Polyimide stencils

To all who will be potentially my salvation,

I am currently researching Polyimide stencils for possible use and manufacture. If I may be indulged - with due reference to all past enquiries and notes on the subject - can anyone offer an up to date opinion with regards to life expectancy ( number of passes ), ease of use & ease of cleaning. I recognize the Canadian source of a cut stencil is KJ Marketing but is there anyone else in the world making these?

All help greatly appreciated.

RICHARD

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| To all who will be potentially my salvation, | | I am currently researching Polyimide stencils for possible use and manufacture. If I may be indulged - with due reference to all past enquiries and notes on the subject - can anyone offer an up to date opinion with regards to life expectancy ( number of passes ), ease of use & ease of cleaning. I recognize the Canadian source of a cut stencil is KJ Marketing but is there anyone else in the world making these? | | All help greatly appreciated. | | RICHARD | I have been using the polymide stencils from KJ for about a year now. We are a low volume high mix OEM so most of our stencils haven't seen that many passes but so far they seem to be holding up very well when compared to the stainless. For example, many of my stainless stencils are shedding fibers from around the bead that attaches the stainless to the mesh, the polymide stencils are mounted directly to frame so this is not a problem. I have been very happy with the ease of setup these stencils offer, we have semi-automatic printers with manual setup. I have found that the stencils wipe cleaner and the stainless blades glide more smoothly across the stencil.

James

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| To all who will be potentially my salvation, | | I am currently researching Polyimide stencils for possible use and manufacture. If I may be indulged - with due reference to all past enquiries and notes on the subject - can anyone offer an up to date opinion with regards to life expectancy ( number of passes ), ease of use & ease of cleaning. I recognize the Canadian source of a cut stencil is KJ Marketing but is there anyone else in the world making these? | | All help greatly appreciated. | | RICHARD | We've looked briefly at polyimide but my experience with it in flexible circuits made me look at other options. We too are a high mix, low volume manufacturer. We have over 2500 stencils relating to about half as many board numbers.

Currently we are trying to "break" Alpha's "Tetra" frameless system. It looks good so far and there's more flexibility with this type system. We retain our ability to use stainless etched, laser cut, step down types.

The huge advantage for us is to convert all our old Fuji frames to DEKs and to save enormous amounts of storage space. Also, per foil costs are about half that of conventional types.

Earl Moon

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