Kitting department splicing refers to the joining of carrier tapes prior to placement machine operation, typically during material preparation, staging, or inventory consolidation. This activity occurs upstream of the SMT production line and is primarily logistical in nature rather than operational.
Unlike production splicing, kitting splicing is performed in a controlled, static environment where the tape is not subjected to active feeder forces at the time of splice formation. Despite this, decisions made during kitting have downstream consequences that directly affect feeder performance, splice integrity, and production continuity.
Additionally, kitting splices may be formed hours or days before they are exposed to operational stress, introducing time-dependent variables such as adhesive aging, contamination, or partial bond relaxation.
In the kitting environment, splicing is performed under quasi-static mechanical conditions:
Adhesive bonding in this context relies primarily on:
Crucially, bond formation is evaluated visually rather than mechanically. Adhesive systems that appear stable under static conditions may not be optimized for:
Typical kitting splicing scenarios include:
These processes emphasize throughput and convenience, often at the expense of operational simulation.
Failures attributed to “production issues” frequently originate in the kitting phase. When a splice formed under static conditions is later subjected to:
latent weaknesses are exposed.
From an engineering standpoint, kitting splices must be evaluated not by how they appear at rest, but by how they will behave as load-bearing structures during machine operation. Treating kitting splicing as a low-risk task can lead to systematic underestimation of failure probability during live production.
