Expansion of production capacities

KSG has invested around € 11.6 million this year in the two plants in Gornsdorf and Gars am Kamp. In addition to expanding production capacity, we are also upgrading process technology for high-speed HF and HDI/SBU printed circuit boards.

"With this year's investments we are increasing our competence in HDI/SBU (high density interconnection/sequential built up) printed circuit boards and continuing our course for security of supply, high product quality and flexibility", says Swen Klöden, CTO. “We have invested around 10.8 million euros in the Gornsdorf plant in Saxony and have further expanded production capacity at the Gars am Kamp plant in Lower Austria with around 800,000 euros.

With extensive, demand-oriented investments totalling € 35.3 million,KSG has already converted the two sites into high-end production facilities and expanded the production capacity at the Gars plant over the past three years. This year, the largest investment projects are focused on extending the technological possibilities as well as on capacity expansion and increasing process reliability in key processes. These include the installation of the plugging process for filling drills and blind holes, a further laser drilling machine and the installation of a measuring machine for measuring the conducting track structures of highly complex antenna structures.

Our process experts in Gornsdorf have also planned an SES plant (Stripping/Etching/Stripping), a copper recycling plant and an electroplating plant, which will be installed in 2021. This will provide security of supply coupled with technology expansion for the process-reliable production of highly complex HDI/SBU structures. The higher integration densities possible with this process offer PCB designers considerable space savings and fewer restrictions in the layout of complex circuits.

"Semiconductors continue to push the development of printed circuit board technology. For us, this means that we have to continue to perfect the properties of the printed circuit boards with ever smaller dimensions," emphasises Klöden. In Europe today, twelve layer HDI multilayers with a line/space of 100 µm and smaller are state of the art.

Optimised signal integrity requires an even higher integration density. To achieve this, PCB designers are forced to combine impedance-controlled multilayers with layer structures larger than twelve layers with complex SBU structures 3+x+3 and ultra-fine conductor patterns smaller than 75/75 µm line/space. When routing fine-pitch BGA structures with several hundred connections on the bottom side, rewiring strategies with filled (plugging) staggered or stacked microvia arrays are becoming increasingly important.