The Development of MCP-PAL

An exciting period resulting in the development of a machine that offers tremendous cost-effective advantages to the PCB industry

From scale model to real full size MCP-PAL machine

PAL’s Deputy Managing Director, Ronnie Wong explains the reasons behind the exciting co-operation between PAL and Marunaka, which has produced the new MCP-PAL (Marunaka Copper Plater) machine.

We were thrilled in the late 1990s with the development of our PALTECH horizontal plating system, through which the first panels successfully ran at Kintech, in March 2000. Headed by Dr Paul Henington, much time and effort was spent by NewTech engineers in its development and in further understanding its performance and reliability. It was a measure of the creative talent that resides in our factories in Hong Kong and our main production plant at Shenzen, and its development and commercialisation earned us a strong reputation for rising to challenges.

It was a wise man who said "timing is all" … and of course, PALTECH was deemed ready for our customers at just that moment when the world went into something of an economic downward spiral and the price of PCBs dropped with alarming alacrity. Result? Most of our customers were faced with a need to buy new machinery but the feeling was, that although our horizontal system was indeed state-of-the-art, it was just too expensive to buy in the ‘belt tightening’ economy.

At the same time, the cry went up in Taiwan for a "surface contact free" plating system for the production of fine line circuitry. Something we knew that PALTECH could not cope with easily, so we looked for a new solution.

“Patents Pending?- the sign that says it all!

We have a very close working relationship with a great many of our customers. Our machines are not "off the peg", we work with our engineers in customer companies in every instance to build exactly the machine they want. This close relationship leads to them sharing their aspirations and market intelligence with us. Increasingly, they were telling us of a Japanese development that they thought we should be looking at and emulating – the vertical continuous plating system.

Our Japanese agent, Ken Tamba, was extremely helpful. Together we researched what was on the market in Japan. As a company, we spent time considering whether we should develop the whole system ourselves, or whether we should join forces with one of the Japanese companies that our research had revealed was working in this field.

The President of Marunaka, Mr Masatsugu Nagakura visited the stand at TPCA 2003 and is seen with some of the stand attendants and in front of a poster about the MCP-PAL machine

We decided that the best route would be one of co-operation, and it was at the end of 2001 that we signed a strategically important agreement with Marunaka Kogyo Co Ltd. Their vertical continuous plating system had been working since 1998 and over 30 lines had been sold – all of them in Japan. We were interested in their technology; they wanted their machine to have worldwide exposure and be developed to meet worldwide needs – we had the ingredients for a perfect co-operation agreement! Once the agreement had been signed, we formed a special engineering team (now known as PAL’s New Product Development Department) led by our Engineering Director, Mr C.W. Wong. Members of the team visited Japan to gain a greater understanding of the MCP machine, and we ended up with literally thousands of drawings from Marunaka, all of which then had to be translated at the Shenzhen plant.

Without the benefit of any confirmed orders we determined in early 2002 to set about building the first test line in our Hong Kong factory. Work on it began in April 2002 and was completed by June that year. You can imagine the steep learning curve we experienced – we learned all about the qualities of the machine during the manufacturing process and our experience gave us the confidence to plan to launch it into the market during 2002.

A scale model of the MCP-PAL was the star of the PAL/Pelsco stand at TPCA 2003 - Patrick Chan, Asst Regional Manager for the Taiwan market answers visitors?questions on the machine

Getting the test line built was just the start of things! We then spent nine months running plating tests to confirm its performance and do test runs to show potential customers what it could achieve several Taiwan-based customers like Compeq, Kinsus, Unitech and Wus supported the project strongly and prepared panels for us to use for testing. They also sent their experienced engineers to our test line in Hong Kong for performance verification and to suggest improvements.

NewTech, and especially Billy Ng, spent long periods working on improving the plating quality and the machine itself. During this period we added many PAL features to the machine including Data Monitoring software and environmental enclosures. Now, the MCP is capable of handling thin panels right down to 0.06mm, micro via plating and via filling.

E B Ho, Ronnie Wong, Ada Yung and Oliver Leung - senior members of the management teams of PAL and Pelsco - at TPCA 2003

So far sales of our machines have been mainly in Taiwan and China, but what a success story we have there to talk about! Since 2002 we have sold over 20 lines. The first was sold to Kinsus who now have four MCP-PALs; Wus were our next customer – they now have five of the machines; the third and fourth lines went to Unitech who now have four lines; and the fifth was ordered by Compeq who, like Wus, have five. As can be seen by the number of machines that each of those five companies now have, our customers were delighted by the performance of their new machines and ordered again, and again and again. In addition Tripod have two, and Nanya and Unimicron each have one. A tremendous success story at a difficult financial time for the industry!

We firmly believe that the MCP-PAL will help the PCB industry to produce high quality PCBs cost effectively, thanks to low capital investment, low running and maintenance costs. What more could they possible want!

......AND FOCUSING ON ONE OF THOSE PURCHASERS

Kinsus Interconnect Technology Corporation is a relative newcomer, having set up in Taiwan only in September 2000 with their 144,000sq.ft facility completed in May 2001. Their U.S. subsidiary, Kinsus Corp, based in California-San Jose was incorporated in October 2000. They specialise in IC substrates – PBGA, CSP, Cavity Down BGA, and Flip Chip.

Since then they have been truly flying as a host of facts and figures show

• Capital expenditure to date US$58 m
• 2002 sales US$27.8m
• 2003 sales up to US$63.5m
• 2002 factory expansion to 270k sq.ft
• 2004 factory expansion to 500k sq.ft
• 2003 capacity – 20kk for all their product mix
• 2004 predicted capacity – 25kk

"The secret to our success is that, not only are we a manufacturing service provider, but a technology service provider too," explains Jeff Chang. "We are great believers in being able to claim that we are a total solution provider on all types of substrate; we are leaders in the technology field; we believe in offering a quick turn around service and in continuously driving advance product & low cost solution.

"We grab new technology with enthusiasm! That’s why we enjoy working with PAL, whose New Technology and New Product Development Departments are continually looking for new ways of helping their customers achieve their objectives. In a drive to achieve better plating uniformity, we tried out a horizontal system. Its performance gave us acceptable results, but for a variety of reasons, including our aim to constantly drive down costs and our need to plate panels in excess of 20" meant that we felt the time was right to switch to vertical plating.

"We were delighted to hear of PAL’s work on the MCP-PAL machine and eagerlyworked with PAL on its development, preparing panels for them to use for tests; and sending engineers to Hong Kong to keep in touch with progress and make suggestions. We took delivery of our first MCP-PAL in October 2002, using this line for both pattern and panel plating, which resulted in us making changes to the original design (not always the best policy, as we found!). PAL improved the system for us and since then we have placed orders for more machines to keep in step with our rapid expansion, and desire to keep improving our hi-end products on which it is essential that we achieve more than 85 per cent plating uniformity – for Microwave RF, thick Copper uniformity is essential.

"The MCP-PAL lines are helping us achieve our objectives and we are delighted with the results – what more can we possibly want! We have enjoyed this experience of working with PAL on the continuous improvement of the MCP-PAL and look forward to enjoying the results of their ongoing R&D work."

Further information on Kinsus from www.kinsus.com.tw