worldwide designer and manufacturer of equipment and systems for resistance welding, laser welding, laser marking, laser cutting, and hot bar reflow soldering and bonding.^{[1][2][3][4][5][6]} Established in 1948, Miyachi America Corporation is headquartered in Monrovia, California, US. The company’s equipment is used in numerous industries, chief among which are aerospace, automotive, batteries, electronic components, general electronics assembly, and medical devices. Miyachi America Corporation has 185 employees, with 11 sales and manufacturing offices serving about 11,000 customers worldwide. More than 80,000 items are manufactured annually. The company is certified to ISO 9001, China Compulsory Certificate (CCC), European Conformity (CE), and Canadian Standards Association (CSA) quality certifications.

Company History

Amada Miyachi America Corporation, an Amada Group company, was founded as the Weldmatic Division of Unitek Corporation in 1948. Unitek Corporation was founded with the introduction of the first stainless steel orthodontic bracket, manufactured by a group of orthodontists in Pasadena, CA. The name “Unitek” comes from the term “Universal Bracket Technique.”

Early welding equipment designed and manufactured by Unitek Corporation included the stored energy resistance welding systems (CD/capacitive discharge), initially developed to weld the brackets on the orthodontic bands used to straighten teeth. This equipment almost immediately found application in the electronic industry, eventually replacing AC/direct energy systems used to manufacture guns for cathode ray tubes. It produced significantly better welds and production yields. Weldable strain gages and many diverse electronics assembly applications quickly followed.

Early product lines focused on operator-run semiconductor machines for wire bonding and chip attachment, as well as reflow bonding systems, thermodes, and weld monitors. Although the company did not invent the first resistance welders, it perfected the technology and was the first to apply it to welding small microelectronic modules.

Early innovations developed during the 1950s through the 1980s include:

• Weldmatic Model 32 Weld Head and its successors used a patented force firing system that was critical in small part welding. Direct mechanical digital readout of firing force evolved and was followed by electronic strain gage force monitoring and profile control systems.
• Development of SCR discharge circuitry to replace mechanical relay firing systems (contactors) for the semiconductor industry.
• Unibond® pulsed bonding power supply, with patented Voltage + Current feedback control.
• Unitip® electrodes for fine wire bonding.
• Electro-magnetic weld head system consisting of linear force actuator and microprocessor process control.
• Weld Sentry® weld monitors and process control systems.
• Unipulse® welding transformers designed for half-cycle, uni-polar operation at speeds up to 5 welds per second.
• Micropull electronic controlled wire bond tensile non-destruct and destruct pull testers.
• Computer interfaces for wire bond pull testers to provide automated data collection as well as closed loop process control systems to detect operator and/ or machine errors.

The company was acquired by Bristol-Meyers in 1978, and again by Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company (3M), in 1987. 3M subsequently divested the equipment division from its dental products division in 1988, after which it became an independent company.

The company was reorganized as Miyachi Unitek Corporation on September 30, 1994, when Miyachi Corporation purchased it and merged it with the former Miyachi America Company. In October 2013, Miyachi Unitek changed its name to Miyachi America Corporation. The name change aligns Miyachi Unitek with other Miyachi Corporation companies around the globe. The company will continue to use the Miyachi Unitek brand name, taking advantage of its brand recognition in the marketplace.

Amada Miyachi America's products are used worldwide in the assembly of precision microelectronic parts, devices, and products in a wide range of industrial applications.

Parent Company

In March 2013, Miyachi America Corporation’s parent company, Miyachi Corporation (MHC), approved a takeover by Amada Co., Ltd. and became a consolidated subsidiary, now known as Amada Miyachi Co., Ltd. Amada Co. Ltd. is a leading Japanese company, headquartered in Isehara, Kanagawa, which develops, manufactures, sells, and services products and systems for metal sheet processing, metal cutting, pressing, and machine tooling. The company was established in 1946 and is listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange (6113:Tokyo). It has 60 subsidiaries (17 in Japan and 43 overseas) and more than 7,000 employees worldwide. Annual revenue exceeds ¥200 billion. Amada will maintain Miyachi Corporation’s independent business operations.

