Your home may feature new technology from Broome County's Universal Instruments, but you probably don't know it:
https://www.pressconnects.com/story/...n/65364116007/
From the article: "If you own a cell phone, chances are a Universal Instruments machine played a role in its production.
If a new product line takes off the way the company expects, even more of the electronics that drive day-to-day life may soon be traced back to the Broome County manufacturer.
Universal Instruments, based in Conklin, brought its latest product, the High-Speed Wafer Feeder, to market in late 2021 and has been ramping up production this year.
The new technology is touted as the world’s fastest rapid-exchange multi-die feeder. A wafer is a thin disc of semiconductor material, often silicon, that acts as the base of a die, or chip. Essentially, Universal's machine is an advanced packaging technology designed to handle the semiconductor chips that control an ever-expanding array of electronics, from toothbrushes and refrigerators to vacuum cleaners and cars.
Microchips represent some of the tiniest components of these products, which can't function without them. Most new cars, for example, are outfitted with more than 100 chips that act as the "brains" of the machine, guiding everything from navigation and climate controls to shift timing.
“It’s everywhere,” said Glenn Farris, Universal Instruments Vice President of Marketing. “Semiconductors are ubiquitous.”
How Universal's High-Speed Wafer Feeder solves an industry problem
For decades, the electronics industry has been guided by Moore’s Law, an observation coined in 1965 that holds that the number of transistors on a microchip doubles roughly every two years and provides a corresponding reduction in costs. The trend has started to break down in recent years as the cost savings associated with smaller transistors have not kept pace with advances in the technology.
Over time electronics have grown more complicated, incorporating different technologies into a single device. That drives up costs in manufacturing.
Enter Universal's High-Speed Wafer Feeder. The machine can handle multiple different semiconductor devices inside one machine, creating greater efficiency and higher yields while bringing down costs.
“If you want to get the cost of the end product down, you’ve got to get the cost of the components down. If you get the cost of the components down, you’ve got to get down the cost of whatever manufacturing process you’re using to assemble those,” said Farris. “That’s where we come in. Our equipment is a key piece of the assembly, the manufacturing solution for those advanced packages, and enables that functionality at a lower cost.”
The High-Speed Wafer Feeder plays a part in producing everyday items like phones, computers, televisions, medical devices, solar panels, and wearables like smart watches and ear pods.
“When you bring a new product to market you don’t solve yesterday’s problem, you’re trying to solve tomorrow’s problem. That’s what we’re doing,” said Farris. “We have great hope and expectation that over the next decade this is going to be a very important contributor to the economics of our electronics and to the industry, and certainly to Universal. It should dramatically help us grow and improve our profitability and performance as a company.”
New product will drive hiring at Universal Instruments
Universal Instruments has been developing the High-Speed Wafer Feeder for a handful of years. Farris estimated that 95% of the work was completed at company headquarters in Broome County, where Universal has been based since its founding in 1919.
Today, Universal employs around 300 people in Conklin and another 50 or so in Rochester.
The first High-Speed Wafer Feeder was shipped in the fourth quarter of 2021, with several more sold in early 2022. Production will ramp up into “very substantial volumes” toward the end of the year, Farris said. Given the high-end nature of the product, that could equate to a few dozen units in the product’s first year on the market.
“We’re talking tens of units in a quarter,” said Farris. “A unit a week is good volume for us.”
Farris said the company added around 80 people in 2021 and may fill a similar number of positions in 2022 through a mix of growth and current employees retiring from the workforce.
The pace of the company’s growth has been slowed by struggles to promptly fill open positions, as well as supply chain issues that have plagued the global semiconductor industry for the past few years.
The chip shortage has fueled a push to bring semiconductor manufacturing and associated packaging back to U.S. soil. Intel, the world's largest semiconductor manufacturer, earlier this year announced plans to build a $20 billion complex outside of Columbus, Ohio.
“Today most of this equipment we manufacture doesn’t go to a U.S. customer, it goes overseas,” noted Farris. “We’re very hopeful and optimistic we’re going to see that macro trend change over the next 5-10 years and see more of these manufacturing plants coming back to the U.S.”
New technology aided by federal, state, local partnerships
Universal Instruments was aided in the creation of the High-Speed Wafer feeder by NextFlex, a federally-funded Manufacturing Innovation Institute with the goal of advancing U.S. manufacturing of Flexible Hybrid Electronics. The project was also supported with matching funds from Empire State Development through the Upstate Revitalization Initiative.
The agreement with Empire State Development included the installation of a High-Speed Wafer Feeder in Binghamton University’s Smart Electronics Manufacturing Laboratory. Farris said Universal and BU have long enjoyed a “synergistic” relationship that includes shared resources.
Dr. Mark Poliks, Director of the Center for Advanced Microelectronics Manufacturing at BU, said Universal's product will provide students a unique hands-on experience working with cutting-edge manufacturing technology.
“It’s been a valuable asset to partner with a leading technology company in our own backyard and we look forward to continued cooperation and knowledge sharing,” said Poliks."
Some more company information, including job openings:
https://www.uic.com/
https://www.uic.com/careers/
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