HARTING, Elgin, Ill., has brought its one-stop shopping concept for designing and manufacturing 3D-MID components to North America. Now, customers can work with a North American-based HARTING specialist, which simplifies the entire development-through-production process.
3D-MID (3D Molded Interconnect Device) components are injection-molded plastic parts with integrated electrical circuits. These circuits can be arranged on the 3D substrate as required by the design engineer to produce parts typically smaller and lighter weight yet more functional than conventional alternatives. 3D-MID manufacturing allows for the inclusion of gaps, channels or apertures for sensors, contacts or other elements.
IC chips and small, flat components (SMDs) can be incorporated into the molded housings. The 3D substrate can be shaped to complement a product’s layout or shape. With their size, functionality and assembly cost advantages, 3D-MID parts are preferred in products like pressure, current and optical sensors, switches, embedded vehicle cameras, RFID transponders and much more – wherever space and weight issues require higher-level integration.
HARTING translates a customer’s idea or need into a design concept. Then it manufactures all molds and performs all manufacturing and testing at the HARTING Mitronics production facility in Switzerland. HARTING uses both major 3D-MID manufacturing technologies: Laser Direct Structuring, a one-step process in which circuitry is laser-imprinted, and Two-shot Molding, a two-step process molding two different plastic compounds, one of which is metallizable, the other inert to plating agents so metallization becomes a self-aligning process.
In other news, HARTING’S manufacturing center in Elgin, Ill., been AS9100C accredited by UL/DQS for the manufacture of both backplanes and cable assemblies. The widely recognized AS9100C quality management standard is designed to meet the stringent, complex and unique demands encountered in the aerospace and defense industries. Major aerospace manufacturers and their Tier 1 and 2 suppliers worldwide require AS9100 certification or compliance as a condition of doing business with them.
The AS9100C standard incorporates all requirements of ISO 9001:2008 and goes further, with 100 additional requirements to satisfy aerospace and defense customers. It provides for a comprehensive quality management system focused on areas directly impacting product safety and reliability including configuration management, purchasing controls, product realization, monitoring and measurement.
The Elgin facility, whose backplane manufacturing is part of the global HARTING Integrated Solutions business unit, also is ITAR (International Traffic in Arms Regulations) registered with the US Department of Defense for both backplane and cable assembly manufacturing. ITAR regulates the use of defense-related technical information to safeguard US national interests.
HARTING
www.harting-usa.com
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.