ESD-Protected Tray

• Packaging Products for Highly Sensitive Electronics Require Competitive ESD Solutions Plus Global Technical Service

Mild shocks produced by electrostatic discharge (ESD) are common everyday occurrences. However, in sensitive electronic components, ESD does more than produce mild discomfort — it affects product reliability and profitability. This damage can occur during device handling or from poor ESD control practices.

Safely transporting highly sensitive devices to prevent damage from ESD requires specialized carriers that not only address ESD, but also satisfy additional performance requirements specific to the end-use application. Pacific Plastics & Engineering (PP&E) serves the electronic packaging industry with trays that provide engineering-driven ESD solutions. To accomplish this, PP&E turns to RTP Company for high quality conductive compounds and unmatched support.

One PP&E customer that supplies proprietary packaging techniques for maximum protection during the shipping and handling of sensitive devices required multiple specialized trays to meet various requirements. In addition to ESD control, the trays required high purity, impact resistance, and almost impossible molding capabilities. However, each tray had a separate set of property challenges as they each had different end uses. This necessitated RTP Company to develop several different ESD material solutions.

Aesthetics were critical for one tray requiring transparency. Property requirements were aptly met with a clear PermaStat^® product. PermaStat^® compounds from RTP Company offer permanent static dissipation properties that won’t migrate or bloom to the surface of the part. Because they are non-sloughing, they are ideal for clean-room and static-free applications. For this application, a PermaStat^® 600 Series ABS compound was specified with a surface resistivity of 10¹⁰ to 10¹¹ ohms/square and static decay rate of less than 2.0 sec.

Requirements for other trays were met with RTP 300 Series high purity conductive polycarbonate compounds. One version demanded high impact properties, but in another version it was critical to meet competitive price points. Further customization was essential to ensure that each compound was ideal for its particular market niche. During these formulation challenges, it was proven to PP&E that RTP Company delivers more than just exceptional materials.

“RTP Company was more than willing to be creative in formulating compounds so we can competitively position our products correctly,” said Tom Star, Sales Manager at PP&E. “Furthermore, RTP Company separated themselves from the competition with exceptional global technical service and support.”

PP&E also utilized RTP Company’s CAE support services and received a MoldFlow^® filling analysis. The study examined the filling pressures for two different sized ESD trays. After analyzing the proposed gate locations as well as various other nominal wall thicknesses, RTP Company made recommendations for part adjustments.

PP&E molds its products both domestically and at strategic off-shore locations in Asia. “A key piece for our success is turning resins over to Singapore to ensure consistent supply at our Asia molding locations,” said Ray Scherer, Engineering Manager at PP&E. “RTP Company is able to meet these supply challenges and provide global technical service. They readily offer this important service to us and we readily use it!”

PP&E has been growing annually at an astounding rate of 25% and ships its products to over 400 customers all over the world. They are actively working on programs for three of the worlds’ largest chip customers and count on RTP Company for their custom formulations. According to Scherer, “We wouldn’t want to take on these projects without RTP Company!”

Pacific Plastics & Engineering delivers the highest quality products from injection mold tooling to molded plastics, assemblies and packaging. They have a Class 100,000 clean room molding program and use state-of-the-art monitoring and process control equipment. For more information, go to www.pacificplastics.com.

MoldFlow® is a registered trademark of MoldFlow Corporation.
PermaStat® is a registered trademark of RTP Company.