Aismalibar on Laminates, Following the Market, and More

Estimated reading time: 17 minutes

Patty Goldman: There's a board in your showcase that has an aluminum back and it's got a bend to it. Can you talk about that?

Benmayor: That's the Flextherm laminate. It is an aluminum-based material with a very thin 25-micron layer that you can bend in order to achieve a 3D shape without losing the PCB functionality. 

Goldman: And the purpose of the aluminum-backing is obviously to dissipate heat directly.

Benmayor: With Flextherm we solve two main issues. As the thermal impedance is so low, we are able to transfer the temperature from the LED to the aluminium at very fast speed making the LED operate at lower temperature. At the same time and due to the Flextherm technology, we are able to bend the populated PCB with certain angles, achieving  a more regular light source. This is very important in the rear lights of a car. The LED located on a board requires an angle to achieve certain light uniformity and, by bending the PCB boards, the lighting manufacturers achieve different ranges of angle and can save a lot of money on optics or with different PCBs connected in between them. Traditionally, the rear lighting on the automotive was done with X amount of PCB boards inserted into plastic molds with different angles and connecting in between them with cables and connectors. With the Flextherm laminate, we give them the opportunity to do this in one piece, and be able to angle the LEDs in different directions, so they achieve a much faster assembly inside the light and only in one piece. They reduce a lot of potential problems with the connectors and so on.

Goldman: I'm guessing you work very closely with designers on that?

Benmayor: Yes, it's not easy. We launched Flextherm five years ago and we thought it would be a booming material in the market, but we are just now starting to see that reality. Now it's starting to boom. It took a long time to convince electronic designers that they could easily bend the board and create a 3D shape that includes a printed electronic design.

Matties: It's getting traction now.

Benmayor: No, the traction was always there. The problem is that when you talk to electrical engineers, these guys are not mechanical engineers. They are electronic engineers, and they are used to working on layer bases. Two dimensions.  Mechanical engineers are constantly using three dimensions, but electronic engineers are always thinking in two dimensions. The electronics engineers always talk about copper layer. So when you try to explain to them that the copper layers can bend, they don't think that’s possible until you show them a sample. When they do see this, they need the interaction of the mechanical engineers because things get complicated for them when the third dimension appears in an electronic board. When they go to three-dimensional layers, they need to integrate this on boxes and on plastics and this integration is not so easy.

Goldman: It takes some imagination.

Benmayor: Yes. You need imagination and they are not the right guys to have mechanical imagination. The right guys are the mechanical engineers, who at the same time have little idea of the what is going on in a PCB board. You cannot imagine the number of discussions we’ve had where we have to explain that after the board is ready and populated, they can now bend it with certain angles. 

Andy Shaughnessy: So you're saying the designers and the electrical engineers really need to have a mechanical engineer, or at least think like a mechanical engineer?

Benmayor: It’s a combination of electronic engineering and mechanical engineering, yes.

Shaughnessy: The designers and electrical engineers do tend to think in layers and numbers.

Goldman: Because that's what they always had to work with. It's the same with totally flex PCBs, in that they have to think, “Well, I can do this, but then how do I make use of that? How do I make use of this neat new technology?” It takes them a while.

Benmayor: If you go to the rigid-flex technology, at the end of the day it's two boards connected by a polyimide flex and you only need to calculate the distance in between one and the other. When you arrive to a Flextherm, you really need to shape it out as a mechanical part, and then you need to put it flat and then make the integration of the PCB on top. So it has to operate one way around, not starting from the PCB side. You have to start from the mechanical side and then put the board flat, and then print the PCB design on top. That's easy to say, but when you arrive at these kind of organizations, it's not so easy to work it out internally.

Matties: And how you bend it and such will affect the way that the heat dissipates as well?

Benmayor: The bending, no. The bending has limitations from the shapes you can build. Flextherm cannot do all shapes because there are some angle limitations and radius limitations. And this has to be implemented because once you bend over a certain angle, you can destroy the connections or damage the board itself, so there are some parameters. We try to inform the OEMs of the limitations, such as what is the minimum distance from the component to the radius of the bending point etc. So we have to be in constant communication with the designers in order to help them.

Matties: Is there a design rulebook that has been produced for designers as a reference?

