SMG facility – 24k Square Feet

Drilling We have 7 fully automated Excellon Drilling/ Routing machines. The drilling program is generated from the customer Gerber files.

Shadow Process The Shadow process is the process of coating a conductive material inside the drilled holes. The coating leaves a thin film of electrically charged material in the holes that aids in electrico-plating.

Film Lamination The process of applying the dry photo-resist film over the copper laminate surface in order to facilitate the the printing of the circuit on the boards.

Imaging Films are made from your Gerber files. Trace patterns and pads are then transferred to the panels in the image machines you see to your left.

Developing At this stage we are developing the film we adhered to the panels in the previous process. During this process the circuit pattern is developed and excess film is also removed.

Copper Plating The next step is copper plating, where additional copper is electroplated on to the exposed circuits & inside the holes. This is done by migrating the copper from the copper anodes in the tank onto the boards using a very heavy DC Current.

Tin Plating This process plates tin over the copper we just put on the board. The purpose of this is to protect the circuit during the etching process.

Etching Process First we remove the excess film from the panel to reveal the circuit pattern. Then we etch the excess copper off of the panel.

Tin Strip Here we remove the protective tin coating from the copper circuits.

Visual Inspection #1 We inspect the boards for defects before putting on the LPI (Liquid Photoimageable Ink).

LPI – Liquid Photo Imaging The LPI is imaged in the same way the circuit pattern was imaged earlier.

LPI - Developing Now we develop the soldier mask. The Excess LPI is removed from the imaged areas. Soldier will only adhere to the exposed holes and pads as needed. These same steps are repeated for the legend.

HASL – Hot Air Solder Leveling Here you see one of our HASL machines. This step coats all the exposed copper holes and areas with either leaded or lead free soldier (ROHS).

Immersion Silver & Gold Plating As an alternate to soldier we have ENIG (Electroless Nickel Immersion Gold) and Immersion Silver finishes. During this process we plate the holes and pads with a very thin layer of silver or gold.

Electrical Testing – Bed of nails After the boards are visually inspected for a second time we offer several types of electrical testing for opens and shorts. Here you see the bed-of-nails tester.

Electrical Testing – Flying probe For testing dense boards, we use the flying probe tester pictured on your left.

Automated Optical Inspection Here is our automated Optical Inspection machine. This is ideal for very tight density boards that the human eye cannot inspect well visually.

Waste Water Treatment The plant is equipped with a complete waste water treatment facility. Strict guidelines are followed to protect the environment, heath and safety. SMG complies with all EPA standards and is inspected regularly.

Multi-Layer Press Here is our Multilayer Press, we can do up to 10 layer printed circuit boards. After the inner layer are done, we laminate the panels and then follow the same process we just described for the double sided boards to produce the top and bottom layers.

In house stock room We hold inventory product for blanket orders for our customers, so that their boards are ready for JIT delivery on a moments notice.