Not All Plating Lines Are Created Equal

Estimated reading time: 12 minutes

Großmann He was a technical electrician. He worked at Atotech, building plants. He became more and more specialized information about PCBs.

Matties: Where do you see the company headed?

Großmann We want to reach all those small facilities and PCB platers in the U.S. Ludy is often in the Silicon Valley area where there are galvanic plants or test tanks for copper cells and prototyping. To get the information flow for green fabrication and all the benefits, Mr. Ludy’s opinion is that there still lots of galvanic plants in the U.S. are, and from the technology side, they’re not very advanced. He has seen lots of people still lifting the flight bar up and letting it fall down to get rid of the air bubbles as well as walking with rubber boots through the copper cell doing work. This is something Mr. Ludy wants to change with information flow, and it will take some time, but we hope to get into the U.S. market with our technology. We doubled the company’s size and efforts to reach that.

Matties: It’s interesting that you mentioned the manual tanks. That’s something we see a lot in the U.S. with people using plating racks, etc. Happy was recommending that you sell the single cell.

Holden: When the customer only orders one or two panels, it’s not even on a flight bar.

Großmann The big thing in the past was building everything smaller and more compact, as well as the technology, such as a higher AC current on the area, to reach those small companies who don’t have that need to produce mass volume to get their amounts also fulfilled. Mr. Ludy’s recommendation is if they want to get higher technologies, it’s a huge benefit because you dry the panels in a much more environmentally friendly way. For drying the panels, we mostly use 1.6-kilowatt drainage. For one model, we need 2.3 kilowatts. We have an adjusted temperature of 21°C instead of 60°C of the hot air blower.

Matties: As you said, the old way is throwing money away.

Großmann: Right. We have a decent drying time, and with the drainage, some remain in the drilling holes. In this system, we get the complete moisture out of every corner of the panel.

Matties: How do you achieve that? What’s the significant difference?

Großmann Right now, we have a regenerator. We use the air and dry it completely. There’s nearly 0% moisture in the air. Then, inside of the tank, we have special inlets and outlets so that we don’t blow the dry air on the panel. We use different dynamic pressures to achieve and extract as well as blow. There’s blow and vacuum from two sides—the back and the front. Even the water that remains in the small areas can move because of the different directions. Compared to the old way, this is also very green. This is already patented by Ludy, and right now, we have 13 plants of PCBs using this technique.

Matties: It sounds like you are doing some good work. We appreciate you taking the time to speak with us today.

Großmann: Thank you for making the trip out here.