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The Chemical Connection: Getting to Know Your Vendor

After working for a capital equipment supplier for almost 50 years, I’ve found that the most important part of getting to know your vendor is good communication among all parties. While contact between fabricators of a constantly changing product line and the designers of those products may occur daily or weekly, conversations between you and your equipment supplier may be years apart. That lengthy gap often means that previous contacts may have been promoted, retired, or moved on to other opportunities. You may have also migrated to a new supplier with whom you have little or no history. In either case, you will be interacting with someone you are unfamiliar with (as they are with you). Therefore, it is essential for both sides to communicate clearly so expectations will align.

It sounds easy enough, doesn’t it? Yet many problems encountered with the equipment end of the business are due to miscommunication between the supplier and the customer. Usually, these come as assumptions made by both parties that are not addressed during the discussions leading up to the final design and purchase order.

A simple example occurred a few years ago. A potential customer contacted us about etching equipment to thin down copper sheets to a specified thickness with tight specifications. They specialized in copper gaskets for high-compression racing engines, cutting them from a copper sheet with a water jet. Their problem was that the milled copper sheet came in standard thicknesses. The mill was able to deliver custom thicknesses but at a greatly increased price. They were buying standard-thickness copper sheets and sanding them down to the desired thickness with the automatic sander. Not only was this slow and dusty but the sanding work hardened the copper and required an annealing step before cutting. Etching it to thickness would be quicker, cleaner, and less costly. A few test runs in the lab showed that the etching process would easily meet their specifications, so a production system was proposed and accepted, and a purchase order was cut.

The communication problem became apparent when the equipment was delivered. The customer was not familiar with these types of purchases and assumed they were receiving a turnkey system where the equipment would be delivered, installed, filled with cupric chloride, tested, and ready to run. Unfortunately, they did not make this expectation clear to us during our discussions. We were not entirely without fault here as we offer installation assistance as a separate item, but since the customer did not request it, we assumed they didn’t need it. As a result, when the truck arrived at the customer's location, there wasn’t even a forklift available to remove the equipment from the truck, let alone move it into the building.

Fortunately, it was a small, self-contained system that only needed water and electric hookups, so it was set up quickly, the chemistry found, and process training provided in short order. Had this been a larger and more complex system, the simple communication failure would have been a major problem for both parties.

One way to avoid this type of communication gap is to set up a factory acceptance test, where the finished system is set up in the factory and run, usually with water, before delivery. The customer representative(s) review the quotes and specifications page by page with the factory engineers to determine whether everything is working as promised or expected. Any anomalies are usually found at this stage, and it is much easier to make corrections while the equipment is still at the factory rather than after it is delivered. Not doing a factory acceptance test can result in a wide range of problems, anger, and frustrations that could have been avoided.

A few years ago, a customer wanted to replace a 20-year-old two-stage chemical cleaning system (provided by a competitor that is no longer in business) that was beginning to fall apart. It seemed easy enough. They just wanted a work-alike copy of their old machine. The first stage was an aggressive alkaline clean followed by a three-stage cascading water rinse. The second stage was a mild acid stop bath followed by another cascading water rinse and dryer. The original installation drawing was provided and copied as closely as possible. When the system was finished, they decided to forego a factory acceptance test to save some time and expense. The system was duly shipped and installed.

The initial results were terrible. The panels came out of the system discolored and with obvious wheel tracks which would not be acceptable for continuing to the next process step. The customer suspected the wheel material was different from their old system; several wheel changes were tried to no avail. We were puzzled, as we had no problems with the dozens of these types of systems in the field with the same construction materials using the same chemistries. As the days passed with no solution, anger and frustration grew. Then it was discovered that the pump taking the overflow from the second stage rinse (after the acid treatment) to the first stage rinse after the alkaline clean had not been hooked up. The customer had not been mixing the alkaline cleaner solution properly but got away with it in the old system because the rinse after the alkaline clean became slightly acidic from being supplied by water from the acid rinse. This neutralized the alkaline chemistry on the surface of the board as it came out of the alkaline cleaner before it could mar the board’s surface. The pump was hooked up correctly and production was underway quickly. A factory acceptance test would likely have picked this up and saved everyone much time and aggravation.

The moral is that even when you think you have good communication and trust between both parties, it never hurts to double-check. As former U.S. president Ronald Reagan often advised, “Trust but verify.”

One final thought (that should put us in good stead through all walks of life) is that sometimes, despite the best intentions, miscommunication and mistakes occur. I know I’ve made the occasional error. There are generally two responses when this happens: scream and shout, point fingers and threaten to sue; or swallow your anger and frustration, then say, “Let’s work together to identify and fix the problem and worry about assessing the blame later.” I’ve been on the receiving end of both responses, and I don’t think I have to tell you for which customer I am more willing to go the extra mile.

This column originally appeared in the January 2024 issue of PCB007 Magazine.