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30 SMT Magazine • February 2017 by Stephen Las Marias I-CONNECT007 Electrolube's Phil Kinner, global head of the conformal coatings division, talks about the trends shaping the company's product inno- vation strategies, and their latest solutions and technologies to help address their customers' greatest challenges. Stephen Las Marias: From a conformal coating standpoint, what are the greatest challenges that your customers face? Phil Kinner: Many of our customers increasing- ly face challenges regarding environmental pro- tection, with more and more applications tak- ing electronics to places where they wouldn't previously have gone before. So we have seen a lot of opportunities for coatings and encap- sulation resins to help protect customer devic- es from even the harshest of operating environ- ments. These opportunities have largely arisen from automotive and LED customers who con- sistently face challenges with corrosion, con- densation and high humidity. We've also seen an increase in customers enquiring about re- ducing tin whisker growth, eliminating VOCs, reducing conductor spacing and ultimately in- creasing productivity. Everything's got to be smaller, more tightly spaced, faster, more pow- erful and has to last longer. We are also frequent- ly asked about coverage, if the coating doesn't cover, it can't protect and that is certainly an is- sue facing customers. Las Marias: How is Electrolube helping customers address their issues above? Kinner: Our strength lies in our ability to re- solve problems and find suitable solutions for our customers. In the last year, we have made significant investment in the very latest test- ing equipment for our laboratories and a top of the range selective conformal coating system, which definitely gives us an edge over com- petitors when it comes to helping our custom- ers. Our new thermal shock chamber is state- of-the-art and most chemical protection man- ufacturers don't have this kind of machine at their disposal, and need to first send their prod- ucts off to a third party test house before they understand the capabilities of their products. If we have a specific technical enquiry from a ELECTROLUBE Highlights Latest Technologies Targeted at Automotive, LED Applications FEATURE INTERVIEW Thermal shock chamber