SCHWETZINGEN, GERMANY – Industrial inkjet printing developer Notion Systems announced that is has been selected by the Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences (ICASS) for organic material R&D. Notion Systems worked together with its partner YixinTech as its system went through a long comparison against other inkjet printers in the market.
ICCAS is a multi-disciplinary research institute dedicated to basic research in broad fields of chemical sciences. One of its major research areas is organic materials for display applications.
Antonio Schmidt, SVP at Notion Systems, said: "We thank the ICCAS team for their trust and are convinced that our industrial inkjet solutions will add great value to accelerate their research and protect the environment. We are glad, that the reopening of the borders allows us a very close and extensive cooperation”.
BANNOCKBURN, IL – In recognition of their leadership and their significant contributions of time and talent to IPC and the electronics manufacturing industry, three IPC volunteers were presented with the IPC President’s Award at IPC APEX EXPO in San Diego, Calif on January 24, 2023. Recipients were Steven Bowles, Lockheed Martin; Stan Rak, SF Rak Company; and Savita Ganjigatti, Sienna ECAD Technologies Private Limited.
Steven Bowles is a member of more than 30 standards development committees, holding leadership roles as Chair of 3-10 Printed Board Base Materials, D- 13 Flexible Circuits Base Materials, D-15 Flexible Circuits Test Methods, and D-11 Flexible Circuits Design. He is the Chair Emeritus of 2-30 Terms and Definitions Committee. Bowles is also a member of the Committee Chairman’s Council and a Lifetime Member of IPC’s Technical Activities Executive Committee (TAEC). He is a member of the Lead-Free Electronics Risk Management, (PERM) Council, a Mentor in IPC’s Emerging Engineer Program, and was the very first recipient of IPC’s Rising Star Award in 2015. Winner of many committee leadership and committee service awards, Bowles also serves as an IPC standards committee A-Team leader.
Stan Rak is the chair of the IPC APEX EXPO 2023 Technical Program Committee (TPC) where he has served for six Technical Conferences in different roles, working closely with IPC staff and industry experts on program development. Developments include the expansion and strengthening of the TPC, the introduction of Special Sessions designed to stimulate audience participation in emerging fields and assisting with the transition to a digital document format for improved communications with authors. Rak has contributed to the inaugural releases of the standards, IPC-5262, IPC J-STD-001GA/IPC-A-610GA, and IPC-7093. He received the IPC Rising Star Award in 2016 for IPC-related contributions to the automotive electronics manufacturing industry.
Savita Ganjigatti has been involved in the industry for more than 30 years, and served as a steering committee member for the IPC 2022 Global Design Competition, representing the Asia Pacific region. A program panel member of the IPC Global Thought Leadership Program, she has also serves on the IPC India Technical Advisory Committee, was instrumental in starting the PCB competition in that region, and conducted many design contests. Ganjigatti was a critical in the development of the Women in India Electronics group, paper presentations, and standards reviews facilitated by IPC India. She helped to implement “PCB Design Engineering” as an elective at several Indian universities, and she is actively involved in skill development initiatives of the Indian central government.
“The leadership and expertise of Steven, Stan, and Savita sets the standard for building electronics better,” said John W. Mitchell, IPC president and CEO. “By presenting them with IPC President’s Awards, we are showing our appreciation for their significant contributions to IPC and the global electronics manufacturing industry.”
NASHUA, NH – Freedom CAD Services is pleased announce that Dan Amiralian has joined the company as the Chief Strategy Officer (CSO). Dan will be responsible for strategically expanding Freedom CAD’s capabilities in Electronic Product Development. Freedom Electronic Product Development (EPD) will provide customers an array of engineering services such as Electrical, Mechanical, Software, Firmware, Industrial, Signal, Power, Test, and CAD Engineering all geared to help customers seamlessly meet their Time-to-Market and Development cost goals.
Dan will be responsible for building the capabilities to fulfill the requirements of turnkey electronic product development, by augmenting Freedom’s 20 years of complex PCB design experience.
Dan has been in the electronics industry for over forty years predominately in EMS market. His prior employments include Efficiency Products International, Fairchild, Cybermation, Distron, Virtex, and Bedrock Automation. He was President and Owner of New Age EMS before selling the company in 2016.
Dan has led multi-disciplinary product development teams that have introduced literally hundreds of new products over the years ranging from industrial controls, medical, and automotive products to military and avionic hardware with an emphasis on products that are high-reliability and have strict security requirements. His experience covers hardware design, firmware development, process engineering, test development, and reliability engineering.
CHANDLER, AZ — Rogers Corporation (NYSE:ROG) will exhibit at DesignCon in Santa Clara, CA (booth #614) highlighting some of its high performance circuit materials. DesignCon is a premiere event for electronic design engineers working on circuit and system levels held at the Santa Clara Convention Center, Feb. 1st & 2nd.
John Coonrod, Technical Marketing Manager, will be presenting “Overview of PCB Fabrication Influences on RF Performance for Millimeter-Wave Radar” on Feb. 1st at 8:00 a.m. in ballroom C during the Drive World – Advanced Automotive track.
