Deep Into Technology at Compunetics

Estimated reading time: 14 minutes

Ward: Exactly. This castellation design has been extended to be sort of multi-purpose. On one end of this board it doesn't have to be a bump bonding attachment. It can facilitate any type of mating. We've expanded this castellation design to include multiple features, different features, so it's sort of a multi-purpose economic solution. 

Goldman: Another example of partnering with your customers to develop a new technology and new methods.

Ward: Right. It took a couple hours in a conference room of going back and forth with ideas, and it's not something you're going to do on the phone. We had to sit down and hash out all the details. It was a collaboration. Doing it was not as much fun, but we got smart about it along the way and learned how to save some steps and cut costs, and make it more affordable for us and the customer. 

Goldman: Then you made it work, and that was fun. 

Ward: Yeah, it is satisfying when it works out. 

Goldman: So where is all this going to take you next?

Capar: We have aggressive growth goals. Since I started here, we’ve been focusing mainly on operational excellence measures, and we’ve made great strides. We want to become one of the leading quick-turn advanced technology fabricators in the industry. To grow our business, we have a tremendous amount of work in progress including what Jesse mentioned. Three people spent three days at the IPC APEX EXPO spec’ing out equipment. We have placed an order for a second plasma unit. We are close to placing an order for a second automated high-temp lamination press. A via fill machine is next. We will be investing heavily in our business. We have been hiring as well.  It has not been easy but we filled a number of operator positions to strengthen our second shift. We are confident of our capabilities and we want to get the word out about Compunetics. We don’t want to be the best kept secret in the PCB industry anymore because there is very little technology that’s out there that Compunetics cannot do.

In general, industry expects this level of technology to come from tier one fabricators like TTM and not from a small- to medium-sized company in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. So, we want to get the word out, but again, once you’re confident with the technology and the turn time, we believe there is a real demand in the industry for a high-tech shop that can consistently deliver an on time, high-quality product.

Goldman: Anything to add here, Tim?

Schmitt: A few other things. One of them is that we do have some expertise in large defense antennas. One was for Lockheed Martin. It was a space-based radar and we made 72 tiles. Those tiles, each about 18”X18” were all assembled into one unit and were successfully tested tested by the Air Force. Those were a multilayer flex hybrid, which included the flex and some Rogers material, plus buried resistors. We have other customers that we do antenna work for as well. 

Goldman: Do you see much call for embedded components?

Schmitt: Lately we have not been seeing a lot for buried resistor work. We do see a lot for buried capacitors, and we've worked with the buried capacitor materials from Oak-Mitsui, 3M and DuPont. As a matter of fact, our sister division uses buried capacitance material in their product, which we provide to them. There is another market that just picked up for buried resistors, which we can't talk about now, but it has potential. We're also involved with certain customers that use interposers. We do a lot of interposers. They end up at Intel and Intel’s customers and are used in high-speed logic analyzers. The interposers are all fairly complicated. They're usually rigid-flex. They usually have high-speed materials, Nelco 13 SI EP or similar materials. They'll have traces down to two mils to get the impedance they need, and they'll be anywhere from eight to up to 20 layers. Some also have buried resistor layers, and all have high-density via-in-pad outer layers with some of them down to a 0.35-millimeter BGA. I remember one had 17 different controlled impedance values. Those go to a variety of our customers. They're all high-speed, high-value interposers.

Goldman: Thank you. You certainly are doing a lot of interesting things. I hope you will write about it one of these days! Anything else you would like to add?

Capar: I can say I am very happy to be here. Again, what drew me to Compunetics was their legacy of being a world-class shop back in the day that I had tough time competing against. Many years later when the opportunity came up to join Compunetics I jumped on it, and I’m happy I did. I have a broad-based experience in scaling businesses, and I am confident that with my incredible team we will be scaling this business and creating jobs in Western Pennsylvania. You are going to hear a lot of great things about Compunetics in the coming days and months.

Goldman: OK. I’m definitely looking forward to that. Gentlemen, thanks so much for your time.

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