KEMPEN, GERMANY – Thank you and with a cheerful "Good Lack"! That's what it says in black and white on every bottle of Peters-Kölsch beer that Sven Kramer handed over to the staff of Unimicron Germany GmbH. Besides two cases of the top-fermented beer, the product manager handed over two boxes of the famous Prinzen rolls to the circuit boards producer in Geldern - a gift from the company.
"The DeBeukelaer biscuit has always been the second best product from Kempen, behind our Elpemer® solder mask," says Sven Kramer with a smile in front of the assembled team of the Unimicron solder mask department. The dousing of the great teamwork between the Kempen-based ink manufacturer and the Geldern-based PCB manufacturer is, of course, postponed until after work. Instead, many Unimicron employees take the opportunity for a bite into the sweet Prinzenroll biscuit during the shift change.
There are reasons for the convivial get-together in the Unimicron Park. For the conformal coating of their PCBs, the company relies on the quality of Peters solder resists from the Elpemer® 2467 SM-DG product family. "This resist actually meets our expectations," says Unimicron department manager Sascha van Düren, who thanks the company for the biscuits and Kölsch gesture. "You can rely on it," emphasises Jonas Poschen, process engineer from the Engineering department. Sven Kramer, Head of Application Technology at Peters, is pleased to hear this. The chemical engineer points to the simple, fast and precise processability even in the representation of finest ink structures in the direct imaging process.
The photoimageable Elpemer® solder resist is well on its way to convincing industrial customers worldwide regarding its performance. "From Kempen, you only have to drive 20 kilometres north up the Lower Rhine area to find with Unimicron a company that claims the benefits of Elpemer® for itself," says Sven Kramer who has already spent more than half of his 59 years of life working for Peters. At the Holländer See south of Geldern, it is now known that the end properties with regard to factors such as elasticity, insulation and mechanical and chemical quality stand up to any comparison with other coatings.”
The two companies from the Lower Rhine region are setting standards with their partnership. Unimicron manufactures between 2,000 and 2,500 PCB panels for the world markets every day. In addition to the automotive division, which has always been a flagship, renewable/solar energies as well as industrial applications have been added on an equal footing. The good relations between the company founded in 1945 and Peters date back to the time when Unimicron still operated under the name Ruwel. The founders Fritz Stahl in Geldern and Werner Peters in Kempen are generally regarded as pioneers of printed circuit board technology. It has been a stable axis ever since.
At that time, Ruwel mass-produced the first printed circuit board in Europe, which is considered the initial spark for rapid industrial development.This circuit board for Metz radio sets is still exhibited today in the Deutsches Museum in Munich. At the end of 2010, Ruwel was taken over by one of the largest PCB companies in the world, the Unimicron Technology Corporation, which invested in the company and thus provided a boost to innovation. "By this, Unimicron has taken a great development that we from Peters support with heart and soul, due to our shared tradition and entrepreneurial conviction," says Ralf Schwartz, CEO of Peters. "Cheers".
