PALO ALTO, Calif — July 2022 — Arch Systems today announced $15M in new funding led by Two Bear Capital and joined by new and existing investors including seed lead investor Uncork Capital.

Arch, founded by Stanford engineering PhDs, provides leading electronics and discrete manufacturers with an advanced analytics platform for factory-wide and multi-factory operations. On the manufacturing floor, the technology provides best-in-class operational guidance to improve productivity, quality, and maintenance. Across multiple factories, Arch automates global KPI alignment and delivers enterprises tools to drive data-driven action management both at in-house and contracted factories to maximize overall manufacturing performance.

Arch Systems CEO Andrew Scheuermann explained the company's position and traction: “Today our product, ArchFX, is in use in more than 15 countries, analyzing hundreds of unique products with the continuous rich data from well over 5,000 smart factory machines. Arch’s enterprise customers are unlocking in the $10 millions, even $100 millions of untapped factory capacity. This is made possible by identifying and solving significant factory-based bottlenecks across enterprise-wide systems that were previously invisible– while enabling factory by factory front-line operations with best-in-class, standardized productivity, and quality process control.”

About the new financing, the Arch CEO said, “This new funding will accelerate our go-to-market motion both in our core area, electronics manufacturing, and in the adjacent area of high-tech manufacturing including defense and medical manufacturing. Two Bear Capital brings incredible expertise and insight into company building in the deep tech and networking space as well as our domain manufacturing markets. This is a rare and exceptional combination of expertise. We are excited to be partnering with them on this next phase.”

Two Bear Capital’s investment was led by partner Ida Khodami. “I am beyond excited about our investment in Arch,” said Khodami. “Having held engineering and operations leadership roles in the biotech industry for over a decade, I have seen firsthand the tremendous value of factory-wide analytics and the investment required to integrate equipment (smart and legacy machines) in all factories, even in the most sophisticated ones. Arch is changing the integration game for new and existing factory machines by providing accessible, unprecedented analytics tools. We invested in Arch to help fuel their further expansion into biotech, medical devices, electronics and other areas of high-tech and discrete manufacturing.”

The funding comes on the heels of significant growth at Arch with more than 300 percent year-over-year growth in business both in active analytics users and connected machines. The company is currently in an active hiring phase and launching two major products in the coming months – Action Management System, an enterprise control room designed around machine data signals and corrective actions for top floor to shopfloor rapid decision making, as well as Production Insights, an ArchFX Core offering that will make a subset of Arch’s analytics developed on large enterprise data sets available to individual factories for the first time.

About Two Bear Capital

Two Bear Capital (TBC) was founded and is led by veteran Silicon Valley venture capitalist and philanthropist Michael Goguen. Two Bear Capital seeks to invest in the most promising early-stage companies solving some of today’s most urgent problems at the intersections of healthcare, biotechnology, bioinformatics, artificial intelligence/machine learning, cybersecurity, and software infrastructure for enterprise. Two Bear Capital’s investment team is based in Whitefish, Montana, the San Francisco Bay area, San Diego, and Boston. To learn more, visit www.twobearcapital.com and follow Two Bear Capital on LinkedIn.

About Arch Systems

Arch® works with top-tier global electronics manufacturers to extract data from any machine, both new and legacy, to unlock data governance and drive uniform metrics for enhanced productivity and predictive analytics. Arch has built the largest collaboration of industry domain experts working hand-in-hand with data scientists to constantly map new signals in the data, adding them to the ever-growing library of operational analytics and recommendations. These signals and recommendations are changing how manufacturers tackle their most complex problems, allowing them to simplify and align actions both on the shop floor and the top floor.

PCB WEST: The leading technical conference and exhibition for electronics engineers. Coming Oct. 4-7 to the Santa Clara (CA) Convention Center. pcbwest.com

BANNOCKBURN, Ill., USA, July 13, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- More than 100 top executives representing companies in the U.S. electronics manufacturing industry are urging the U.S. Congress to address critical shortcomings in the printed circuit board (PCB) industry and the entire U.S. electronics supply chain.

The letter, organized by IPC, a global electronics manufacturing association, urged all members of the U.S. House to support H.R. 7677, the Supporting American Printed Circuit Boards Act of 2022, which would incentivize purchases of domestically produced PCBs as well as industry investments in factories, equipment, workforce training, and research and development (R&D).

The letter stressed that the legislation, introduced by Reps. Anna Eshoo (D-CA) and Blake Moore (R-UT), is critical to rebuilding a severely depleted but still-critical U.S. manufacturing sector; would ease an already strained U.S. supply chain; and would strengthen U.S. national security. PCBs are a critical component of the electronics ecosystem and are as integral to electronics as semiconductors. In fact, electronic systems cannot function without PCBs, and yet the United States is overwhelmingly reliant on non-domestic sources of them and is falling behind in cutting-edge PCB technologies.

