Date: 22 April 2008 from 14:00 to 15:00
Venue: EM2.23
Name: Dr Robert Kay
This is a two part talk
Part 1 - High volume, low cost electronics manufacture using stencil printing.
Printing techniques using a master such as stencil or screen for printing materials have been a fundamental part of the electronics manufacturing process over the past 30 years enabling the fabrication of low cost, high volume and repeatable products. Stencil printing in electronics manufacture is used in the deposition of solder interconnects, adhesives materials, electronic circuit features, via filling and more. The industry is driven by a continual demand for more functional, faster and smaller products. This has driven the continually innovation of the printing process to the point where sub-100um pitch printing is required. This talk will outline the trends in the electronics industry in particular relation to the electronic packaging sector and highlight the developments made by a Heriot Watt developed stencil manufacturing technology which is revolutionising the printing capabilities of many printing process applications. In this presentation the manufacturing process using microengineering techniques for stencil fabrication will be covered along with print results for different electronic manufacturing applications.
Part 2 - A brief introduction and history of MicroStencil Limited a Heriot Watt University spinout company.
This section of the talk will covers the development in bringing a novel stencil manufacturing technology developed at Heriot Watt University to the global electronics manufacturing market. It will cover the initial challenges faced by the Company founders Professor Marc Desmulliez, Dr. Eitan Abraham and Robert Kay such as scaling up the initial prototypes, route to market and sources of funding. The presentation will cover post investment developments such as establishing a volume manufacturing premises in Scotland, sales and marketing approaches and a joint venture manufacturing agreement in Singapore with the largest player in the stencil printing industry, DEK.
Robert is an Electrical and Electronics Engineering graduate from Heriot Watt University. In recent months Robert completed his Ph.D in microengineered stencil manufacture which is the basis for the Companies innovative technology. He is one of the founding members of MicroStencil Limited and has been the Chief Technical Officer of the company since its incorporation. Robert is currently located in Singapore managing the production line at DEK Singapore and assisting the global sales and marketing team to grow the adoption of the Company's novel product into a number of the global semiconductor manufacturing companies such as Intel, STMicroelectronics, Infineon, and NXP.