Multiline Technology Closes; Multiline International Europa Unaffected

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

Multiline Technology closed its doors in June of 2016. However, Multiline International Europe (mie) remains active, robust and very much in business.

Multiline Technology started as Lenkeit Industries in the 1940s, as a tool and die-making business serving the electrical and automobile industries. Alfred Angelo became a partner in the 1950s and the sole owner in the 1970s. In the mid-1970s, Alfred’s older son, Michael, joined the company and steered it toward specialized tooling for the piercing and blanking of single-sided and punched-plated through printed circuits. When multilayer printed circuits began becoming wide-spread in the late 1970s largely because of the growth of the mini-computer industry, Lenkeit was well positioned to supply registration-slot punching dies to PCB fabricators in the United States and particularly to the burgeoning computer industry which at that time centered mostly in New England.

Paul Waldner was hired in 1980 to design a line of equipment including the Acculine laminate punch, the Optiline Artwork punch, the pre-preg punch, the depinner, the layup table and ultimately, the post-etch punch. Multiline Technology began as a division of Lenkeit Industries in 1981. In 1985, Lenkeit Industries abandoned its tool and die-making business and the remaining Lenkeit employees were integrated into Multiline Technology. Exports became an important part of Multiline’s business in the mid-‘80s. Paul Waldner and his family moved to Germany in 1987 to establish Multiline International Europe (mie).

Then mie expanded its business beyond the narrow focus of registration systems, although mie and Paul Waldner continued Multiline’s tradition of innovation as a source of product ideas, product development and product improvement. When mie and Paul Waldner were partners, from 1991 to 2015, mie became an important contributor to the state-of-the-art of imaging and exposure technology, laser drilling, X-ray registration drilling, registration of exposure and multilayer panels and multilayer pressing technology. Multiline International Europa and Multiline Technology and by extension, Michael Angelo and Paul Waldner, ended their partnership in 2015.

Today mie is the distributor throughout Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) for Fujifilm’s PCB products, and mie continues to offer registration solutions for their customers. In addition, mie has supply or cooperation agreements with:

• Innolas, a German producer of laser micro-machining and drilling machines
• Miva Technologies, a German producer of laser imaging solutions
• Entelechy, an engineering outsourcing service
• eSurface, offering fully additive and semi-additive circuit technology
• Echo Graphics, manufacturer of film developing and processing equipment
• Mie exposure machines, frames and accessories, consumables and spares for clean room and press room requirements

Many Multiline Technology customers are worried about how they will be able to maintain their machines into the future. Mie is offering reasonably priced upgrades of obsolete or unsupported elements of Multiline Technology machines and is committed to finding solutions for maintaining older Multiline Technology machines, both electrically and mechanically.

For further information, contact Paul Waldner at Multiline International Europa at +49-172-934-7401 or or pwaldner@mie.de.