Revolutionizing Inner Layer Registration

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

In this interview with Anthony (Tony) Faraci, founder and president of DIS, we delve into enhancing inner layer accuracy and yields, pivotal to boosting profitability in the circuit board industry. Tony has extensive experience in the development of tooling technology over the decades, which ultimately led to his founding DIS. From his beginnings at Multiline to tackling the challenges of registration accuracy, Tony's insights clearly lay out the complexities of modern manufacturing and the innovations in shaping the future of inner layer registration.

Marcy LaRont: Tony, tell me about your origin story and how you got to where you are today.

Anthony (Tony) Faraci: I studied mechanical engineering in college, then soon after college I started in this business at Multiline Technology, which made registration equipment, punching blocks, and punching machines for the circuit board industry. It was a leader at the time, and to this day you'll hear four-slot tooling referred to as “Multiline tooling,” even though there are other manufacturers that make it. I worked at Multiline for about 15 years, first as a service manager, working my way to a technical sales and product manager, where I performed tooling audits at customers’ facilities.

For tooling audits, I visited customers that were post-etch punching and pin laminating their inner layers and didn’t know why they were experiencing misregistration. I would look at the punching machines as well as their punch and die blocks, lamination plates, press plates, and pins—the whole tooling from front to back registration, from the artwork to X-ray. At that time, there weren't any LDI machines yet, and Multiline’s tooling was a new product; everyone used artwork, and they would have to pin the artwork. I learned how to check for accuracy and good registration. While I was doing all that deep work on factory floors, I realized that, over time, the layers were increasingly thinner.

To read this entire conversation, which appeared in the December 2024 issue of PCB007 Magazine, click here.