Catching Up with HSIO’s James Rathburn

Estimated reading time: 12 minutes

Rathburn: Thanks Dan. There are companies providing fine geometry substrates and circuits in the 12 micron range today, but most of those constructions have trouble reaching very tightly tuned impedance. Our focus is not only on fine geometry, but on providing clean signals at fine geometry. We also have the capability to form circuit bearing LCP structures with embedded antennae, shielding, or decoupling into 3D geometries that cannot be fabricated with conventional technology.

Beaulieu: OK, let’s get to the acquisition of HEI. What are the details? Why did you buy this company?

Rathburn: Through the effort to enable our LCP circuit technology with existing conventional suppliers, we came across the former HEI fabrication operation. The facility was well respected as a high-end circuit shop, and was a key part of the overall HEI business. Events with the parent and other subsidiaries resulted in bankruptcy and customers stepped in to continue supply. We bought the operation primarily because of the excellent capability existing today, and validation of applying that capability to our LCP technology. We have a unique view of circuit production that takes advantage of the high end capability already in place, and we will invest to enhance conventional production as well as add the LCP capability to create the best domestic circuit supply available for fine geometries and high performance.

Beaulieu: And what was the synergy between the former HEI facility and HSIO?

Rathburn: HSIO has a very unique approach to the circuit industry. There are many capable companies domestically that can produce quality three-mil lines and space circuits. When geometries fall down to two-mil lines and spaces, the pool of capable suppliers is reduced; below two mils the supply base is even more limited. We have approached circuit fabrication by applying the manufacturing principles used in our other business, where precision production of panelized formats with a mix of additive and subtractive processes yields capability not possible with normal board shop fabrication. Whether the material set is conventional polyimide, rigid laminate, Teflon or LCP, we apply our core manufacturing building blocks considering what the end customer really needs in the application.

Whether the need is for a one-piece prototype or higher volume, we will provide a roadmap for adoption that allows the customer to sample a better version of the circuits they are buying today simply by providing the existing design for us to replicate using our improved processing methods. Once the experience is qualified, design rules for finer lines and spaces will be implemented to provide better performance, higher density, thinner dielectrics, impedance adjustments beyond build to print, with smaller full metal copper vias and reduction in layer counts. We also have a unique approach to combining injection molding of substrate cores, selective metallization of polymers, and mixing conventional rigid, ceramic materials with a fusion binding process that enables embedded components and 3D circuitry.

The synergy meshes very well with our circuit and socket focus. We are well respected in the socket community with unique products that enable semiconductor developers to validate and test silicon directly on real world platforms with high performance. Every one of our socket customers uses several circuits in their efforts to validate and test new silicon and systems, and the availability of circuit products tuned to the same performance of the socket products is very compelling. We will also support end product circuit fabrication with the opportunity to enable very high performance socket and connector applications. No other company can provide the overall signal chain attention HSIO provides.

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