Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/582861
18 The PCB Magazine • October 2015 Stepinski: Initially, the greatest obstacle was just to get to the cost points. That was step one. I looked at various alternative technologies and no technology on its own got us there. It was through the integration of everything where we gained the cost benefits. One of the biggest initial challenges was the soldermask process, which is very manual—it's much more manual than many other things out there. To get that to the automated stage, which we're still develop- ing, took considerable effort in the beginning. During the installation phase, the tweaking and experimentation with the inkjet processing was also a significant engineering investment, as was the etch recycling. Matties: Previously, how long did it take for Whel- en to get a circuit board? Stepinski: Six weeks on average. Matties: And now, start to finish? Stepinski: Our cycle time from deburr through final finish is four and a half hours for a panel, and we produce a panel every minute and 15 seconds in fully automated mode. With drill- ing, routing, and testing, on average, we're go- ing to add another two hours for that. Matties: For your drilling you have Schmoll machines, all single heads. You have eight of them sitting out there and they're auto load and unload? Stepinski: Correct. Matties: I see a stack of drilled boards, ready to go to the process. It looks like you queue up the drilled panels. Stepinski: We designed the drill area to be the bottleneck for the factory, and we designed the wet process area to be scalable for the next 10 years, so the limiting factor is the addition of drills and drill machines and drill heads as de- mand increases. And that is because having the addition of wet process equipment as your con- straint when you initially build the factory is a very poor idea. That's not very scalable. But in- dependent drill machines are very scalable. Our central system for vacuum power can handle up to 28 drill machines. Right now, we have eight on-site. Matties: After they are drilled, the boards go into the process and then for primary imag- ing you're using the Mutracx Lunaris process. That's a new process—the first of its kind and unproven. You're bringing in really new tech- nology, which seems kind of risky for a startup. What was your thinking there? Stepinski: The traditional process was not that amenable to the cost points. This was by far the most amenable. When we look at cost, we look at total cost as well. We look at the waste treat- FeATure WHELEN ENGINEERING REDUCES CyCLE TIME By BUILDING A NEW AUTOMATED PCB FACTORy Schmoll maschinen moduls—Single-head drill machines. auto loaders for Schmoll moduls.