Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/457216
58 The PCB Magazine • February 2015 ogy improvements done by ITRI, their govern- ment sponsored research, as well as their major companies. Barry: In comparison to the U.S., what do you see happening from your point of view? Gene: The U.S. is struggling to maintain a po- sition with a government that appears confused by its economic, domestic, and foreign policies. However, quietly happening in the U.S., and not for volume but for technology, we're seeing some great advances in R&D: in chips, packages, and chipsets, as well as the quiet building of new automated factories in captive shops not public- ly known. Lockheed has three in-house printed circuit shops, and the public thinks there's only one. It's now become an open secret that Intel is building a shop in Chandler, Arizona. Two weeks ago, Lionel and I visited Whelen Engi- neering's new factory in New Hampshire, and it's the first fully automated new printed circuit shop in North America—and I really mean fully automated. The only things that were not part of the automation line were a separate semi- automatic layup set-up and multilayer press- ing line by Burkle, an offline ENIG electroless nickel/gold, and a plasma machine. Everything else was inline, automated, with a very modern design. Instead of treating the air and water of the entire building, they use semiconductor techniques with tunnels around the equipment, making it easier to maintain the environment, and they didn't have to get one single permit for waste treatment because the plant is almost 100% recycled air, fumes, and liquid. Copper is plated out of the spent etchant, the ammonia is recaptured and put back in—it was amazing. And we were watching the first runs of 100 panel lots; Lionel is doing some evaluation of some new imaging equipment that we can't give you the details on until perhaps spring. Barry: Are they in production now? Gene: They're debugging the systems. They started from zero, they put in a building, and they have 12 engineers and technicians run- ning two shifts a day. Barry: They purchased a lot of U.S. fabs as well, didn't they? Gene: Yes, that was interesting. They have a custom-designed plasma, they have a custom- designed waste treatment system designed by the general manager of the plant—an oldie in our industry, Alex Stepinski of Sanmina and other companies in the past. They have some innova - tive approaches from the handling of the legend ink to the handling of solder mask and protect- ing the layer that goes down before the legend ink. It was highly innovative; their plating was all horizontal Atotech equipment, and the ma- chines were dual routers, single-station, high- versatility. And they paid 10% more than, say, a 5–6 spindle set-up or the equivalent. I said, "Why did you do that?" They said it was be- cause the versatility and productivity is greater. I think much like many other things, the days of conventional electroless copper are gone. The days of conventional drill sets are gone, although there are always going to be some. The days of imaging using phototools are waning. It will be a minor part of production within 10 years, except for maybe the Chinese copycats. Barry: I visited DSG in Dongguan recent - ly, and I was thinking here's a company that came in not with a Chinese mentality, but with a business mentality. Gene: A European business mentality—very smart and very successful. Barry: They set up a factory with 470 people and they're pumping out $60 million in sales and plan to double that without adding ad - ditional staff. I'm wondering why can't we do this? Hamed El-Abd: Nobody wants to spend the money. Gene: Well, we can do that. Yesterday, Phil Plonski, senior managing partner of Prismark, presented a paper. One of his conclusions is a little beyond that which his partner gave at the IPC meeting in North Carolina, in that we have two opposing forces at work here: the need for CHINA OUTLOOK continues interview