OTHER ELECTRONICS & NANOTECHNOLOGY
UPDATE
December 2012
McIlvaine Company
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Mission Micro Molding Adds Cleanroom Space
EV Group Expands Cleanroom in Austria
Picosun to Join China-Finland Nano Innovation Center in Suzhou
Mission Micro Molding Corporation is expanding its facility and adding new equipment. The company reports that the new expanded cleanroom facility improves its assembly capability. The assembly space not only will be able to service assembly lines, but also manufacturing lines, including secondary component sub assembly and packaging.
The company’s main business is providing micro and small part injection molded plastic components, which also will benefit from the expanded production space. Mission Micro Molding already provides clean room molding services, and the new upgrades will add several lines of machinery to complement the existing molding lines.
“[The new space] is a great opportunity for us to expand and meet our customers’ needs for both injection molding and assembly in a cleanroom environment,” said company President Lisa Carr.
Mission Micro Molding specializes in .01 gram to 13 gram parts only. Services include injection molding, insert molding, over molding, and assembly. The company has the capabilities to mold in a variety of materials including PEEK (poly ether etherketone), Delrin, Santoprene, PP (polypropylene), PE (polyethelyne), Polycarbonate, PMMA (poly methyl methacrylate).
Based in Mission Viejo, Calif., Mission Micro Molding is a woman-owned small business. The company is ISO 13485 and ISO 9001 certified.
EV Group (EVG), a supplier of wafer bonding and lithography equipment for the MEMS, nanotechnology and semiconductor markets, has completed its expanded cleanroom IV facility at its corporate headquarters at St Florian am Inn, Austria.
The expansion is part of the company's long-term growth strategy to address high-volume tool orders and speed time to market for its customers worldwide.
EVG has doubled its cleanroom space for process development and pilot production services. It has also expanded its application labs, added new R&D facilities for internal tool development and testing, and opened a new training centre for customers and staff.
In addition the Group has increased its automated high-volume manufacturing (HVM) systems (for different wafer sizes) to strengthen its demonstration and process development capabilities.
Although manufacturing and product development are centralized in Austria, the company says technology and process development teams here work closely with the company's subsidiaries in Tempe, Arizona; Albany, New York; Yokohama and Fukuoka, Japan; Seoul, South Korea; and Chung-Li, Taiwan where additional application labs and cleanroom facilities are available for onsite customer demonstration and technology process development.
EVG works with universities and R&D institutes worldwide to contribute to the most advanced research for semiconductors, MEMS, light emitting diodes (LEDs) and other high-tech devices.
Earlier this year, the addition of an ultra-modern manufacturing facility doubling the production floor space marked the completion of the first phase of EVG's long-term expansion plans. The company increased its order intake in fiscal year 2012 (ended 30 September 2012) by 5% over 2011 and increased its revenue by 20% within the same period.
More than 100 new employees have joined the company in the last 12 months, taking the total to approximately 600 worldwide.
LSA Laser, a U.S. contract manufacturer of medical devices, has installed an ISO Class 8 (Class 100,000) cleanroom at its premises in Plymouth, Minnesota, continuing the expansion of its manufacturing facilities.
The new cleanroom will include a CO2 laser system with up to five more systems planned for precision processing silicone, TPE, Teflon and other polymers in addition to a range of medical grade metal materials.
‘Growing demand for precision laser processed medical components and assemblies are the reason for this continuing expansion,’ said Tom Noll, LSA president.
‘Our unique facilities and processes, together with our partner relationships with customers, drive this growth.’
LSA Laser is a contract manufacturer of medical device components and assemblies with ISO 13485:2003 certification.
The firm recently moved into new 26,000 sq. ft. manufacturing and office facilities. It uses 26 laser welding and cutting systems with up to six-axis motion control and computer aided manufacturing capabilities.
LSA processes include laser cutting, laser welding, laser ablation and laser marking used in a broad range of medical devices including defibrillation leads, stents, catheters, surgical instruments, dental instruments, orthopedics, hearing devices, neuro applications and others. Many of the processes include materials such as platinum, titanium, nitinol and nichrome in sizes as small as .001in.
As part of a multi-million pound refurbishment at BAe Systems' Crewe Toll Production Facility in Edinburgh, DAW Technologies (Europe) has just installed 21 ISO Class 8 (Class 100,000) cleanrooms, together with associated processing and bonding suites. The new facility will form the centre of excellence for laser testing for the BAe Avionics Division. The laser testing facility is an integral part of BAe Systems' Production Hall Refurbishment program, which has been project managed by property and construction consultants Thomas and Adamson. David Young, a partner at Thomas and Adamson and project manager for the refurbishment, explains: "Our client's brief at the outset was to construct a facility which gave maximum flexibility for future business expansion with minimal disruption to the existing services and occupants.