Amada Miyachi Co., Ltd.

Amada Miyachi America's parent company, Amada Miyachi Co., Ltd. (AMY), was founded in 1972 to manufacture and market semiconductor-related measuring instruments and welding control equipment in response to the demand for quality control in the automobile, television, and electronics industries. The company incorporated microprocessors and other electronic devices into its resistance welders to enable high quality precision joining and monitoring and analysis. Its Weld Checkers™ are used worldwide for weld monitoring.^[7]

In 1984, the company developed a neodymium-doped yttrium aluminum garnet (Nd:YAG) laser welder that allowed for more precise and micro welding, and this product line became a central component of the company’s business, along with resistance welding. In recent years, it has advanced into laser marking, with the development of small and powerful Nd:YAG and neodymium-doped yttrium orthovanadate (Nd:YVO4) laser markers.

AMY has more than 600 employees (consolidated), 10 sales offices and 2 factories in Japan, 8 subsidiary companies (Miyachi America Corporation (MAC), Miyachi Europe Corporation GmbH, Miyachi Korea Corporation, Miyachi China Corporation, Miyachi Thailand Corporation, Miyachi India PVT, Ltd., Miyachi Taiwan Corporation, Miyachi Vietnam Co., and Ltd., Miyachi Brazil Ltda) and 4 overseas factories (located in China, USA, Germany, and Thailand). Annual revenue is ¥20 billion.

A European sister organization, Miyachi Europe Corporation, has 138 Employees, with €34 million annual revenue and manufacturing facilities located in Germany and The Netherlands.

Products

Amada Miyachi America specializes in the design and manufacture of welding, marking, cutting and bonding equipment and automated systems. Major products sold include:

• Standard and customized laser and resistance systems – Application qualification and testing, system specification, assembly, system verification, and installation and training. Included are gloveboxes and dryboxes, tooling, motion, optics, software, monitoring.
• Laser marking equipment – Fiber laser markers, 1064 nm and 532 nm, Nd:YVO4 laser markers, CO2 laser markers, semi-automated workstations, custom tooling, for OEM or integration, accessories and consumables.
• Laser welding equipment – Nd:YAG and fiber laser welders, pulsed and continuous wave, automated and semi-automated workstations, fiber optic cables, custom tooling, accessories and consumables.
• Laser cutting –Systems with up to 5 axes of coordinated motion, proprietary position-based firing laser control, for stainless steel, copper, silver, titanium, platinum iridium, and plastics.
• Resistance welding – Power supplies (linear DC, high and mid frequency inverters, capacitive discharge, AC weld controls), weld monitors and checkers, displacement monitors, weld heads (manual and air actuated, servo-motor controlled, electromagnetic), accessories and consumables.
• Heat seal bonding – Reflow and heat seal power supplies, automated and semi-automated workstations, FPD repair stations, thermodes, accessories and consumables for connecting flexible circuits and PC boards or LCD screens.

Applications

Amada Miyachi America currently offers seven different technologies, which the company combines together to create end-to-end assembly joining solutions to facilitate reliable and repeatable welding. A few of the key application areas include:

• Medical devices – laser welding, laser marking, and laser cutting technologies for welding, marking, sealing and cutting state-of-the-art medical devices made of both plastic and metal, including cardiac pacemakers, defibrillators, guidewires, catheters, cannulae, hearing aids, brachyseeds, orthodontic appliances, prosthetics, and surgical tools. The company’s laser welding and resistance welding equipment and atmospheric enclosures were used in the production of a cochlear implant shown in this video.
• Aerospace – welding of batteries, sensors, displays, and jet engine honeycomb manufacture and repair.
• Automotive – direct part marking with text, graphics, bar codes and data matrix codes; laser welding, laser marking and engraving, resistance welding, and hot bar reflow soldering of sensors, switches, dashboard electronics, lighting components, and brake shoes.
• Electronic components – resistance and laser welding of hard drive read/write armatures, hard disk assemblies, electrical connectors, lead frame assemblies, relay terminal connections, and batteries.

