Let’s throw some figures at you:

PCB services

Year

Customers

Orders

Sales

2014

+/- 9.000

+/- 77.500

+/- 16.600.000

2013

+/- 8.000

+/- 69.500

+/- 15.500.000

2012

+/- 6.900

+/- 63.000

+/- 15.000.000

All sales are to customers excluding transport costs and taxes.

Eurocircuits has shown a consistent growth in customers and orders over the last 2 decades. 2014 has been another successful year with a consolidated turnover including PCB services, eC-equipment and consumables of 17.5 million Euro. This growth allows us to continue to develop new products and services for our customers. We will continue to invest in new equipment and new processes to keep you at the cutting edge of PCB technology, and to provide more of the tools that will help you deliver your products to market on time and on budget.

2015 will see another leap forward in PCB services, in PCB software tools and in eC-equipment. These are described in our “Looking forward in 2015” . Here let’s summarize what was new in 2014.

First the services:

  1. RF pool updated and extended. We introduced Isola’s I-Tera material to provide a lower-cost solution for RF development.
    RF pool – insights and details
  2. New order time line. So you can track your orders more easily through manufacturing
    New timeline makes order tracking smarter
  3. Pre-production approval. For customers who want to check the final production data for their PCB just before it hits the shop-floor…
    Pre-production approval
  4. PCB PIXture. Give your PCBs a powerful visual impact and make them stand out from the crowd
    PCB PIXture launched
  5. More options added for STANDARD pool, BINDI pool and stencils
    New Eurocircuits products and services presented at this year”s Electronica 2014

New software tools

 to help designers cut costs and tailor their design data for particular orders:

  1. Buildup wizard and Layer editor updated and extended. Choose the most cost-effective multilayer builds in the Buildup Wizard and specify blind/buried vias when needed. Use the Layer Editor to confirm or fine-tune the build found by PCB Visualizer tools.
    Buildup wizard and layer editor updated
  2. Marking editor. Add order-specific text (QR codes, production dates etc.) to your PCB, or place order numbers, UL codes etc. in your preferred locations on the board.
    Marking editor
  3. Panel editor. Build a custom panel on screen to suit your assembly requirements, or view an eC-panel before production.
    Panel editor

New equipment

 including fixtureless testing of assembled PCBs as well as hand-soldering aids:

  1. eC-test-mate. Run functional tests on assembled prototype and small batch PCBs without the time/cost needed to build test fixtures.
    eC-test-mate
  2. eC-pre-heater. Reduce heating times and the risk of thermal stress to make hand-soldering/de-soldering of critical components faster and more reliable.

Workshops

We organized a series of workshops on prototype soldering and on working with the EAGLE CAD system. Many of our customers upgraded their EAGLE systems in the summer when CadSoft released a major new version. If you would like to join a workshop, contact your local sales team or email euro@eurocircuits.com.

Investments in ICT, plant and equipment.

We re-invested more than €1.5 million during 2014 in R&D and in new plant and equipment including:

  1. New servers and extra software licenses to boost the capacity and speed of our website, so that we can provide a better access experience to more customers at the same time.
  2. PCB Visualizer development. Each year we spend over 300k Euro in further development of our online tools because we believe in tools that make ordering faster and more efficient.
  3. eC-test-mate and eC-pre-heater development.
  4. Ledia direct-imaging. Direct imaging machines expose photo-imageable soldermasks and photo-sensitive etch and plating resists directly using a laser or as on the Ledia a tuneable LED light source. This cuts process times as no phototools are required and allows greater imaging precision and finer features. For the first applications, see our “Looking forward in 2015” BLOG.
  5. New plating and water treatment plant in our Aachen plant. We take environmental issues very seriously and work continuously to reduce energy and water consumption and maintain the highest quality of water output.