Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/582861
30 The PCB Magazine • October 2015 where. Although a lot of fabricators, as you know, are already in place, and it's hard to say "We're going to start fresh with a clean piece of paper." Stepinski: I think in a brownfield operation it is difficult, but it's not impossible. One way to look at it from a brownfield perspective is you have process segments that you can certainly automate. If you just were to look at individ- ual process segments like pre-clean through strip, for instance for innerlayers, that segment should always be automated. There's no good reason why it should not be automated. A lot of people say, "Well there's product vari- ation, or there's fine lines," and things like that. You need to just spec the equipment out appro- priately so it's robust for that application. You need to do pretesting. All of that equipment is on the market now from a host of different suppliers and you can also make it so there's no waste from the system. It's all available. Our research showed that and we've done a proof of concept here, and this is applicable to multi-layer applications. The innerlayer applications, the easiest ones, are automated. We actually automated the whole outer layer process here. People have tried to do innerlayer processing before with varying degrees of success, but outer layer is much more difficult. If you can do that, you can do an innerlayer. Matties: What sort of line spaces are you getting down to? Stepinski: The minimum we do here is three and three. Matties: Can you go lower with the technology you have here if needed or is that just what you designed to? Stepinski: That's what we designed to. Matties: But if someone needed to go lower, they could certainly go to whatever they need to. Stepinski: Yeah, and there are all different pro- cesses that can be employed to go lower and all of them are robust. A lot of this stuff is used in Asia all the time now. Matties: You know, I'm looking at it and really, I only see a couple of really new pieces of technol- ogy in the Mutracx system, but everything else… Stepinski: Everything else has just been in- tegrated. We took equipment that has been around for a while as a standalone and we in- tegrated it. Matties: For the primary Mutracx process, what sort of reduction in cycle time did you gain there? Stepinski: One of the challenges with a conven- tional photolithography process is if you're us- ing artworks you're worried about repetitive de- fects and things like that. The Mutracx process Burkle Workcell lamination system. handling system for orbotech Sprint inkjet printer. WHELEN ENGINEERING REDUCES CyCLE TIME By BUILDING A NEW AUTOMATED PCB FACTORy FeATure