PACKAGE DEVELOPMENT SUPPORT

The activities originally consisted of the supply of the TOWA encapsulation equipment, after sales service and spare parts, however in addition to this, the cooperation with the package/product development centers of European customers and European institutes became an important activity and TOWA Europe started to play a leading role in the development of new products by European companies.

To further expand this, our Packaging Development Center located at Geograaf 14, Duiven, The Netherlands has been founded. A fully equipped laboratory with 2 TOWA molding systems, test and measuring equipment as well as an engineering department is available to give full support in all the phases of product development, from initial concept up to test, qualification and industrialization.

A Dutch, German and English speaking staff is there to assist the European customers with the exciting process of new package development.

How can your company benefit from our new service ?
Companies already familiar with Molding technology as well as companies that are not, can benefit from our product development assistance service. We offer customized programs for specific product development tuned to the molding know-how level of your company. From the start, this product development program takes future industrialization plans into account, which ensures that the commercial aspects are well covered.

If Molding is a new technology for your company, our product development assistance will prove to be especially helpful to learn all aspects of this technology. The introduction of Molding into your manufacturing process constitutes much more than just buying a machine. During our development assistance program we will guide you through all aspects of the molding process, such as package design, material selection, process parameters, etcetera. Our program will make you familiar and confident with equipment and the process technology.

Feasibility stage
The first part of a product development program consists of information and data exchange. Towa Europe’s engineering and package development team will discuss and define with you all aspects of the product, such as functionality and geometry, as well as future industrial aspects such as volumes and manufacturing costs. Timing is key nowadays, time to market plans are already to be taken into account from the earliest stages onwards.

Our specific input will be covering all aspects, possibilities and constraints of the molding technology, however other manufacturing process steps can be addressed as well.

Design > From concept to design freeze
Towa’s engineering and package development assistance team will generate a fully defined package and package carrier design drawing set. A moldflow simulation and mold filling assessment may be part of the feasibility study. Final result of the design stage is the design freeze.

Test mold project definition
A complete new product development requires design evaluation with a small testmold. Moldability as well as design, can be evaluated and samples produced with the testmold can be evaluated on all their criteria. After risk assessment the critical areas are named and addressed, as these require full focus during test and evaluation. This will result in a test mold project plan .

• The typical activities of a testmold project are listed below.
• Engineering of testmold
• Manufacturing of moldparts
• Trials and evaluation
• Product verification
• Process verification
• Define process window
• Optimization by process settings
• Optimization by material change
• Optimization by mold tool change
• Product qualification
• Overall evaluation, conclusion and reporting

An extensive program may even result in multiple testmolds. This means more cycles of the testprogram, with input from the previous ones.

Test Mold Project
Molding equipments.
For the testmold programs,  2 state of the art Towa Molding system are available.

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The Towa YPM 1180 can be used for product development that needs the transfer molding technology.	Our TOWA CPM 1080 system can be used in case the TOWA Compression Molding technology is needed, on this platform we can mold areas up to a wafersize of 12 inch.

Specific options that can be used are the FM vacuum option for vacuum level up to 1 Tor / sec. A film handler is available for product features like exposed die, for MEMS and vision applications.

Engineering and manufacturing of testmold parts
Towa Europe make use of universal testmolds that can be equiped with small product related inserts to keep leadtime and cost at a minimum.

Mold Trails and verification
Test trials are made by qualified staff from Towa Europe and of course your staff will be invited to join the test and sampling activities. Molded products from the test mold can already be used as mechanical samples or functional samples and their quality can be verified with available various inspection equipment. Typical checks and the available equipment for this are:

• Visual check on external voids, cracks  – Microscope
• Dimensional check – Smart scope
• Voiding  – SAM (Scanning Acoustical Microscope)

Product – Optimization
Optimization is only needed when defects appear and therefore cannot be predefined. Optimization can be done by process optimizing, change of  the material used, or change of mold tool. Our experienced staff will select the required optimization steps.

Process verification – define process window
When the products are good, the process limits can be defined to establish the process window.

Product qualification
When results are good, product qualification samples can be made for qualification, real life testing, (simulated ) reliability test and so on, at our Packaging Development Center.

Overall evaluation, conclusion and reporting
An extensive report of the program results will be issued.

Transfer to production
Small volumes we can produce for you, For large volumes, we can advise you on the most suitable Towa Molding equipment for your specific requirements.

For more information please contact us at  info@towaeurope.com