Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1309864
20 PCB007 MAGAZINE I NOVEMBER 2020 missing right now. You have people that have the elements that have individual components to do it, but I haven't seen it successfully all put together and working. With the high-mix, low-volume approach, what are the biggest issues? You can get a load- er and an unloader, and now the product is automated. With high-mix, low-volume, that's not the goal. Our goal is focused on the begin- ning of the product life cycle. We're not focused on the mature phase of the product life cycle; we're focused on the engineering and develop- ment phase of the product life cycle to do this as efficiently and as quickly as possible. That's the focus of our R&D activities. When you go into the mature phase of the life cycle, you can use equipment that is bare-bones, has no flex- ibility, does the same thing all day long, and is very cheap to make. What we want to do is have a piece of equip- ment where you can put a very small panel that's flexible and then follow that by a very thick panel that weighs 10 kilograms. That's very large. The equipment adapts to do this on its own without a human going over there and monkeying around with it. Because you can't re- place the person in the U.S. if you don't replace this, and the person is just going to stand next to the thing and change the setup every time. Our focus is to automate the measurement and characterize the plating coding complete- ly. We also want to automate the etching and measurement of the etch result completely be- cause we see that this is very prone to human error, and it's very costly to do it with peo- ple. This is our big focus right now, as well as going touchless. All of our equipment is ESD- compatible, and we're doing a lot of embedded components. Matties: Did you have to bring in a software partner to execute this? Stepinski: We have a mixed bag. We are grow- ing to do everything ourselves, but we're not there yet. We're in the middle of this ramp-up because one of the challenges is IP. I have a constant stream of new ideas coming from our team, and we have to make sure we're not giv- ing this away to others. We are motivated to do it all internally, but there are some aspects we outsource now. We're adding people over in Poland to support this. By next year, we'll be 100% independent. Matties: It sounds like what you're developing is a platform that will be part of your equip- ment offering, and you can help others be- come a smart factory. Day: If people do things well, we don't rein- vent the wheel. Some people in the market do things well, so that moves on to the next one. In the future PCB market, I don't think peo- ple are going to upgrade what they have to be automated and centrally controlled. They're going to need new fabs. Just as our custom- er base seems to be increasing in this turn- key direction, people need allocated purpose- built factories, or you're going to see the bigger multinationals making our own captured PCB houses with all the AI, Industry 4.0, etc. Stepinski: You can't compare a 30-year-old Toy- ota Camry to a new Tesla. Day: A lot of the folks probably just need to buy a Tesla and throw the Camry away. Stepinski: I worked in these shops, too. It's amazing that some of these shops are 30-years old, but it's also amazing what you can do with a Toyota Camry, but it's hard. Matties: And that's where you start chewing up your profits. Stepinski: The process window is this big, and we're trying to make it something you can comfortably walk through. Matties: You're making the PCB fabrication an attractive business again, with it being zero- waste and hands-off. Stepinski: It has been a relatively bad business for a long time, and we're trying to make it something that's enjoyable.