ESI’s CapStone FPCB System Delivers Highest Via Drilling Throughput in Industry

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

Electro Scientific Industries, Inc. announced the availability of its new CapStone flexible printed circuit board laser processing system, which offers 2X throughput improvement over its predecessor for processing blind and through hole vias—the highest in the industry.

“Flexible printed circuit (FPC) manufacturers will get a significant advantage with CapStone,” said John Williams, ESI’s vice president of marketing. “Our marketing and engineering teams focused on the areas that would make the biggest impact on our customers’ productivity, pairing our newest beam control capabilities with the latest laser technology to deliver substantial gains. Doubling throughput not only enables FPC manufacturers to meet aggressive production schedules, but also allows them to add capacity with a smaller factory footprint, less capital expenditure and less recurring expense. This efficiency gain will drop right down to our customer’s bottom line.”

CapStone helps manufacturers keep pace with evolving technology requirements, such as the increasing use of blind vias and next-generation flexible materials. ESI’s new DynaClean beam positioning feature, enabled by its patented esiLens technology, reduces unproductive beam movement and provides multiple focus settings at every location. ESI’s newest-generation beam positioning technology, AcceleDrill, takes advantage of the high power and high repetition rate of the esiFlex laser to deliver unprecedented processing efficiency. Combined, these technologies allow FPC manufacturers to double their processing throughput without compromising quality, substantially lowering per-panel processing costs while maintaining high yields across a range of applications.

“The new CapStone solution leverages our extensive intellectual property portfolio and laser-material interaction expertise developed over several decades of experience in laser-based PCB processing. It expands our product offering to address important emerging applications in flex PCB manufacturing,” said Williams. “We expect the CapStone system to meet our customers’ needs well into the future.”

About ESI, Inc.

ESI’s manufacturing systems are designed to enable manufacturers of electronic components and devices to optimize their production capabilities and commercialize technologies through laser processing. ESI’s systems deliver more control, greater flexibility and more precise processing of a wider range of materials. The result is higher production quality, faster throughput, and higher yields, allowing customers to more easily meet new and challenging customer requirements, consistently meet aggressive production goals and better control costs. ESI is headquartered in Portland, Oregon, with global operations from the Pacific Northwest to the Pacific Rim. More information is available here.