VCP Series · VCP / VCPS / DVCP
A vertical continuous plating line is not a gantry on its side. The panel moves through fixed cells, so the whole design question becomes how to keep the copper ion concentration at the bottom of a 0.25 mm hole equal to the concentration at the surface.
Two numbers decide whether a VCP line is good: the copper thickness in the middle of the hole, and how much that number moves from panel to panel. Everything else on the machine exists to hold those two.
The panel is clamped vertically on a flying carrier and driven at constant speed through pre-treatment, copper cells, rinse and exit. There is no crane, no tank-to-tank transfer, and no drip between cells. Four things follow from that, and all four are economic:
IPC-6012 Class 3 asks for 25 µm average copper in the hole with a 20 µm minimum. On the surface you will typically run 25 to 30 µm. If the hole centre only sees 40% of the surface current density, you need 62 µm on the surface to reach 25 µm in the hole — and then you cannot etch the pattern back.
So the cell is designed around three variables, in this order: how fast depleted electrolyte is replaced inside the hole, what the additive package does at the via bottom, and only then what waveform the rectifier produces. A bigger rectifier does not fix a badly plumbed cell.
An IrO2-coated titanium mesh holds its effective area for the life of the line, so the current distribution you commission is the current distribution you still have in year five. Copper is added as CuO powder or copper balls in a dissolution tank, dosed from amp-hours.
No anode bags to change on a Sunday shift, no phosphor-copper sludge in the cell, and a 0.2 mm mesh that keeps particles out of the boundary layer — which is the difference between a nodule problem and a chemistry problem.
Each copper cell carries its own rectifier with independent forward and reverse time and current. Reverse pulses preferentially dissolve the brightener-rich deposit at the hole mouth, which is exactly where DC overplates.
A 16-copper / 4-tin line carries 20 rectifiers. The copper section is pulse; the tin section is DC. Water-immersed V-seats are used so the pulse edge does not arc at the contact — a detail that only matters once you run pulse at scale.
Nozzle bars sit on both sides of the panel and fire at an angle rather than straight on, so the jet sweeps the hole mouth instead of stalling against the panel face and creating a stagnation zone. Every pump is on its own VFD.
Flow is mapped across the panel at commissioning to ±10%. Level control and an overflow weir mean the panel never leaves a cell with a dry strip, which is where streaks come from.
An insoluble-anode bath does not drift in copper — it drifts in acid, chloride and additives. Specific gravity, chloride and the additive break-down products are what walk the current density window out of range in a week.
Copper oxide, sulfuric acid, chloride and additives are dosed from amp-hour integration plus analysis, and the line reports recipe, panel ID and thickness data to the fab MES over a documented API.
| Parameter | Range / standard |
|---|---|
| Panel size | up to 620 × 620 mm (larger engineered per project) |
| Panel thickness | 0.4 – 6.0 mm |
| Through-hole aspect ratio | up to 40:1 with matched chemistry and pulse |
| Copper thickness | 5 – 30 µm per pass; 25 µm typical for panel + pattern |
| Within-panel thickness range | ≤ 5 µm at a 25 µm target |
| Throwing power | ≥ 85% |
| Current density | 1.1 – 2.0 ASD (10 – 20 ASF) |
| Line speed | 0.3 – 2.0 m/min, recipe controlled |
| Copper cells | 6 (panel) / 16 (pattern) / 20 (thick board) |
| Anode | insoluble IrO2/Ti mesh + copper dissolution, or soluble phosphor copper with bags |
| Rectification | pulse (PPR) per copper cell, DC per tin cell, one unit per cell |
| Dosing | automatic: CuO, H2SO4, HCl, additives, from amp-hour + analysis |
| Wetted materials | PP / PVDF / SUS316L to suit the chemistry |
| Control | PLC + HMI, recipe management, MES interface, alarm and trend logging |
For a continuous line the throughput is the plated width times the speed — not the panel count times the cycle. With one strip of 620 mm panels:
m²/hour = panel width (m) × line speed (m/min) × 60 × number of strips
At 0.62 m wide and 0.7168 m/min, one strip yields 26.7 m²/hour. Two strips yield 53.3, three strips 80.0. Line speed is not a free variable: it is fixed by the plating time your copper thickness requires, divided into the length of the copper section. That is why we ask for the copper target before we ask for the output — the target sets the speed, and the speed sets how many strips you need to buy.
Two strips of the same line cannot exceed 53 m²/hour for a 25 µm target at 40:1. If a project needs more, it needs a third strip or a second line, and no amount of rectifier current changes that.
VCP lines from this platform are in mass production at HDI and HLC fabs in China, Thailand, Malaysia and India, running panel copper at 5 µm into pattern copper at 20 µm — 25 µm in the hole to IPC-6012 Class 3 — on boards for AI server, networking and automotive applications.
Across the wider range, 357 machines were delivered between September 2021 and May 2026, 122 of them pattern plating and 41 panel plating lines. See the delivery record.
VCP wins on volume and repeatability: no crane transfer, no re-clamping, the same current history for every panel. It holds thickness distribution to 40:1 when the chemistry and the pulse recipe are matched to the hole - that is the build we design today and have delivered into production. Past that the constraint stops being agitation and becomes dwell time: on backplanes thicker than 5 mm, or where the copper target is heavy, the gantry line is the right machine because it buys time in the bath, not more flow. We build both and will tell you which one your stack-up needs.
DC is sufficient up to roughly 10:1 when the flow is right. Above that, periodic pulse reverse pays for itself: the reverse cycle re-dissolves the brightener-rich deposit at the hole mouth, which raises throwing power and flattens the surface-to-hole difference. On a 16-copper/4-tin line the copper section is pulse and the tin section is DC — there is no reason to pulse tin.
Insoluble IrO2-coated titanium mesh with a separate copper dissolution tank keeps the anode area constant for the life of the line, so current distribution does not drift as the bath ages. There are no anode bags to change and no phosphor-copper sludge in the cell. Soluble anodes are cheaper to install and familiar to every plating engineer, but anode area shrinks and the bags become a maintenance schedule.
It is not guaranteed from a catalogue. We plate a coupon from your stack-up at three current densities, section nine points per hole, and set the recipe and the guarantee from that pilot run. The line then holds it by dosing from amp-hours and by recipe locking — not by operator adjustment.
Yes. The tank modules and the rectifier bus are sized for the final configuration; the intermediate cells are shipped as blind tanks and commissioned later. This is common when a fab starts with panel plating and adds pattern plating a year later.
Related lines: via filling lines · gantry lines for 40:1 HDI · ENEPIG lines
Send us the board: layer count, panel size, hole diameter and depth, copper target and required m²/hour. We will return a cell count, a rectifier schedule and a pilot-run plan.