The 71st Residenzfest took place in Kirchheimbolanden in mid-August. The wine festival, in the ambience of the historic towers and city walls, was awarded the title of the most beautiful wine festival in the Palatinate in 2017. The employees of ILFA’s Kirchheimbolanden branch did not want to miss out on this festivity and celebrated there with colleagues from TCLAD Europe and Brain4PCB.
They have been with us for about two weeks now and are slowly settling in: Three young men have started their training with us and are learning everything about the production of complex printed circuit boards.
From 9 – 11 May we were exhibitors at PCIM Europe, the trade fair for power electronics, intelligent drive technology, renewable energies and energy management. Here we shared a 26 sqm stand with TCLAD and presented a wide range of PCB boards and thermal management solutions.
And once again we have received new machinery for our production in Hanover. In the area of multilayer technology, we are now supported by an FLX bonding system from DIS. It enables pinless alignment of multilayers, rigid and rigid-flex PCBs. Two different processes take place in one unit: Layer-to-layer alignment and bonding of layers. This process eliminates the additional tolerances associated with pin lamination and thus helps us achieve more precision, especially for high layer multilayers.
Most of us rarely get to see her, because Susanne Manthey feels very much at home predominantly on the night shift of our surface technology (OFT). She has now been working for ILFA for 35 years and recently celebrated her long anniversary together with her department.
In July 2022, four new colleagues will strengthen the ILFA team at our production site in Hanover. They will start in the purchasing, quality inspection, grinding laboratory and photo and lacquer technology (FLT) departments. The increase in personnel comes at a good time for us, because we always have exciting tasks and a lot to do.
The training lasted two years and there was plenty of content, both in theory and in practice. Now our two apprentices have successfully passed their exams to become machine and plant operators and are ready to enter the profession.
The FED PCB Working Group, an association of industry experts from Germany and Austria, met for its 21st meeting this time at ILFA in Hanover. Exciting topics were on the agenda, such as dealing with UL certifications, annealing recommendations for flex and multi-layer PCBs or the further handling of a joint project on copper layer thicknesses.
For its expansion plans, the Hanover-based PCB producer ILFA relies on the expertise of the respective industry leaders. In the field of wet chemistry and electroplating, the specialist Atotech has now been acquired. The Berlin-based company is one of the world’s leading suppliers of special chemical processes and equipment for the printed circuit board, chip carrier and semiconductor industries and is distinguished by its excellent support and services, among other things.
Sometimes it is not so easy to keep up with our new hires. On 1 June 2022, we at ILFA were once again able to recruit three new colleagues for our production site in Hanover-Anderten. The reinforcement is for our internal sales department and in the production area for the surface technology (OFT) and multilayer departments.