Some of the products being featured at the Rogers booth include:
Radix™ 3D Printable Dielectrics family of products is the first available material featuring a dielectric constant of 2.8 and low loss characteristics at microwave frequencies. These printable dielectric materials give radio frequency (RF) designers unprecedented design freedom in creating new components, eliminating the need to consider typical manufacturing design constraints.
Radix 3D Printable Dielectrics are proprietary composite materials designed for Digital Light Processing (DLP) 3D printing, enabling a scalable, high-resolution printing process for end-use RF dielectric component manufacturing. Rogers Corporation’s first Radix 3D Printable Dielectric material has a targeted dielectric constant of 2.8 and a dissipation factor of 0.0043 at 10 GHz when cured.
Rogers Kappa® 438laminates are now available in 10 mil. Designed using a glass reinforced hydrocarbon ceramic system that offers superior high frequency performance and low-cost circuit fabrication results in a low loss material which can be fabricated using standard epoxy/glass (FR-4) processes. Kappa 438 laminates also have the UL 94 V-0 flame retardant rating and are lead free solder process compatible. Standard thicknesses include 10, 20, 30, 40 and 60 mil.
SpeedWave® 300P Ultra-Low Loss Prepreg. With the increasing need for stackup flexibility in high layer count designs for 5G mmWave, high resolution 77 GHz automotive radar, aerospace & defense and high speed digital designs, SpeedWave 300P prepreg offers a broad range of competitively priced high performance options for the circuit designer. SpeedWave 300P prepreg can be used to bond a variety of Rogers’ materials including XtremeSpeed™ RO1200™, CLTE-MW™, and RO4000® series laminates.
This prepreg system offers a low dielectric constant of 3.0 – 3.3 and a low dissipation factor of 0.0019 – 0.0022 at 10 GHz with stable performance over a broad frequency range. This material is offered in multiple spread and open weave glass styles and resin content combinations to maximize stackup options.
COOLSPAN Thermally & Electrically Conductive Adhesive (TECA) is a thermosetting, epoxy based, silver filled adhesive film used in bonding high power circuit boards and has a storage life of up to 12 months from date of manufacture. COOLSPAN films provide a convenient and reliable approach to bond high power circuit boards, heavy metal back-planes, heat sink coins and RF module housings. This approach overcomes voiding and flow issues that are problematic for sweat soldering and dispensed adhesive approaches. COOLSPAN TECA films can be tack soldered in a fixture, ensuring accurate registration. This is followed by a tooled thermal cure or PCB press cycle.
CHANDLER, AZ — Isola Group, a global leader in advanced circuit materials for printed-circuit boards (PCBs), is inviting exhibition visitors to learn more about halogen-free PCBs at DesignCon 2023. Visitors to Isola’s exhibition Booth 627 can discover how unmatched levels of electrical performance are possible with a new trio of halogen-free circuit materials. DesignCon 2023, scheduled for January 31-February 2, 2023 in the heart if Silicon Valley, in the Santa Clara Convention Center (Santa Clara, CA), is the major conference and exhibition for high-speed communications and systems design and development.
Isola Group will be unveiling its latest TerraGreen® low-loss circuit materials: TerraGreen® 400G, TerraGreen® 400GE, and TerraGreen® 400G2. The circuit materials incorporate advances to Isola’s existing TerraGreen® standard halogen-free circuit materials and TerraGreen® (RF/MW) halogen-free circuit materials for RF and microwave circuit applications. The new TerraGreen® circuit materials are based on selected glass fibers and ultra smooth copper materials to form ultra-low-loss circuit materials ideal for high-speed- digital (HSD) and high-frequency analog circuits typically used to interconnect wired and wireless communications equipment and networks.
Because they are RoHS-compliant for use with lead-free circuit manufacturing processes and compatible with FR-4 circuit material manufacturing processes, they are well suited for producing cost-effective hybrid, mixed-signal circuits. The three new TerraGreen® materials all feature glass transition temperature (T g ) of +200°C and decomposition temperature (T d ) of +380°C.
Isola Group’s Chief Sales and Marketing Officer, Sean Mirshafiei, explains: “We are very excited to offer the PCB industry our three new products that were created with a unique halogen-free resin system that has outstanding CAF and bond line resistance.” He added: “TerraGreen® 400G2 is our most advanced High Speed Digital product. We use ultra smooth copper foil and ultra low Dk glass fabric that are combined with this novel resin system for optimal performance for the next generation of high-end network and communication systems.”
The three new TerraGreen® circuit materials deliver outstanding stability with temperature and frequency, maintaining constant permittivity (Dk) and loss tangent (Df) at temperatures from -55 to +125°C. They are capable of even less loss than the company’s popular Tachyon® 100G circuit materials at 28 GHz. For example, TerraGreen® 400G exhibits typical Dk of 3.1 at 5, 10, and 20 GHz with typical loss tangent of 0.0018 at the same three evaluation frequencies. TerraGreen® 400GE halogen-free circuit laminates offer higher Dk of 3.4 at 10 and 20 GHz with slightly greater loss, with typical Df of 0.0026 at 10 and 20 GHz. The lowest-loss material of the halogen-free trio, TerraGreen® 400G2, features typical Dk of 3.1 at 5, 10, and 20 GHz with typical Df of 0.0015 at the same three frequencies. For more information, visit the Isola website at www.isola-group.com.
