February 10, 2005 - DEK has enhanced the machine maintenance and monitoring features of DEK Interactiv™ Internet-based support, to allow remedial actions to be planned during scheduled maintenance visits and thereby maximise uptime and productivity.

Machine owners can also now quickly call-up the service history of each machine in the enterprise by remotely accessing the DEK Merlin database, as well as using ProEngineer™ remotely, to identify and check availability of spare parts and upgrades while standing at the machine.

“The power of DEK Interactiv to maximise convenience and cost-effectiveness for our customers is limited only by the scope of IP-based communication,” said Jon Howell, Customer Support Manager, DEK Printing Machines Ltd. “Combined with the advanced architectures of DEK screen printing and high accuracy mass imaging platforms, the value added by DEK Interactiv will continue increasing at Internet-speed.”

DEK Interactiv’s new predictive maintenance capability is enabled by DEK’s Intelligent Scalable Controller Area Network (iSCAN), which enhances control and monitoring of machine subsystems and is featured on the latest Instinctiv and Micron-class machines. The CAN fieldbus allows extensive monitoring of subsystem parameters, such as operating voltages and temperatures, which is stored in on-board memory. Using DEK Interactiv to analyse this data remotely allows a wide range of subsystem conditions to be anticipated long before failure. Maintenance or replacement can then be planned to coincide with a regular maintenance visit. This ensures availability of the necessary replacement parts, prevents emergency stoppages, and safeguards accuracy and repeatability.

DEK service control centres have used the Merlin system to maintain service records for each customer’s machines. Customers, too, can now view their own machines’ histories by using DEK Interactiv to query Merlin records, subject to security authorisation. At a glance, machine owners and security-cleared staff can now confirm the most recent service, verify software status, review hardware upgrades and inspect comments appended by DEK service control centre staff. With this information readily available, customers can now take a finer-grain approach to asset management, and thereby maximise machine utilisation. ProEngineer™ is another powerful tool used by DEK to manage customer machine configurations. Now, in the hands of customers, ProEngineer in the form of internet based “3D Find a Part” takes away the laborious cross-referencing of catalogue parts and paper records when specifying replacement parts or selecting machine performance upgrades.

These new features augment the existing capabilities of DEK Interactiv, to exploit the power of broadband, always-on Internet connection to closely couple machine owners, their machines, and DEK support resources. These include strategically located DEK service control centres, software and hardware engineering specialists, service and spare parts records, and the DEK knowledge servers containing new media help resources such as graphical online tutorials.

DEK Interactiv services are supported by the DEK Instinctiv™ user interface featured on the latest DEK Instinctiv and Micron-class machines. Combined, these two innovations deliver new experiences for owners and operators of screen printing and high accuracy mass imaging equipment, making machines more responsive, easier and more efficient to manage, more repeatable and robust, and easier to configure for complex, precision processes including wafer-level semiconductor packaging processes.