Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1507822
SEPTEMBER 2023 I PCB007 MAGAZINE 57 with SEL fairly rapidly. SEL came to the fab in New Hamp- shire to receive base level training on all aspects; they were given full access to the shop, and our engineers helped them out. SEL collaborated with GreenSource on the factory design and equipment selec- tion to ensure that the GSF automation equipment and ZLD system worked well. Once SEL saw the setup in New Hampshire, they wanted a similar structure for their master plan. We designed horizontal equip- ment for them although we did not install this equipment. We installed the ZLD unit, a prime piece of technological advancement that greenfield sites will be interested in. Rick, did SEL install custom-built equipment? Nichols: Everything we build is custom, to some extent. I can give you an example. A typ- ical stripping line in most board shops uti- lizes an alkaline solution of one kind or other, especially now. Oen, shops use just sodium hydroxide, and this will tend to oxidize the pan- el's copper surface. Our stripper, for example, has a built-in post-clean to ensure that the pan- els that come out are directly readable by AOI. How important is the zero-waste discharge to the overall facility? Nichols: It's important because permits are required to release any kind of contaminant into the environment. Everybody is—cor- rectly so—environmentally concerned right now. With traditional liquid discharge systems, they discharge clean water, but you're still basi- cally bringing water in—at great cost, espe- cially nowadays—and once it's done, you're pumping it back out. In the meantime, you're treating it using expensive hardware. e benefit to our system is that, while you still have the treating step, you reuse the water back in your system. You may top it up from time to time due to evaporation, scrubber loss, etc. But let's say a facility was using X amount of water with a traditional pro- cess. Now, they will be using a fraction of this with our sys- tem. Most of the water they use and treat will go back into the fab. Michael Gleason: Environmental sustainability is the number one attractor for the ZLD sys- tems. e added benefit is recycling the water. Depending on the geography of a particular circuit board shop, either the treated water just exits their facility into a holding pond or it's trucked off and processed further, for which there is an added cost. With the ZLD system, there is both a major cost savings and a conser- vation element. I'm curious about GreenSource's involvement in the design and specification of that. Will you be the design consultants for new green- field facilities that are both zero waste and cutting edge? Gleason: We certainly are. We've gained a lot of experience from our New Hampshire facility, SEL, and a third site here in New Eng- land. Based on this experience, we've received quite a bit of interest from the electronics community. I want to say there's more interest on the potential semiconductor side than on the tra- ditional PCB side of the industry. Obviously, there is a lot more money in semiconductor. at dynamic is changing, however, as various funding channels open for PCB fabrication in Rick Nichols