Electronics & Automation in Utrecht – best show since long

Last week from the 28th till the 30th of May, the BENELUX electronics industry came together in Utrecht for the biannual event EA-beurs. With 4.356 visitors over 3 days, the exhibition counted 500 visitors more than the last edition in 2011. We registered 810 visitors on our booth which kept us very busy. Every m² of exhibition space was fully occupied in de Jaarbeurs Utrecht, offering visitors a nice buzz of activity.

Engineersonline did a daily review of the exhibition. All reviews (in Dutch) can be found here:

Day 1 : Beurs direct vol op stoom

Day 2 : Negen gigawatt… of een banaan

Day 3 : Het wordt eentonig : Cup opnieuw naar Eurocircuits

Our customers could register for a free ticket for the exhibition through our website and via links sent in pre exhibition mails. 331 people effectively did so. Over the 3 days 201 visitors entered the exhibition with their pre registered Eurocircuits ticket. This number proved to be undefeated by other exhibitors and thus for the fourth edition in a row, the marketing cup went to Eurocircuits. Thanks to all these customers that contributed to this success.

The weekend before the exhibition we have launched our new website. The major point of improvement was the introduction of PCB Configurator. It is the new step in the Eurocircuits goes visual strategy, after the release of PCB Visualizer and PCB Checker.

PCB Configurator enables the manipulation of the order details to bring them in accordance with the data content before the order is launched. That way we avoid unnecessary misunderstandings and miscommunications.

PCB Configurator contains also a very strong engine for technical validations of all available Eurocircuits services. It forms the basis of our new calculation program. In there you will find our complete overview of technical capabilities at your finger tips with prices just a few clicks away. More info in our BLOG: PCB Calculator now integrated with PCB Visualizer and more detailed info will follow later.

Rethinking our website made us redefine our services. Today we have 4 PCB services based on their base material.

Existing users can see quickly what has changed and all users can find a complete user guide here.

This also affected our technical classification which leads to the publication of new design guide lines and new EAGLE dru files. Both can be downloaded from our website.

New generation eC-reflow-mate. Just one month befor the exhibition we released our new version of the eC-reflow-mate. This made it one of the hot topics on our booth. More details on what our new generation eC-reflow-mate has to offer can be found in the BLOG we wrote about it.

 

 

Eurocircuits produced and sponsored all PCBs for the exhibition gadget project “Helios”.Almost 2.000 visitors could assemble the Arduino based “Helios” by visiting 6 predefined booths. Page Electronics, a Eurocircuits customer, pre assembled a part of the boards. The remaining quantity was live assembled on the “live line” in Utrecht. Visitors could see the board emerge from the assembly line and get informed about every production step in the line.

 

 

 

Eurocircuits also participated in two seminars bringing two presentations: “traceability” and “good PCB data”. Both presentations were given in Dutch. You can find their brief content as well as the full presentation below:

Uw PCB data: klaar voor de printplaatproductie?
Dirk Stans, Eurocircuits

 

De data die de ontwerper aflevert aan de PCB fabrikant is verre van klaar voor de productie. Elke PCB fabrikant moet er nog een heleboel checks op uitvoeren en aanpassingen aan doen om de data bruikbaar te maken voor productie en er zo de noodzakelijke machineaansturingen uit te genereren.
Wat zijn de meest voor de hand liggende basisregels om goede PCB layout data te genereren? Wat zijn de meest voorkomende fouten? Welke tools heeft Eurocircuits ontwikkeld om deze fouten snel te vinden en aan te passen? Een overzicht aan de hand van een praktijkvoorbeeld.

Bekijk de presentatie hier

Traceability in een printproductiebedrijf: van basismateriaal tot afgewerkte PCB
Dirk Stans, Eurocircuits

Eurocircuits past de traceability filosofie al vele jaren toe in zijn producties. De initiële motivatie hiervoor was om zelf zicht te krijgen op de eigen productieprocessen. Maar in combinatie met de gestroomlijnde online administratie van Eurocircuits, biedt traceability een tweede peiler aan: transparantie van de productieprocessen naar de klant toe. Hierdoor kan de Eurocircuits klant specifieke informatie over zijn product ontvangen. Deze informatie komt rechtstreeks en automatisch uit het traceability systeem. De presentatie gaat verder in op de ervaringen met traceability en wat het oplevert voor de producent en de klant.

Bekijk de presentatie hier

 

On the exhibition floor we were captured by the press for an interview. Watch it here!

 

Last but not least, the exhibition was not only a success but it was also a lot of fun being in the midst of our home market between many friends and colleagues and being visited by so many new and existing customers. Our cooperation with neighbour “tbp” contributed again to the positive atmosphere on our linked booths and extended onto the exhibition floor. “tbp” organized the bar, we brought the Belgian beer. We only took back empty barrels and cases.

Some impressions

 

 

This BLOG is a follow up on our previous BLOG on E&A.