Clamason’s automated transfer press line provides the ideal manufacturing solution for set-top boxes as the UK tunes in to digital TV
All digital TV uses multiplexing to combine and compress multiple TV channels into a single transmission that needs to be decoded by a suitable digital receiver. Digital set-top boxes or digiboxes are the receivers for digital terrestrial TV (Freeview), digital satellite TV services (from providers BSkyB, BT Vision and Setanta Sports) and cable TV (Virgin Media) available to the UK viewing public. There are basically three types of set-top box offering different functions – reception only, recordable (on to disc or hard drive as in Sky Plus) and high-definition TV (the last-named being recordable but in the latest high-definition format, for example Sky HD).
Clamason Industries currently manufactures EMI-shielded, metal enclosures for most categories of set-top box, since they can incorporate up to four pressings. Accordingly the components produced by Clamason are the pre-painted, zinc-plated mild steel, top cover (bought in as pre-cut blanks, with piercing and bending performed at Clamason) and the zinc-plated mild steel base, plus in some cases a printed front and back panel. Even those set-top boxes which appear to be made of plastic, such as the Sky HD box from Thomson, still utilise three pressed parts, the outer skin being merely cosmetic.
Clamason has been able to help the household names in this field, such as Thomson, Pioneer, Panasonic and Sony because of its successful track record of having made the original BSkyB decoder box for Pace in the mid-1990's. For that major project, Clamason installed at its Kingswinford, West Midlands, factory a special Chin Fong Worcester® transfer press line of six presses located together.
The transfer press line at Clamason allows the manufacture of highly complex parts with no carry strip and the automatic insertion of other components and has the facility to reverse the burr side automatically within the process. It is ideally suited to complex and intricate set-top box applications where maintenance of the highest aesthetic standards and surface quality is an essential consideration.
This fully automated line provides rapid transfer of pressings between stations by pick-and-place robots with careful handling. This is worlds apart from the sometimes dangerous conditions at stamping plants in the Far East. There many set-top boxes are made with manual transfer between press operations instead of robotic handling.
Having opened a 10,000 sq ft plant (with a mirror transfer press line for set-top boxes) in 2006 at Nitra in the Slovak Republic, Clamason is now well placed to deliver local production solutions to major electronics companies and their network of manufacturing partners in the region, ranging from Panasonic, Hitachi and Philips to Celestica, Elcoteq and Flextronics. This new factory is part of Clamason’s strategy of staying geographically close to such key players, who may require critical, bi-weekly or even daily, deliveries on a just-in-time basis.
The potential imposition, under discussion, of tariffs on electronics goods imported from outside the European Union has made the lower labour cost areas of Central, formerly Eastern, Europe a really attractive proposition for international electronics OEMs.
Also, whilst small, simple components are relatively cheap to transport around the world in quantity, expensive, finished electronics assemblies are far more costly to move about. What is more, the carbon footprint of such journeys is becoming a significant issue. It is unsurprising, therefore, to see global companies Hitachi and Panasonic amongst others already building in the Czech Republic, for example, a flat screen TV plant of 12 million capacity.
In conclusion, Clamason’s set-top box customers in Central Europe can get exactly what they want when they want it, in order to satisfy our growing needs for digital TV.
