Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1193979
22 PCB007 MAGAZINE I DECEMBER 2019 Feature Interview by Barry Matties I-CONNECT007 Barry Matties recently interviewed Jesse Zi- omek and Tony Faraci of DIS Technology. They discussed pinless registration—a new process that can reduce lamination cycle time, improve quality, and eliminate a lot of the guesswork usually involved in the lamination procedure. Barry Matties: I understand that you are based in New York. You've been doing pinless tooling for quite some time on the rigid side, correct? Jesse Ziomek: We have, for about 15 years in the market globally. As a reference point, we've had 152 installs in 18 different coun- tries. But yes, our focus has been the rigid side until recently. Matties: And now you are eliminating the hard tooling—the pins to do the layup of a rigid-flex PCB and reduce those tolerances. Ziomek: Yes. About two years ago, we were asked by a rigid-flex customer, "Can you de- sign something for this?" Because of the cut- outs and the prepreg, the PTFE fillers and the overall design was completely different. We used a lot of the same technology, but we had to make some different configurations, so we did. Now, the operator manually loads each inner layer and prepreg into the system. Two fixed cameras read the fiducial targets that are on the centerline on the core, and there are also four different bond pads on the outer pe- rimeter. The platen then comes down, picks up that inner layer, and gets it into the right position; there's also a clamp on the north and south ends of the panel, which clamps that into posi- tion. The platen then releases and repeats that process with the prepreg and the next layers. As that build-up takes place, it then has one final clamp that feeds into the system, where the induction heads then clamp down, turn on the induction, and the copper on the copper bond pads on the perimeter heat up, causing a tack bond between the prepreg and the inner layers. Matties: And then it's ready for lamination. What You Need to Know About Reducing Lamination Time Jesse Ziomek Tony Faraci