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10 PCB007 MAGAZINE I JUNE 2018 to the article, it is very good for extremely fine features. Another recent area of concern is via fill- ing and we have an article by Saminda (Sam) Dharmarathna, et al., of MacDermid Enthone, on an electroplated via fill process which looks most interesting. This process can electroplate copper in a via while keeping the surface cop- per thin—quite a trick! This month, Mike Carano's "Trou- ble in Your Tank" column on trou- bleshooting PTH failure mech- anisms fit well with our wet processing topic. We hope you benefit from his practical knowledge and are storing his columns for future reference! Our final column this month comes from Elmati- ca's Didrick Beck. The subject is Lean manufacturing and the differences between standard and non-standard product lines. Good information to know. OK, so some of these articles have a lot of charts and graphs, and data that may seem daunting, but the information is worth reading so don't skip over them. Finally, getting back to volunteering, I'm looking forward in the months ahead to do- ing more local volunteering at our library, the historical museum, the animal shelter, and of course gardening. We are already moving one of our editors into the role of shepherd - ing our columnists (interested in writing for us?) and I'm backing off on more editorial du- ties to free up some time. Not gone, just mov- ing aside a bit to get into some other interests, so keep on reading and I will see you next month when we fill you in on the latest in solder mask technology. You are subscribed right? (Gotta ask!) PCB007 Patricia Goldman is managing editor of PCB007 Magazine. To contact Goldman, click here. ever more demanding customers in ever short- er time spans at ever lower costs and prices. How the heck do PCB companies accomplish this? Not alone, of course. The suppliers of both chemistry and equipment have been hard at work to help their PCB customers keep ahead of the curve. Much improved chemistry with better process windows, more reliable control, and lower toxicity have been at the forefront. And much research and improvement have gone into equipment in the form of both automation and—shall we say—efforts at process consis- tency (think spray and pump technology). So, let's look at what these people have to say and hopefully you will pick up some pointers and tidbits and learn about some new pro- cesses at the same time. To put everything in perspec- tive, we turned to specialty chem- ical company MacDermid Enthone (yours truly worked for two of the orig- inal companies). Don Cullen, Jordan Ko- loge and Ted Antonellis filled us in on not just what's new in chemistry but also in analysis and automation. Lately, one of the areas of concern for both PCB manufacturers and their customers is the final finish on the PCB—and the greatest of these seems to be in the ENIG, ENEPIG, etc., types. Atotech's Rick Nichols next presents an article on autocatalytic gold—as opposed to immersion gold—as a final finish being cham- pioned by the automotive industry for its high reliability. Coming at it from the equipment side of things is Viking's Marc Ladle with an interest- ing article on how changes in equipment de- sign can have a profound effect on the chemis- try. I think suppliers on both sides will tell you how important it is that they work together. Our next article comes from Uyemura, in Ja- pan. Tetsuya Sasamura and colleagues address a different final finish, this one without nick- el—a gold/palladium/gold process. According