April 2007
Press Release – Pushing the Bounds of Technology

Cemgraft at Newbury, part of AWS Electronics Group, is proud of its record in constantly pushing the bounds of its surface mount technology. Cemgraft is noted as being one of the UK’s first RoHS accredited contract manufacturers. We have previously reported on its significant investment in leading edge technology with its five flexible and high specification surface mount lines and its investment in automated optical inspection (AOI). Cemgraft have not hesitated in responding to the needs of their customers by also investing in a dedicated team who can provide prototype boards within 2 days. Jamie Maughan – Operations Director says “Electronics technology changes daily and my job is to keep us at the front, I steer my team to ensure we are pushing the bounds of technology, we are now assembling more complex boards, and manufacturing them faster than ever before (up to 42,000 placements an hour) and with higher quality using automated optical inspection.”

The company is now mounting multiple micro-BGAs, chip scale packages (CSPs) and 0201 components both through its Fast Track™ facility and on its main production lines with the capability of 01005. Indeed, the factory assembles complete products using multiple boards, each carrying up to 78 BGAs, micro-BGAs and CSPs, with outstanding quality, and responsiveness to urgent customer requirements, all of it supported by their in depth technical expertise.

Their Fast Track™ facility is unique within the industry, being a dedicated rapid prototyping section capable of assembling the most technically demanding products. They offer average two-week turn-round times from receiving the fully kitted BOMs (often free-issued) but they can do this in 2 days. This is drastically helping customers reduce their time to market.

In many instances customers use Cemgraft to help them with their own product development especially in areas such as design for manufacture (DFM) and design for test (DFT), the team provides full technical input before and during the process and a complete report after the production run. It is hardly surprising that some of the leading chip manufacturers and scientific companies use Cemgraft to assemble their demonstration boards for their new and leading edge electronic components.

Cemgraft is clearly helping the industry push the bounds of technology and as part of the fast growing AWS Group will continue to do so into the future.

Paul Deehan, Chief Executive of AWS Group, said, “Our acquisition of Cemgraft back in 2006 was strategic to provide leading edge technology within the group, Cemgraft is proving that UK electronics can be competitive if we maintain that leading edge.”