ESI Receives Significant Order for Flex PCB Laser Via Drilling Solution

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Laser-based manufacturing solutions provider, Electro Scientific Industries (ESI) - a division of MKS Instruments has announced an order for its recently-released CapStone laser drilling solution for processing flexible printed circuits (FPC). The order follows an extensive on-site system evaluation at Compeq Manufacturing, Huizhou, China, where CapStone delivered exceptional throughput and performance. Similar evaluations are underway at other major manufacturers where systems have already been qualified for production.

According to Director for Purchasing, Material Division at Compeq, Cathay Wu, their testing and evaluation process for CapStone has been rigorous and extensive. The company has processed thousands of panels over the last few months with the CapStone system. They evaluated the system on a wide range of applications and material stacks, as well as numerous via types and sizes-in both panel and roll-to-roll processes-and achieved excellent yield. CapStone showed significant increases in throughput and savings in cost-per-panel, and has met or exceeded expectations. Compeq is now looking forward to leveraging CapStone for a number of applications and taking advantage of its throughput and yield to stay competitive in this very demanding market.

Capstone offers twice the throughput of previous-generation systems while maintaining yields, increasing uptime and significantly reducing maintenance costs. These all translate directly into greater productivity and lower cost per panel. In the simplest analysis, doubling throughput doubles return on investment and halves the payback period. Since ESI put its first CapStone systems in the field, they have processed over a hundred thousand panels. All systems are currently qualified and running in high-volume production. Given the cost-driven nature of the printed circuit board (PCB) processing industry, and CapStone's extraordinary value proposition, the system continues to generate significant interest and early customer adoption. They are now looking forward to finalizing the placement of additional systems as the market learns what CapStone can do.

Developed by ESI, a leader in flex PCB laser drilling solutions, the CapStone system is optimized to process the FPCs widely used in consumer electronics, such as smartphones and other handheld devices. Building on the proven ESI platform, CapStone's new laser technology and control capabilities deliver breakthrough performance at twice the throughput of the previous-generation model, and with equivalent accuracy and precision in critical parameters such as via diameter and placement. CapStone systems are available now, either directly from ESI or through ESI channel partners world-wide.

A world leader in applied laser technology, ESI’s manufacturing systems is designed to enable manufacturers of electronic components and devices to optimize their production capabilities and commercialize technologies through laser processing. MKS Instruments, ESI’s parent company, is a global provider of instruments, subsystems and process control solutions that measure, monitor, deliver, analyze, power and control critical parameters of advanced manufacturing processes to improve process performance and productivity for customers.

Established at Taoyuan Lu-Chu village in August 1973, Compeq Manufacturing Co., Ltd. was the first specialized printed-circuit board (PCB) manufacturing company in Taiwan to support the government’s policy in developing the high-tech industry. Beginning with producing single-sided and doubled-sided printed circuit boards, and progressing by persistent dedication to technology research and development, Compeq then started mass production of 6-layer printed circuit boards for computers in 1983, leading Taiwan PCB industry into the new stage for multi-layer board production.