Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1467744
16 PCB007 MAGAZINE I MAY 2022 with regulations and requirements. Waste treatment is operating overhead. ey're look- ing for incremental cost savings from waste treatment. With less effluent going out, there's less treatment and use of chemicals. e point is, they're only doing it because of compliance issues, or because their equipment is ready to be replaced and they might need to replace old equipment with something more efficient. But they don't do that to reduce costs. ey need to look at Wonderwise to reduce chemical usage, look at inkjet technology and other technolo- gies as possible ways of reducing chemical con- sumption and disposal. Carignan: In some of the cases, the customers of the fabricator want this. ere's a customer demand saying, "We really would like to find partners in the fabrication industry as a whole, who are green, because the products derived from that channel are what we want to carry in our branding." Matties: It's more about reducing the load on your waste treatment, which saves you money, not only on input costs, but also in having to manage that waste. Medina: Yeah, and that's true when you talk about existing facilities. Now, if you've got a greenfield, that's the opportunity to take advantage of all the ways you can reduce waste, as Ed said, and become a green opera- tion. If you look at GreenSource Fabrication on the East Coast, that was their whole strat- egy. en you've got Schweitzer building a facility in Idaho, and their intention is to follow the GreenSource example. OEMs are increas- ingly sensitive to zero waste and being green; we'll continue to see more board shops being more willing to do the same. Inkjet Printed Resists Happy Holden: You mentioned inkjet. I wonder about the progress on etching or plating resists that are inkjet-printed and bypassing the entire photoresist direct imaging develop/etch/strip strategy. Carignan: In the first wave, there are several manufacturers. e hot market for inkjet is clearly solder masks because solder mask is such a lengthy—and not a very clean—process, with a lot of process steps and a lot of labor costs. e focus from any of the manufactur- ers is to promote solder mask because the ROI is more apparent. You can feel it in labor costs. You can feel it in everything. However, there are people today who are using plating resist. Etch resist and legend printing has been around for quite a long time now; the viscosities have been worked out; it is a jettable material. I would agree with you, Happy, that jettable plating resist is probably the next frontier. What makes it more attrac- tive is that there are many manufacturers who already have those chemistries. It's logical to think that would be the next frontier. Now, most of the manufacturers are focus- ing on solder masks because it is such a labor- intensive, capital equipment-intensive and wasteful process. at's really why it has the first application, if you will. Engineering Expertise and Industry 4.0 Holden: Maybe their bandwidth of invest- ment and implementation has to be narrowly focused, because of their resources. ey can't afford or don't have the manpower to do too many things in parallel or nothing's going to get done. Labor automation is a 1980s strategy, which, rightly so, the printed circuit people are just catching up to the big OEMs who did it in the '80s and '90s. But I wonder how long before they get into the 2020 smart factory, which is data driven. e whole realm of the smart fac- Frank Medina