WALTHAM, MA — Nano Dimension Ltd. (Nasdaq: NNDM, “Nano Dimension” or the “Company”), a leading supplier of Additively Manufactured Electronics (“AME”) and multi-dimensional polymer, metal & ceramic Additive Manufacturing (“AM”) 3D printers, responded today to another move by a shareholder that it believes is organizing a potential attempt to dismantle the Company’s board and management and to opportunistically access Nano Dimension’ cash reserves for its own benefit.
Over the last year or so, while multiple companies saw the growth of their business challenged, Nano Dimension’s revenues grew over 300%.
During that time, the wider stock market caused stock prices across the 3D-printing industry to lose value faster than Nano Dimension’s share price. However, broader market changes and sector specific pressure, has left the Company’s stock value lower than its cash value per share. As a result, investors with a short term focus are seeking to break up the Company’s business and liquidate its cash for their own business or personal needs, without regard for the investment required to generate value for the Company’s over one hundred thousand shareholders or for its over 500 employees.
Recent events and shareholder's involved
A Schedule 13D filed on January 23rd, 2023 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”) indicates that a small group of foreign funds have joined together and claim to own approximately 5.1% of the outstanding ordinary shares of the Company.
The largest of the shareholders, Murchinson Ltd. (“Murchinson”), controlled by Mr. Marc Bistricer from Toronto, Canada, previously offered to acquire the Company in September 2022 with an offer that was substantially below the cash value per Nano Dimension’ share at the time. The prior offer lacked certainty due to several deficiencies: it was neither backed by a proof of existing ownership nor evidence of available funds nor supported by a financial advisor, all the while being qualified as “non-binding” by Mr. Bistricer himself. Based on the speculative nature of the offer, the Company’s board of directors rejected the offer as highly conditional.
Since the rejection, Mr. Bistricer has persisted in harassing and publicly disparaging the Company’s management, which resulted in the Company delivering a “cease-and-desist” letter. Murchinson continued to attempt to interfere with Company business by sending harassing and threatening letters to the Company’s directors, attempting to stop a shareholder vote (subsequently rejected by the Israeli courts), and publishing disparaging information about the Company’s management and board members in social and other media (as determined by an Israeli judge in connection with a court testimony).
In addition, Murchinson, Mr. Bistricer and several of their affiliates have a history of securities violations and settlements with the SEC, which required the repayment of ill-gotten gains and fines over $8.1 million.
Ever committed to executing on its business plan and creating notable shareholder value, Nano Dimension is considering various legal measures in order to protect itself from a takeover, as long as it is a target, by applying value protection mechanisms that will reduce the incentive for destructive offers and will allow investors to easily differentiate between legitimate offers aimed at improving the Company's value and business prospects from those that merely seek to fill the pockets of shady hedge funds.
Nano Dimension continues to deliver results
While the Company has faced the aforementioned challenges, Nano Dimension has been able to perfect its capabilities, product lines, and its business focus under the leadership of its management and the guidance of its board of directors.
The Company continues to execute on its plan to develop and deliver advanced systems for 3D printed electronics and precision metal, ceramic, and polymer parts, while serving critical industries, including aerospace and defense, advanced automotive, electronics, medical electronics, and other industries.
This plan has demonstrated both steady organic growth and expansion from acquisitions, alongside continued complex technological development. In 2022, there was a significant increase in revenue (1,180% over 2020 and 316% over 2021), due to a combination of acquisitions and accelerated organic growth.
Nano Dimension is strategically well prepared for the year ahead
Since raising capital in 2020-21, merger and acquisition has always been a core part of the Company’s strategic plan. This plan called for using its unique financial position to complement its growth strategy by utilizing its cash reserves to acquire technology companies that develop complementary technologies to the Company's core activities, which will help the Company to accelerate its continued development, while also building a robust business to deliver long-term value and return-on-investment to shareholders that far exceeds its current cash reserves.
The market dislocations of 2021 into much of 2022 caused many competitors to undertake acquisitions at valuations that the Company’s board of directors and management perceived as unfavorable, because there was not a discernable way to translate these deals into a return-on-investment for shareholders.
Thanks to this prudence, Nano Dimension is in an exceptional position and strategically prepared for the year ahead. In particular, Nano Dimension is able to acquire opportunities in 2023 at far more favorable valuations and with higher likelihood than before. In summary, based on prudent stewardship heading into 2023, Nano Dimension is the best capitalized company in its segment and the logical consolidator as the Company expects that even more competitors will run into capitalization issues this year.
Nano Dimension, under its board of directors, with the leadership of its management, and with the dedication of its over 500 employees, continues to be focused on its primary mission: to accelerate the growth of its existing business, and, most importantly, protect the capital of investors to leverage its unique market position and seize opportunities for meaningful shareholder value creation.
