Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1453746
FEBRUARY 2022 I PCB007 MAGAZINE 17 well as just the acceleration and the PCB mar- ket in general; people are really busy. It's hard to look at new things. And it's hard to take that pause for a minute and consider new technol- ogy and new processes. But you're right that this is gaining traction, and we're seeing a lot of interest in the market and across all industries. It's not really narrowed into any specific indus- try. at makes sense because with electronics in general, we're trying to do more in less space. Matties: Of course, seeing a shi in some of the supply chain attitudes is creating market opportunities as companies are looking for new suppliers, so it may be a perfect time to start talking about alternate methodologies for accomplishing their needs. What do you think the most important message is that we should be sharing with PCB fabricators regarding additive or semi-additive? Dunn: e most important thing that I would like fabricators to understand is that there is a market demand for it, and that it is not as an intimidating of a process to bring into your facility as it might appear. Vinson: In years gone by some of these changes from one point to another in the roadmap have been quite difficult and require quite a bit of investment. is looked like it would be from a lot of history that we've got, but it's really not so difficult to make that transition. If these PCB fabricators are seeing demand from cus- tomers or the ability to attract new customers with better business for them, then they should certainly consider what it takes to modify their manufacturing processes and bring these semi- additive processes online in their shops. Matties: When you're talking to fabricators, what's the greatest resistance or the most asked question you get? Vinson: We get questions such as, "We're going to put new processes in. Are they safe? Are they going to be environmentally friendly, or am I going to have to redo my entire facility to adapt to these things? And where am I going to have other pitfall areas?" As we talked about lithography earlier, they ran the gamut of ques- tions, but they're pretty much the ones that we think they would be at. We're not really seeing anything too unusual or off the wall. Matties: No real showstoppers? Vinson: No, none that we can see. But there's a lot of hesitation and a lot of questioning at the beginning. Matties: As you're saying, people won't wait and see the reliability, the performance over- all, and market acceptance. It's just a process of giving it enough time and space to develop and prove itself. Vinson: e market, though, is showing itself to be very robust and is pulling a lot of these shops toward the A-SAP process faster than they anticipated. We're seeing a lot of new interest from a lot of different areas simply because of that. Matties: Is North America behind in the addi- tive and semi-additive compared to Asia or other places? Vinson: Yes. ere's a lot more capacity in other The market, though, is showing itself to be very robust and is pulling a lot of these shops toward the A-SAP process faster than they anticipated.