December 11, 2009
Metals Company of Furukawa Electric that manufactures and sells copper products has recently introduced a new rolling mill and continuous annealing furnace into the Nikko Works, which is its mainstay plant. The total investment amount is 8 billion yen. This introduction is aimed at improving the quality of copper strips for the IT and electronics markets, and for connectors in particular, to the world's top-ranked level, as well as at strengthening our fast delivery capability, thereby achieving customer satisfaction.
Background
Due the downsizing and weight reduction of electronic equipment in recent years, miniaturization of, and high-density mounting in, connectors is being accelerated. Accordingly, there is a growing need for connector materials that have a small thickness and high strength, along with a high dimensional precision that can reduce the complexity of die adjustment in press forming.
Contents of the New Facilities Introduced
The new rolling mill introduced here is a twelve-stand rolling mill appropriate for rolling thin, high-strength materials. And the automatic strip thickness control technology newly implemented can achieve the thickness precision that is highest in the industry. In terms of the shape of rolled strips, moreover, a fully automatic high-precision shape control technology has been implemented, making it possible to supply high-precision materials that are eagerly required in the market.
Meanwhile, the continuous annealing furnace newly installed can deal with, for the first time in the industry, annealing thin materials at a temperature up to 1000°C. This allows us to strengthen our competitiveness in the manufacture and development of high-strength materials that need high heat-treatment temperatures. Specifically, it is generally considered that high-temperature annealing of thin materials is a challenging task in that the strip shapes deteriorate as the material thickness becomes smaller, rendering productization difficult. However, a unique shape control technology has been developed to obtain stabilized strip shapes, which allows us to supply materials with superior bendability.
Moreover, with respect to production scheduling, whereas the leadframe materials and connector materials have been manufactured using the same facilities conventionally, the facilities introduction this time has enabled us to establish two exclusive manufacturing lines, making quality buildups and lead-time shortening possible in accordance with the requirements from each material side.
Future Schedules
The new facilities are scheduled to be introduced in turn to customers and appointed agents starting from this December, and after undergoing evaluation tests, will be in full-scale operation in April, 2010.