Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1453746
14 PCB007 MAGAZINE I FEBRUARY 2022 able to get there. But a lot of their equipment they already have. A lot of the process steps that they have in hand will be able to trans- late forward into those areas. People think that rework is important for these fine features, but for the semi-additive process, it is not as important as it once was. Matties: I was recently talking to a board fabri- cator who has direct imaging already in place. I asked them if they were going aer the addi- tive or SAP, and they said, "We're going to wait and see. We don't really have the resource." Well, if you already have direct imaging, my understanding is that AOI is probably the larg- est investment you would have to make, and everything else would be tank chemistry and methods. I'm not an expert like you, of course. But it seems to me that maybe there's a misun- derstanding of what it really takes to get started with this. Vinson: A lot of that misunderstanding is com- ing from some of the Asian competitors that are investing tens of millions of dollars into new fabrication facilities for these fine line features. Some of them are more modern, semi-additive processes like the ones Averatek is introduc- ing in the marketplace. ose things aren't so onerous as they are for some of the other semi- additive processes that we're seeing from Asia. Nolan Johnson: I'm imagining the team look- ing at this as a process to bring in-house, so how much investment do I need to make in my human resources to bring the appropriate expertise? What does my CAM team need to know? How do they get that expertise? How do I bring them up to speed so that they're experts with our first designs coming through? Vinson: It doesn't take a great deal. It really depends on what kind of discipline you have in your facility. If the facility has been running the same products, year aer year, a lot of the peo- ple are going to be ingrained into how those Matties: e timing is everything in that they must be in a product redesign cycle for it to make sense. For a fabricator, it's knowing that there's an organization like yours out there promoting and marketing it. Calumet has also made this point; this will accelerate and get stronger if we have more fabricators offer- ing this technology, making it more proven or accepted. Dunn: I think that's very true. And I think that OEMs are going to be hesitant to put all their eggs in the basket if there's only one fabrica- tor that can produce using this technology, so the more fabricators producing, the more con- fidence there's going to be all the way around. Matties: Now, assuming a fabricator already has LDI equipment, what other equipment or investment would they be looking at? Vinson: For the fabricators, it's mainly the equipment to create the feature sizes that they need. en maybe a few changes to things like, how clean they keep their areas to keep the size of the dust particles or the foreign particles down to match those feature sizes. But most of the investment is largely driven by the feature sizes needed, and things like optical inspec- tion, tests, and probing. But the semi-additive process does allow for a huge reduction in fea- ture size that will meet almost all the applica- tion needs today. Matties: For a fabricator reading this, where is that tipping point, that time when they really must invest if they don't already have LDI and AOI? I'm assuming most of them have AOI these days, maybe not LDI. Vinson: LDI will be almost an entry level requirement for these fabricators. e other things are going to be driven by feature size. ey'll be needing to look at, say, sub-3-mi- cron, 3-mil to 1-mil to sub-1-mil. ey will all require different efforts and equipment to be