ClassOne Technology of Kalispell, MT, USA, which manufactures wet-chemical processing equipment (especially for emerging markets and other cost-conscious users of smaller substrates), has opened a new European sales and support office in Ulm, Germany.
"We are seeing a significant upsurge in our business in Europe," says Win Carpenter, ClassOne's VP of global sales. "This new office is a natural and very important expansion of our infrastructure; it's essential for giving our European customers the level of rapid response and first-class support we insist on."
The new Ulm office will be headed by sales director Roland Seitz, and the service engineering team will be led by Helmut Schlenker (both veterans in the field with long experience in the equipment industry). The facility will also maintain a substantial parts inventory to enable rapid deployment to customers.
"At ClassOne we put a major emphasis on serving emerging markets who work on 3- to 8-inch wafers — many of whom are based in Europe," says ClassOne's president Byron Exarcos. "These companies have processes that would benefit from more advanced equipment, but they usually don't have huge equipment budgets. So we've developed tools that can deliver more performance for a more affordable price — often less than half of what similarly configured tools from the larger manufacturers would cost," he reckons. "That's why we're getting increased interest from emerging markets and from Europe."
ClassOne's wet processing equipment includes the Solstice family of electroplating tools and Trident spin-rinse-dryers and spray solvent tools. The Solstice electroplating family includes the LT for process development; the 4-chambered S4 for mid-range production; and the 8-chambered, fully automated S8, which delivers up to 75wph (wafers per hour) throughput. The Solstice line is specifically designed to provide advanced yet cost-efficient plating for MEMS, sensors, LEDs, RF, interposers and other emerging technologies for ≤200mm wafers.
