Laser direct imaging system improves PCB production

Installed at the company's manufacturing site in Newbury, the laser machine uses eight laser sources to deliver triple the resolution of more traditional photographic based systems. This eliminates problems associated with temperature and humidity instability of photography based techniques. Without requiring the production of costly and fragile photographic master tooling, images are printed directly on to circuit board material. Additionally, the high-resolution system provides perfect images on the company’s standard plating and resist masks thanks to a 25 micron laser spot.

The laser direct imaging system offers auto focus capabilities so that the system can handle different thicknesses of material and rapid job change-overs without expensive tooling. The UV-P300 LDI also provides automatic fiducial camera registration to overcome the problem of poorly registered images. Long life and fault tolerant, in the unlikely event of a laser failure, production continues with the remaining laser sources.

Philip King, Managing Director, Newbury Electronics, commented: "This is a significant investment for our company and one that we believe will make a real difference to both the quality of our products and the efficiency of our service. The old saying 'time is money' is very true in the highly competitive field of manufacturing and being able to deliver the highest quality PCB from here in the UK, with reduced delivery times, gives both us and our clients a real advantage in the market place."