-
- News
- Books
Featured Books
- pcb007 Magazine
Latest Issues
Current IssueThe Growing Industry
In this issue of PCB007 Magazine, we talk with leading economic experts, advocacy specialists in Washington, D.C., and PCB company leadership to get a well-rounded picture of what’s happening in the industry today. Don’t miss it.
The Sustainability Issue
Sustainability is one of the most widely used terms in business today, especially for electronics and manufacturing but what does it mean to you? We explore the environmental, business, and economic impacts.
The Fabricator’s Guide to IPC APEX EXPO
This issue previews many of the important events taking place at this year's show and highlights some changes and opportunities. So, buckle up. We are counting down to IPC APEX EXPO 2024.
- Articles
- Columns
Search Console
- Links
- Events
||| MENU - pcb007 Magazine
Fine, Fast and Flexible: Ruwel at Pfullingen invests in HDI, rush production
February 17, 2004 |Estimated reading time: 4 minutes
RUWEL plant in Pfullingen invests in HDI multilayer and rush production Fine, Fast and Flexible
It is not always the case that big is better - often, the winning point is to be fast rather than slow. For this reason, an impressive amount has now been invested in the Pfullingen plant of Ruwel AG to make it into a "rapid reaction" member of the large Ruwel Group. This means that rush production jobs, including those for multilayers, can now be completed in as little as three days. At present, six orders of this type come in every day, and from next summer this figure will rise to 12, says Ruwel.
The plant at Pfullingen, near Reutlingen, was planned and built in 1991 to the most modern specifications. This was the last large new plant to be built for manufacturing complete printed circuit boards in Germany, according to Ruwel. In 1994, the Ruwel Group integrated the plant, then called "Wolfgang Schiemann GmbH & Co. KG," into its production network. Since then, the site's workforce of some 220 have manufactured samples, prototypes, small- and medium-volume series of double-sided circuits, multilayers with up to 24 layers, and highly complex circuits using laser microvia technology. Furthermore, Pfullingen covers the Group's rush production jobs in this product segment. This relieves Ruwel's large-volume production facilities of these tasks so that they can concentrate solely on mass production, the company says.
Three to four shifts are worked at Pfullingen, sometimes six days a week, to produce around 80,000 m2 of PCBs every year. In the 10 years in which the plant has been under Ruwel ownership, the annual turnover has increased from €11 million to €26m, up by a factor of 2.3. By comparison, the total area of PCBs manufactured has risen by a factor of 2.7, reflecting the drop in prices over this decade. And this was in spite of the ratio of the relatively cheap double-sided circuits to higher-quality multilayers reversing from 80:20 to the present 20:80, notes Ruwel.
Within the Group, the Pfullingen plant benefits from orders for samples, prototypes, and rapid production lots from Ruwel's major customers in the automotive and telecommunications industries. In addition, the plant is involved in orders for small- and medium-sized series, then passes them on to the Group's large-volume production facilities in Geldern or Grassau. According to Frank Hoiboom, Director of Marketing & PR for Ruwel, this cooperation is no problem at all, since work preparation, production equipment, and production processes are harmonized across the various plants. But Pfullingen also has built up its own customer base consisting of medium-sized and smaller customers from the areas of engineering, medical technology and computing.
The Pfullingen plant is specialized in processing a large number of orders for smaller and medium-sized volumes and rush production jobs. To do this, it runs eight "UCAM" software applications in work preparation on fast workstations to guarantee short turnaround times for creating working films and programs from the circuit board data. Every day, the production process begins for 30 different production batches for various customers and articles. In addition, six completely new rush production orders come in each day, says Ruwel.
Small batches (< 30) with an optimum cost-benefit relationship are checked on modern finger testers, all by electrical means. They are especially suitable for prototypes and express orders.
The Pfullingen plant operates several fully-automated direct exposure lines using CCD cameras for registration; here, inner and outer layers and solder resists are structured.
The existing high-speed drills, with their double-spindle system, are characterized by extreme flexibility and particularly large throughput. Each panel is processed by two spindles at the same time. This cuts drilling times almost in half. These systems, too, are equipped for automatic loading and unloading. This set-up allows the plant to carry out six billion mechanical drilling operations per year, with diameters of up to 0.2 mm, says Ruwel.
The horizontal through-hole plating plant based on electroless copper enables the system to produce reliable links between microvias and laser vias. This is immediately followed by advanced horizontal flash copper plating using the reverse-pulse plating method, which creates a reliable basis for the processes that follow.
The latest twin-head laser drilling systems create up to 120 microvias per second (Figure 2).
Laser-drilled microvias and buried vias frequently are the only solution for realizing complex designs with the smallest component pitches. At present, says Hoiboom, Ruwel is seeing rapidly increasing demand for multilayers-principally for complex circuits and HDI circuits. For example, the plant is producing 24-layer HDI multilayers with 3-mil lines and 4 x 4 built-up construction. At Pfullingen, Ruwel also manufactures halogen-free circuits as a "Green Partner" for a number of customers, including Sony.
Figure 3: Lumonics Laser 300dpi Figure 4: Viamagic Laser 300dpi
To achieve the necessary flexibility, speed, and a rational throughput, in Pfullingen Ruwel most recently invested in two new Adara multilayer presses, which increased the pressing capacity by 65% (see pictures below).
Figure 5: Adara-Presse 300dpi Figure 6: Beladen Adara-Presse 300dpi
The company also has invested in optimizing its automated electroplating plants. As well as expanding capacity by 25%, this investment allows Ruwel to meet the demanding requirements in through-plating technology for microvia circuits and high aspect ratios.
Source: RUWEL AG Plant Pfullingen Sandwiesenstr. 3 72793 Pfullingen Tel. + 49 (0) 71 21 - 7 00-0 Fax + 49 (0) 71 21 - 7 00-3 21 E-Mail: info@ruwel-pfullingen.de Internet: www.ruwel.com