The History of BPE

1980 “The Start” Blundell introduce the “Cropmatic” mass lead cutting machine, a unique method of cutting “through hole” component leads before soldering. The Cropmatic became an industry standard and is still used by many companies today. In 1983 the Cropmatic was featured on BBC’s “Tomorrows World” programme. 1990 “The classic CMS400” Blundell launch the iconic CMS400 wave soldering machine, the first mid-range wave soldering machine with process control. Manufactured by Blundell, the CMS400 soon became the best selling wave soldering machine in the UK and is still manufactured in Coventry today. 1993 “World’s first Sprayfluxer” On the back of the success of the CMS400 with over 100 machines already sold in UK, Blundell were the first wave solder machine manufacturing company to identify the requirement for a spray fluxer after the introduction of the new “no clean fluxes”. The new synthetic fluxes were designed to give a clean finish to the pcb without the need to physically clean the board, however, to be effective, a precise amount of flux needed to be applied to the underside of the board and the traditional foam fluxers were no longer suitable. Blundell launched the world’s first reciprocating sprayfluxer as a standard feature on the CMS400 machine in 1993 and went on to design a retrofittable version for fitting to other makes of wave soldering machines. 1994 “Teaming up with ERSA Blundell are appointed exclusive UK distributors for the ERSA range of soldering machines, soldering irons and rework equipment. Established by Ernst Sachs, the inventor of the electrically controlled soldering iron in 1921, ERSA had recently been acquired by the Kurtz Group and had ambitious growth plans to become global leaders in soldering equipment. ERSA needed new partners and with Blundells’ track record and continuing success in the UK wave soldering market, they were the obvious choice. ERSA today are global leaders in selective reflow, and wave soldering. 1999-2002 “Selective conformal coating and entry level pick and place” Blundell are appointed UK distributor for PVA and TWS. 2001 “Yamaha iPulse distributorship” After the acquisition and rebranding of Tenryu by Yamaha, new distributors were appointed for the iPulse range of mounting machines. Blundell were one of the few high profile production equipment companies that didn’t already have placement machines in their equipment portfolio, and after due diligence by both companies, Blundell were appointed the exclusive UK distributor for iPulse. Since the appointment, Blundell have installed over 250 iPulse machines in UK, and based on this success, in 2019 we were awarded the exclusive distributorship for the entire Yamaha range including automatic stencil printers, Yamaha and iPulse placement machines and inline Automatic Optical Inspection equipment. Other key distributorships include: Fritsch (2006), EMT dehumidity cabinets (2007) IBL vapour phase (2009), Creative Electron x-ray (2016), Schunk and PBT distribution 2020

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