SMEMA is an acronym for the Surface Mount Equipment Manufacturers Association.
Contents
In 1999 they merged with the IPC to form the IPC SMEMA Council.
One standard they have is for the wiring of communications between Surface mount technology producing machinery such as a Stencil Printer or a Pick and Place Machine on an Electronics production line. This allows the machines, including the "bridges" between the two known simply as conveyors, to communicate that they are busy, or awaiting a circuit board. The communication only goes sequentially, as there is no addressing. Instead the machine's SMEMA cables connect to each other's upstream or downstream plug. The plugs and wires are multimate connectors and receptacles consisting of 14 wire connections. However, only 4 wires are used for data, while the 8th pin connection is the shielding.
Technical
The SMEMA hardware and software standard version as of March 2008 is 1.2.
Specifications
The specifications are for single board transfer systems with conveyors as the transporters. Specifications state that the boards should be moving from left to right although the same standard does apply to board transfers going right to left. For proper sequencing of boards, two signal lines should be used; "Board Available" and "Machine Ready", the signal "Failed Board Available" is optional