Benmayor: You have the main guidelines for designs, but we always recommend that the OEMs make their design and send us a 3D version so we can check what they have done. Once we see this we point out the critical aspects and offer them solutions to solve potential problems on the bending especially. 

Matties: How fast is that segment growing?

Benmayor: We have been promoting this for five years, and the growth has been small. But now we are starting to see a lot of projects designed with the Fastherm technology so it is growing at a huge pace right now, maybe 50 or 60% every year.

Goldman: That Flextherm must have some mechanical strength to it. Because you bend and it's aluminum so it stands on its own. That's another aspect that makes it different from flex.

Benmayor: Yes, it needs less support, a real benefit. You only need to support a couple of points and then it keeps the shape. There is a lot of cost saving, for example on the manual operation to fix the boards to the plastic box of a rear light.

Shaughnessy: It's probably easier to fabricate, too, because it's not going to warp.

Benmayor: Well, there are two components here. From the fabricator perspective, the PCB is simple, nothing really complicated there. But after populating the board, which is done on a flat surface, now you have to bend it. That's where we get stuck with many OEMs. Because the PCBA guys populate the Flextherm, but they don't want the responsibility of bending the board.

Shaughnessy: Probably afraid it'll break the trace or something.

Benmayor: Yes! Then you’re at that moment when you have to once again help them and tell them, “Yes, you can bend it. But you need proper tools to bend them; you cannot bend them manually, okay?” Depending on the volume, the investment in the tools is expensive, but that investment will catch up easily because of the savings on manpower to make 10 boards, for example, and the connectors and cabling them and inserting them on the line, etc. So, you need more tooling but you save a lot of manpower.

Matties: Sounds like your organization offers a lot of technical advice and support for your customers.

Benmayor: We try.

Matties: Tell us a little bit about the certification requirements for automotive.

Benmayor: Certifications are a must in the automotive industry as many people know. You need to have them if you want to step into the industry, and we try to fulfill all the requirements that the automotive guys demand. I mean, the big automotive players come to visit our factory and over the course of a week they go through all the processes one by one, checking that everything is under control and fully documented. There is a track record on every kind of chemistry involved, traceability, etc. Once you are certified, you have a note, and they say, "Okay, you have to give us a solution for this, this, this. For X amount of points.” They come later and they double-check if all open points are solved. It's very difficult to step in, especially in Europe. The American market is much easier than the European market because many of the quality certifications of the automotive electronics industry in America rely on the PCB maker, but in Europe, they want to audit the entire chain, not only one. The Americans transfer part of the responsibility to the PCB maker or to the PCBA, and they are responsible for the ones that supply the labor and materials to them. In the European market, the OEM specifies to a much lower level than in the American market. Which means they are giving part of the stress of the certification onto our shoulders.

Matties: Just to switch gears a little, what is your view on the copper supply line?

Benmayor: Copper is crazy. As you know, in November of last year, we had a big shortage of copper and there was no copper available in the market due to the lithium battery segment growing so fast. We had to increase our inventories as much as we could in order to roll over this problem. The second part of this year everything relaxed and now the shortage trend is coming back again.

Matties: What sort of impact do you see for short-term in the industry? Higher prices?

Benmayor: Resin chemistry. Chemistry is crazy. It's increasing significantly. And the delivery time in general is very long now and it’s giving us headaches. It looks like the chemistry players are getting on bigger platforms together and reducing structure and the demand is growing, so the access to chemistry is becoming a nightmare. The resin market is very stressful today. It’s not easy to deal with these guys now. Also the glass cloth is in short supply.

Matties: So you're in a tough market. Tough supply line and you have to educate your customers. Congratulations for growing business in those circumstances.

Benmayor: Nothing is easy, right?

Matties: Well, if it was easy, everybody would be doing it, right? And so what you're doing is creating this really strong niche.

Benmayor: Thank you.

Matties: How many people are there in your company now?

Benmayor: We're around 100.

Matties: Is your business at the level that you thought it would be now? Or how do you see that? How do you measure your success?

Benmayor: Aismalibar has a long history in the market and was one of the first laminators for PCB in the EU. Unfortunately, the big volumes have moved to the Far East, but we managed to find niches where we could continue growing and expanding our technology. On the other hand we still have production capacity to increase volumes, and thermal laminates requirements are increasing, so we will follow the market growth as much as we can.

Matties: Eduardo, thank you so much for spending time with us.

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