Estimated reading time: 8 minutes

Up Close: ICT's Hayling Island, UK Seminar

Calm was restored as Chris Wall, ICT treasurer and technical director of Electra Polymers, gave a cool and informative insight into how a privately-owned UK company, celebrating its 30th anniversary, had established an outstanding reputation for delivering reliable and innovative products with world-class technical support to all customers irrespective of size or location.

With 25% of its UK workforce focused on R&D, Electra was recognised as specialist in the development of solder masks, and Wall described the evolution of solder resist materials from screen-printed heat-cured two-component epoxy-polyamine adducts, through single-component UV-cured products to present-day liquid photoimageable formulations rheologically optimised for screen or spray application, with photoinitiator systems optimised for traditional UV exposure or specifically formulated for fixed transmission laser or LED wavelengths. There was an increasing demand for solder masks for high-brightness LED lighting circuits with particular attributes, such as rapid tack-drying on high heat-conductivity substrates, high opacity, tailored reflectivity, and resistance to thermal and UV ageing.

Summarising the current market expectation of solder mask performance, over and above its original purpose of enabling mass soldering techniques, Wall indicated that it was required to prevent corrosion of underlying circuitry, to act as a plating resist for surface finishes, to prevent growth of metal whiskers, to insulate substrates from debris and environment, to assist with component placement, and to reflect light from LED backplanes, whilst being able to be applied by every known method, impossible to over-dry, cheap, fast-exposing using any imaging process, easy to develop out of small holes, able to coat or tent large holes, cheap, rapid curing, resist all known chemical processes yet easy to remove if required, cheap, and available in every colour and surface finish under the sun!

The day had started with Rolls Royce Motor Cars; it was appropriate the seminar concluded with Rolls Royce Motor Cars--what better example of high-quality, low-volume, bespoke manufacturing in the UK? David Monks, manager of Drive Train, Chassis and Electronics, described the quality assurance procedures employed at the Goodwood plant delegates had visited earlier. He began by quoting a few greats: Sir Henry Royce--“Strive for perfection in everything you do. Take the best that exists and make it better. When it does not exist, design it;” Albert Einstein--“Intellectuals solve problems, geniuses prevent them;” and Lord Kelvin--“I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind: it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely, in your thoughts, advance to the stage of science, whatever the matter may be.” These were guiding principles in the Rolls Royce operation.

Monks briefly introduced the model range, from the driver-focused Ghost (base price around £220,000) to the passenger-focused Phantom (base price around £450,000) and explained that, with few exceptions, each car was commissioned specific to an individual customer’s personal needs and preferences, with certain customers prepared to spend enormous sums on customised woodwork, leatherwork, paintwork, and electronics. Whatever the specification, customers demanded the best and Rolls Royce’s quality assurance systems had been developed to ensure that the best was consistently delivered.

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