For 17 days, NVC Lighting Technology Corp. lit up the 2008 summer Olympics—literally. Based in Huizhou, China, the company provided lighting for several facilities in Beijing, including the Olympic village and central area, China National Convention Center, China Agricultural University gymnasium, Beijing University of Technology gymnasium and Tianjin railway station.

Established in 1988, NVC specializes in manufacturing, sales and research of all kinds of lighting products. The company makes commercial, office, outdoor and residential lighting, as well as LED lamps and control gears.

The company began selling OEM and ODM (original design manufacturer) products to Europe in the early 2000s. Since 2006, the company has sold its lighting in the Middle East, Asia, Australia, Africa and Eastern Europe.

For the past five years, axial and radial through-hole LED platforms have enabled the company to greatly increase LED productivity. NVC is also increasingly using LED surface-mount platforms to manufacture lighting.

The surface-mount platforms are made by Universal Instruments, which provides advanced automation and assembly equipment for the electronics manufacturing industry. NVC has installed six Advantis AC-60 LED platforms in the past year.

Universal configured the AC-60 platforms with software modifications for LED handling, as well as specialized feeders and nozzles. The nozzles use soft compliant tips when contacting the LED globe, or they can pick LEDs without contacting the globe.

NVC likes that the AC-60 offers high-production capability for a wide variety of products without reconfiguration. The platform’s two rotary Lightning placement heads maximize throughput for standard 1.2-meter-long LED lamps. The platform can place a full array of LEDs and 01005 passive surface-mount components up to 30 millimeters square, and support PCBs up to 1.3 meters long.

The Lightning placement head contains 30 individually controlled and replaceable spindles, which rotate once every 55 microseconds. The head also features dual optics that provide line balance and optimize production.

“Both the through-hole and surface-mount platforms enable us to build high-quality products at a lower cost to our customers,” says Alex Xu, director of engineering at NVC Lighting Technology Corp. “The platforms also accommodate varying applications, should our product demands change.”

 For more information on LED surface-mount platforms, call 800-432-2607 or visit www.uic.com.