Atotech Brings World-Class AHDI to the U.S.

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During our walk-through of the GreenSource Fabrication facility with VP Alex Stepinski, he started the conversation on surface preparation and plating by saying, “We have Atotech horizontal production technology in place here. We’ve been running Atotech turnkey solutions for a while. All of the equipment and chemistry are from Germany. They come here and configure everything for us. Our three biggest suppliers are Atotech, Schmoll, and AWP. With Atotech, we have direct support from Germany on a regular basis here. We’re doing real technology development with Atotech.”

The Atotech equipment is central to the operation of GreenSource Fabrication. Over the course of the week, we took a deeper dive into Atotech’s installations there. We had several conversations with four Atotech representatives on site to oversee the installation: Moody Dreiza, business director for electronics in North America; Daniel Schmidt, global director for marketing electronics and corporate technology training; Kuldip Johal, global original equipment manufacturer (OEM) director for new technology/pathfinding; and John Foley, systems engineer for the GreenSource facility.

Our conversations explored the specifics for each Atotech line in the GreenSource facility. We discussed production equipment, chemistry, capabilities, and unique innovations specifically developed to realize Stepinski’s vision of highest production flexibility.

Barry Matties: Could you give us an overview of the Atotech equipment installed here at GreenSource?

Daniel Schmidt: Today, GreenSource has eight Atotech production lines installed, including three copper platers, two electroless cop per lines, two surface treatment lines, and a direct metallization line. GreenSource also uses a variety of different Atotech wet chemistry processes, such as our high-throw electroless copper (Printoganth T1), blind microvia filling process (Inpulse 2HF), electrolyte for through-hole, BMV and conformal plating (Inpulse 2THF), electrolyte for conformal or flash plating (Inpulse 2HT), as well as laser direct drilling pretreatment (BondFilm LDD SR), higher copper loading bonding enhancement (BondFilm HC), and our ENIG process (Aurotech DC).

To read the full version of this article which originally appeared in the October 2018 SMT007 Magazine, click here.

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