“Despite the importance of PCBs to electronics systems, they have been an afterthought to policymakers for decades,” said IPC President and CEO John Mitchell. “This bipartisan legislation, if passed, will stimulate critical investments in PCB research and manufacturing in the United States. We’re glad to see so many industry leaders agree and join us in urging congressional support for this bill.”

A recent IPC report found that the United States has lost its historic dominance in PCB fabrication. Since 2000, U.S. share of global PCB production has fallen from over 30% to just 4%; China now dominates the sector at around 50%. The report also emphasized that any loss of access to non-domestic sources of PCBs would be “catastrophic” to the United States’ ability to produce electronics for weapons systems, communications equipment, medical devices, energy systems, and more.

The full letter and signatories can be found here.

 PCB WEST: The leading technical conference and exhibition for electronics engineers. Coming Oct. 4-7 to the Santa Clara (CA) Convention Center. pcbwest.com

TORRANCE, CA — July 2022 — Seika Machinery, Inc., a leading provider of advanced machinery, materials and engineering services, is pleased to offer the Malcom RCX Modular Profiler System with Video Camera. The Malcom RCX-C is an onboard camera system that can track and record a video of the PCB in the reflow oven.

The RCX-C focuses on a targeted view of the PCB inside of the reflow oven by capturing images by video recording with profiling overlay. The camera and lighting source are housed in a heat-resistant case, allowing users to actually see the reflow process.

The Malcom RCX Series modular reflow oven profiling system provides complete profiling of reflow ovens, including oven temperature, video imaging, O2 concentration, vibration and convection air velocity. It verifies that ovens are performing at optimal conditions and enables users to troubleshoot problem areas.

To learn more about Malcom reflow monitoring systems, visit https://seikausa.com/electronics-mfg-equipment/process-control-equipment/malcom-reflow-monitoring-systems.

Ask for a competitive quotation on any Seika equipment and place an order while supplies last. Contact Michelle Ogihara at 310-540-7310; e-mail michelle@seikausa.com; or visit www.seikausa.com.

PCB WEST: The leading technical conference and exhibition for electronics engineers. Coming Oct. 4-7 to the Santa Clara (CA) Convention Center. pcbwest.com

Indium Corporation®, a leader in supplying products to global electronics, semiconductor, thin-film, and thermal management markets, is partnering with SAFI-Tech, an Iowa-based startup that is creating no-heat and low-heat solder and metallic joining products.

Metallic soldering represents a key manufacturing process across many industries, including aerospace, automotive, and electronics. Current solder products trade off the reliability of joints formed with the very high processing temperatures needed to form those joints—a problem that has limited material selection and product design. SAFI-Tech’s patented supercooling platform removes this tradeoff by creating capsules of molten solder that can remain liquid far below the normal freezing point of metal. Using this platform, industry-standard alloys such as SAC305 can be soldered below LTS temperatures, and other alloys can be soldered as low as ambient temperature.

Indium Corporation and SAFI-Tech will evaluate market applications for supercooled solder materials and explore the development of new products.

Indium Corporation President and COO Ross Berntson said, “We’re always looking for innovative materials solutions that can give our customers ways to overcome current limitations of solder products. SAFI-Tech’s supercooling platform is a unique approach that has the potential to be a solution across a variety of applications.”

Ian Tevis, SAFI-Tech’s President and Co-Founder, said, “Indium Corporation is a world leader and innovator in electronics solder products. Our partnership with Indium will allow customers to explore the unique opportunities possible with our supercooled solder materials.” Indium Corporation® is a premier materials refiner, smelter, manufacturer, and supplier to the global electronics, semiconductor, thin-film, and thermal management markets. Products include solders and fluxes; brazes; thermal interface materials; sputtering targets; indium, gallium, germanium, and tin metals and inorganic compounds; and NanoFoil®. Founded in 1934, the company has global technical support and factories located in China, Germany, India, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, the United Kingdom, and the U.S.

SAFI-Tech is an advanced materials company creating supercooled molten metal products. SAFI-Tech’s supercooled platform was invented by co-founders Dr. Ian Tevis and Dr. Martin Thuo at Iowa State University.

For more information about Indium Corporation, visit www.indium.com or email jhuang@indium.com. You can also follow our experts, From One Engineer To Another® (#FOETA), at www.linkedin.com/company/indium-corporation/ or @IndiumCorp.

PCB WEST: The leading technical conference and exhibition for electronics engineers. Coming Oct. 4-7 to the Santa Clara (CA) Convention Center. pcbwest.com