On September 20, 2024, the 15th Long Night of Careers took place at the HCC Hannover, where around 160 companies presented their training occupations and entry opportunities. We also took advantage of this opportunity, ironed our polo shirts, set up exhibition material, prepared give-aways and made fresh popcorn on site.
Over the past four years, we have invested almost EUR 8 million in our PCB production at our Hanover Anderten site. There have been innovations in almost every department, e.g. new machines and systems, clean room areas and new lighting, air conditioning and automation concepts. Our shutdown a few weeks ago marked an important milestone, as our new LAUFFER pressing centre was installed, which again involved extensive conversion work. This work has now also been completed and our production facility is modern, bright and ergonomic for employees and visitors alike.
It is another important milestone in our modernisation offensive: with the commissioning of our new lamination centre from LAUFFER Pressen, we are tripling our lamination capacities in one fell swoop. The RMV 125/6 lamination centre forms the new heart of our multilayer department.
In mid-February 2024, a delegation of high-profile business representatives accepted the invitation from Lower Saxony’s Minister for Economic Affairs, Construction, Transport and Digitalisation, Olaf Lies, to discuss current economic issues. The guest house of the Lower Saxony state government in Hanover provided an appropriate setting to jointly develop requirements for a resilient Lower Saxony economy.
Training to become an electrotechnical assistant is a two-year, initial vocational training programme that is conducted at a vocational school and includes a four-week internship. Our two trainees Johanna and Nikola attend the Berufsbildende Schule Metalltechnik – Elektrotechnik (bbs-me) of the Hanover region for the training and have each secured a traineeship at ILFA. There they learn everything about the production of the printed circuit board and design their own printed circuit board layout for their project work.
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.