"Budget was paramount, as was the aggressive program required to meet our client's business needs. Health and Safety issues relating to laser firing requirements also had to be addressed, not only in relation to mechanical and electrical systems, but also to protect occupants of the area."
"We worked closely with Daw on the design of bespoke safety requirements that prevent unauthorized access and in the event of a door being opened, the laser shuts off immediately. The process of setting up a room for laser testing requires strict adherence to the requisite protocols and it was important that we appreciated the end-user's requirements in order that the cleanroom design met with our client's expectations," Young adds.
This highly serviced project has taken five months to complete from the initial design to handover. The contract was negotiated on an open book basis with Balfour Beatty Construction, which has successfully worked within the Crewe Toll site. This ensured that BAe Systems' expectations of both quality and design were met. Throughout the construction phase, the adjoining facilities continued to be in use, requiring off-site fabrication to minimize disruption, as well as careful planning of on-site infrastructure.
Daw used its modular CLEANseal wall and ceiling system to build the cleanrooms. This methodology ensured significant time savings when compared with more traditional systems and provides a flexible solution for any future alterations. Trevor Drummond, marketing manager at Daw Technologies (Europe), comments: "The next phase of this contract is already in the pipeline and this will consist of a program to expand the number of cleanrooms to 48 over the next two years. It is therefore important that the current facility is both flexible and easily upgraded and, indeed, both these qualities are inherent to Daw's design philosophy. "During the design phase, we analyzed both the process requirements and the environmental criteria carefully to ensure that the stringent temperature and humidity level requirements were achieved. "Each Class 100,000 cleanroom has been validated to Class 1000, has individual temperature controls and is independently earthed." Integration of all the specialist electrical, control systems and process pipework was so critical, adds Drummond, that a complete mock-up of a typical room was constructed to verify the safety aspects, as well as to ensure operational success.
South Korean electronics giant Samsung has announced intentions to build within Malaysia its biggest operations facility outside its home country.
Samsung SDI President and CEO Park Sang Jin met with International Trade and Industry Minister Datuk Seri Mustapa Mohamed to discuss plans to expand manufacturing operations and to establish an inorganic industry R&D hub over the next two years.
Samsung first opened in Malaysia in 1979 providing sales and engineering support and has since invested $1.6 billion in the manufacturing and services sectors. The company currently employs around 7,500 workers. The planned R&D centre is expected to boost employment further, providing progressive training and support for local engineers.
Park reiterated that Malaysia's robust industrial market coupled with a consistently stable economy and diverse local workforce will continue to keep Samsung's operational costs at a healthy level. Samsung has even extended its cooperation with local technology universities, offering students opportunities to seek advanced studies in South Korea.
Samsung's stable of energy products such as lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries have done significantly well, commanding a 30 per cent market share in Malaysia where its facility in Senawang manufactures 22 million units per year. As mobile devices like smartphones and tablet PCs proliferate rapidly, majority of which are powered by Li-ion batteries, Samsung expects to increase production to as much as 400 million units by 2014.
Picosun Oy, the leading Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD) equipment manufacturer is joining the China-Finland Nano Innovation Center, opened 2nd November, 2012 by the honorable guests of H.E. Mr. Wan Gang, China's Minister of Science and Technology, and H.E. Mr. Jyri Häkämies, Finland's Minister of Economic Affairs. The center, located in the city of Suzhou, Jiangsu Province in the Eastern China, was initiated by Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) of China and Ministry of Employment and the Economy (TEM) of Finland.
"Picosun has been actively initiating the collaboration between academia and industry in the field of ALD between Finland and China. It is natural that we participate in all the projects under the frame of the Finland-China Innovation Alliance in Nanotechnology. Picosun is the first Finnish company to enter the Nano Innovation Center. The Center will be a window for China's fast growing ALD community to access the most advanced ALD technology and it will further strengthen Picosun's technology leadership. I look forward to industrialization of ALD technology in China," says Dr. Wei-Min Li, Applications Director of Picosun and CEO of Picosun Asia Pte. Ltd.
McIlvaine Company
Northfield, IL 60093-2743
Tel: 847-784-0012; Fax: 847-784-0061
E-mail: editor@mcilvainecompany.com