Our Versatile RF Products and Assembly Services Help RF Manufacturers Stay Lean

After recently upgrading a new facility, and acquiring Ion Beam Milling, Inc., we are more poised than ever to help RF companies improve their supply chains and bottom lines with an impressive array of on-demand products and services.

To understand the unique positioning of our company, one need only appreciate that a product delivery process is optimized for any manufacturer when they can efficiently leverage their own team member’s expertise in concert with their key outside partners. Optimally, internal engineering experts are putting their skills to work where they can be most valuable—designing and producing prototypes and developing design for manufacturability (DFM) protocols. But all too often you’ll find them doubling as test engineers and assembly technicians, stealing valuable time and energy from more valuable work. This is counterintuitive to the common goal of any well-managed operation, which is to reduce or eliminate all non-essential tasks in the workforce and streamline the time to market for their products.

The key is often making a design/production audit decision before it’s too late. That’s where we suggest we are ideally suited to begin assistance. As a proven RF/microwave solutions company—who also carries key products and provides turnkey assembly and testing services—we provide RF product management teams the opportunity to step back and evaluate what their internal engineering and production teams do best, and with routine. Then, by considering outsourcing of lower volume and perhaps more unique assembly work, such as repairs or repeat low-volume orders, manufacturers can truly capitalize on their core competencies. It stands to reason that a well-thought-out outsourcing plan also reduces equipment and training costs and allows a manufacturer to gain momentum in their product research and development.

“Squeezing out as much gross margin today is vital to our customers. Reducing costs, improving yields, and capitalizing on efficiencies is how we help their bottom lines,” says Jim Morgan, CEO of SemiGen.

Our design and manufacturing center includes mixed-signal RF/microwave assembly, box build, module repair and test services coupled with the diodes, semiconductor devices and manufacturing supplies needed for successful production of hybrids and components. Our team helps with designs, builds prototypes, performs high-level testing, and handles production runs for various customers in the RF, military, space, homeland security, optical, medical device, and commercial wireless markets. Our 37,000 square foot facility includes a class 10,000 clean room and offers manual to fully automatic assembly.

We also offer processing of 100 to 150 mm silicon wafers, as well as alumina and aluminum nitride substrates up to 4.25 inches. Services provided include any combination of photolithography, wet etch, dry etch, metallization, grinding, and polishing.

Recent investments in high frequency testing and hi-reliability (Hi-Rel) environmental testing capabilities enables us to offer solutions for Hi-Rel screening of amplifiers, FETs, MMICs, transistors, diodes, and other active and passive circuits and components. Tests are performed and are delivered with full documentation in accordance with MIL-PRF-19500, MIL-PRF-38534, and MIL-PRF-38535 requirements. Element evaluation and screening options from Class H, Class K, TX, TXV, S-level, as well as custom SCD driven requirements are available.

Another recent investment was the purchase of Ion Beam Milling, Inc. of Manchester, NH in October 2018. Ion Beam Milling pioneered several thin film circuit processing techniques using innovative ion beam milling approaches. They have serviced the RF and microwave industry for over 35 years with thin film products and fabrication services which include custom and standard attenuators, filters, heat spreaders, high power resistors, laser diode sub-mounts, Lange couplers, chip inductors, and transmission lines, to name a few. The company has been fully integrated into the SemiGen facility in Londonderry.

At the helm at SemiGen is Tim Filteau, who arrived in January 2018 from MACOM to become SemiGen’s new President.

“I’m excited to be in a position to continue to invest in and grow this important domestic outsource for the RF community,” said Filteau. “We want to be an invaluable partner to everyone we engage with.”

Whether it’s frustration over witnessing idle hands or machines, or a strategic ‘make or buy’ and ‘repair or replace’ type meeting that leads to questions of design/manufacturing efficiency, the key is to involve your external partners early to take advantage of their tribal knowledge and discipline in satisfying customers just like you.

For additional insight on domestic RF outsourcing, download our tech brief below and contact our technical suppo/technical-application-engineering-support-for-rf-microwave-design-and-manufacturing-questions/rt team with any questions regarding your next project.