Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/992528
14 PCB007 MAGAZINE I JUNE 2018 mation areas, there's not a whole lot of change. My team supports resist strippers and tin strip- pers and those types of chemistries as well. Matties: Do you see any desire for a zero-dis- charge facility and is that coming into play as we see at Whelen? Antonellis: I think Whelen is the only one that I know of in full use of that concept. Cullen: Many customers talk about zero dis- charge. It has not re- ally been happening. I did hear about some new legislation in Chi- na that's coming down the pike for facilities within a certain dis- tance of the protected rivers, five kilometers or something like that. It was going to be zero discharge, so a couple of the guys I spoke to said that they would have to close facilities, and I hadn't heard of that before. I've heard companies applying for permits in different ar- eas based on the restrictions, but there was go- ing to be closure of some significant facilities. As far as I know, it hasn't happened yet, but I've heard the rules are on the way. Matties: It's counterintuitive to China, isn't it? Cullen: Well, in a historic perspective yes, but we've seen that China has gotten much strict- er than even some of the European and North American standards. It started with phospho- rus and then it came down to metals and che- lators. Now it's just zero, no effluent. Cyanide, of course, hit China's platers hard. After a big set of explosions in East China a couple of years ago, and then the algae blooms in lakes outside Shanghai, the smog control measures during high-profile events like the G7 meetings and the Olympics, it seems like serious envi- ronmental change in China is really happen- ing now. Goldman: That's interesting. It's almost like a backlash. The pendulum swings further to the other side than you might think it should or would. Cullen: It really has. In my view, they might be rushing into new regulations a bit too quickly. Matties: What sort of automated control sys- tems are you seeing, and what are the advan- tages? Antonellis: I don't see much besides specif- ic gravity controllers that might be on a ma- chine. And then there is always a manual analysis that's happening back in the lab to confirm any adds that were made automatical- ly. There are nickel controllers for ENIG and electroless copper always has controls, and CVS is used quite a bit for electrolytic plating baths. Matties: I would think with IoT and the surge of sensors everywhere that we would be seeing this in our plating departments. Is there not a desire, or is it not needed, or is there just not enough efficiency to be gained? Jordan Kologe: Part of what we do here is come up with innovative processes that simplify dif- ferent manufacturing steps. A lot of our work is focused on coming out with products that can combine manufacturing processes into the same step. I'm sure a lot of companies are heading down that road as they try to get high- er yields. They're trying to reduce the num- ber of opportunities for defects going through a line, that sort of thing. Cullen: I'm sure you're right, Barry. The IoT revolution is going to enable a lot more auto- mated control. We see this more in our indus- trial or metal finishing business. That, again, is a little bit counterintuitive, because many met- al finishing shops don't have the sophisticated laboratories and a lot of the engineers running around like the circuit fab shops do. So metal finishing shops can tend to have more automa- tion and cloud data sharing. We also see more Don Cullen