SURFACE FINISHING ANOTHER SUCCESS STORY FOR PALIn recent years, thanks in no small part to the establishment of the PAL Surface Finishing Group, led by Tony Evans, working closely with PAL’s Surface Finishing consultant Peter Salmon, the company is building a strong and sound reputation for providing reliable and robust machines for the surface finishing industries. Users are plating an incredible range of products as the following A-Z of products printed in a special Surface Finishing issue of PAL News in Autumn 2003 show. Aluminium alloy wheels, aircraft engine parts, automotive industry requirements, bicycle dynamo lamp sets, bicycle wheels, brass components, car parts and accessories of all shapes and sizes, coins, door furniture, exhaust pipes, fasteners galore, gas fittings, handlebars, hardware, heat sinks, hip joints, medical products, mobile phone antennae, plumbing fitments, pistons, pump parts, sanitary ware, Sari guards for motorbikes, silencers (mufflers) for motorbikes, spark plugs, sun glass frames, supermarket trolleys, valves, welding equipment, wheel rims for cars and motorbikes, ?. and much, much more! Some companies such as Honeywell have a foot in both the traditional electronics and surface finishing worlds, and their story unfolds here! RISING TO HONEYWELL’S CHALLENGEWith a manufacture time of just 12 weeks and exacting metal distribution requirements, Honeywell set PAL a formidable pair of tasks when ordering a new machine. The new machine was installed in Thailand and commissioned in August 2003. It is being used to plate heat spreaders for semiconductor processors produced by several major chip manufacturers. The heat spreaders are plated with Nickel and the metal distribution on the parts must be very precise.
The new fully enclosed machine has an output of more than one heat spreader per second, and features a veritable catalogue of PAL’s state of the art features:
"There are numerous reasons why Honeywell selected PAL as the supplier of choice for this line," explains Paul Silinger, Sr. Chemical Engineer and Project Leader, Honeywell Electronic Materials, Global Operations. "We have had number of years of a good experience with the company from our printed circuit board and packaging operations. Further, we became aware of PAL’s strong presence in Thailand for both service and spare parts. I have visited several PAL installations in Asia as a part of our vendor selection process and was very impressed with the current technology and positive experience of PAL current customers. "As a part of Honeywell procurement process, it is always important to know our vendor’s understanding of our needs and their willingness to accommodate any special requirements. After meeting with PAL engineers and visiting their manufacturing facility, we knew we have the right supplier for this line. The project procurement experience further confirmed that." Prasit Bumrungsaksilp, General Manager of Honeywell Electronic Materials, Thailand is equally enthusiastic. "We are delighted to work with the PAL team as our business partner in supporting our growth in Thermal Spreaders business," he said. "The PAL machine will enhance Honeywell’s plating capability in Southeast Asia and its flexibility complements other high volume state of the art plating equipment located here. It demonstrates our continued commitment to be a worldwide number one supplier of heat spreaders for semiconductor packages." "We enjoy rising to challenges; and the combination of achieving a tight plating distribution guarantee coupled with the speed of manufacture certainly gave us plenty to get our teeth into," says Tony Evans of PAL. "We took a leaf out of the Honeywell book?. their website highlights their company culture by asking ‘Would you be satisfied without telephone service for more than four hours a month? How about no electricity at home for an hour each week? Clearly not. It's no different with our customers. They want better than 99% problem-free performance when they buy Honeywell products to use in their airplane engines, automobiles, computer chips, chemical end products, or other critical equipment. They also want fresh ideas that help them build their future??This exactly reflects our culture at PAL and, like Honeywell we believe it is not good enough to merely satisfy almost all our customer's expectations; but to exceed all of their expectations. We greatly enjoyed working with Paul Silinger and his team on the design of the machine and are confident that they will not only get ‘better than 99% problem-free performance?but also have a machine of which they can be justly proud and continuing input and assistance from us throughout the long life of the machine. "The machine buy-off was scheduled to take place when the SARS outbreak was at its height, so I was asked to conduct it on behalf of Honeywell. It is a tremendous compliment to PAL that a customer would trust us with such a key task. We always take buy-off extremely seriously and pore over every millimetre of the machine ensuring that everything is just as it should be. However I think it is fair to say that this time I, John Chau, Ronald Yeung, Paul Jew and other members of the PAL team, went over and over the line, adopting something of a ‘gamekeeper turned poacher?approach, checking and double-checking absolutely everything." The Honeywell machine was completed in October 2003 and it has been in production since then. Further information on Honeywell is available at www.honeywell.com |