Recent Innovations

Amada Miyachi America has continued to develop a number of technical innovations in the past decade. Key examples include:

• Application of three-dimensional laser cutting for production of arthroscopic surgery devices – Amada Miyachi America developed a method of using a five-axis motion platform to achieve true three dimensional contour cutting for a shaver used to cut away and remove unwanted fragments of the cartilage from a joint during arthroscopic surgery. With this technique, the edge quality of the laser cut tube is nearly flawless, minimizing the extent of secondary manufacturing process steps. This means better shavers, better surgeries, lower risks and ultimately a better quality of life for many people.
• New welding technique enables crack free welding of high silicon Al-Si controlled expansion alloys and aluminum 4047 for aerospace electronic packages – Using a novel concept, Amada Miyachi America enabled crack free welding of 70 percent silicon alloys, which are lightweight, high thermal conductivity alloys that are increasingly being used for RF and microwave packages and other critical heat sinking applications for the aerospace industry. Amada Miyachi America modified the solidification process without using post weld heat treatment. By using a fillet weld geometry and moving the weld close to the edge of the package the isotherms around the weld are modified such that the thermal gradient is reduced and re-orientated. The result included crack free welds in the highest silicon content alloy CE7. In addition the laser parameters process windows for lower silicon content alloys was significantly increased.
• Advances in laser welding systems and technology for medical device manufacturing – Amada Miyachi America developed motion and laser control techniques beneficial to hermetic laser seam welding of implantable devices. Using special software to achieve “position-based firing” along the contour, Amada Miyachi America developed a method that fired the laser not at a constant repetition rate, but rather in response to its actual position along the contour at any point in time. In addition, Amada Miyachi America developed new metals joining production methods using “green light” (532 nm) pulsed welding lasers. The availability of a reliable green light (532 nm) laser welder facilitates precision welding of copper and gold alloys, a true metallurgical weld as an alternative to conventional soldering, consistent high-reliability electrical connections with no long term resistance drift, and a non-contact process that completely eliminates risks of electro-static discharge or physical damage to the parts being joined.
• New force-based bend align method increases yield and throughput for manufacturing pump lasers for the telecom industry – Amada Miyachi America developed a unique force-based algorithm used for deforming pump laser diode packages back into alignment. The packages are part of fiber laser amplifiers used to boost a telecommunications signal as it’s transmitted over vast distances. With the force based bend align method, the signal is peaked faster and in many cases with increased coupling over position based systems. The increased coupling provides improved amplification of the signal and greater signal to noise ratio.
• Enabling high performance optoelectronic modules using novel gas-conserving resistance welding electrode system – Amada Miyachi America developed a new projection welding technique that dramatically reduces the amount of Xenon gas needed to backfill a package. Xenon has good thermal properties that aid in transporting reliability-reducing heat away from the electronic device. In addition, it is an inert gas, which does not enter into slow chemical reactions with other materials that can be a root cause of degraded performance and reliability. However, it is extremely expensive, about $150 a liter and many existing processes waste significant quantities of the costly gas during backfilling. The new cap welding technique uses an innovative electrode vacuum and gas backfill system that enables packages to be evacuated, and then filled with gas before being hermetically sealed using projection welding. This process consumes as little as 5 cubic centimeters of Xenon gas, costing only $0.75 per part.

In November 2012, Amada Miyachi America was named one of 14 finalists in the Patrick Soon-Shiong Innovation Awards, presented by the Los Angeles Business Journal and NantWorks. Miyachi America was honored as an organization that expands the boundaries of its industry and leads the region in impactful innovation.

Patents

Amada Miyachi America has been awarded numerous patents for its resistance and laser welding inventions, over the period 1971 through the present, including the following:^[8]

References

External links

• Official Website
• Laser Institute of America (LIA)
• Edison Welding Institute (EWI)
• Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME) Industrial Laser Community (ILC)
• American Welding Society (AWS)