What is the future development trend of stamping process for 3C connector products?

The future development of stamping of 3C connector products will closely meet the demand of miniaturization and high performance products in 3C industry, and at the same time, it will conform to the general trend of intelligent and green manufacturing, and achieve breakthroughs in precision, efficiency and process integration. The specific development trends are as follows:

The precision is maximized to meet the requirements of miniature high density.

With the promotion of 5G/6G, Internet of Things and other technologies, 3C products are becoming thinner and thinner, and connectors are also evolving towards smaller spacing and higher integration. In the future, the dimensional accuracy of stamping will move towards submicron level, and the terminal spacing of image board-to-board and FPC connectors will be gradually reduced from the current 0.5mm to 0.3mm, 0.25mm or even smaller. This requires the stamping die to adopt ultra-precision machining technology, at the same time, with more accurate feeding and positioning system, and to control coplanarity and welding reliability through on-line detection technologies such as SPI and AOI, so as to avoid the plug-in and signal transmission performance of connectors being affected by tiny size deviation.

Intelligent production, improving efficiency and yield

Intelligentization is the core direction of manufacturing upgrading, and stamping of 3C connectors will also comprehensively promote the landing of intelligent production lines. On the one hand, the popularization rate of servo presses will be greatly improved, and it is estimated that the popularization rate will reach 65% in 2028. With the multi-station progressive die technology, the production rhythm can be further improved and the energy consumption cost can be reduced. On the other hand, the production line will widely integrate AI vision inspection, laser size measurement, die pressure sensing and other equipment to monitor product defects and equipment status in the stamping process in real time, and automatically stop the alarm in case of abnormality. Moreover, the application of digital technology will realize the full traceability of production data, and it is predicted that the yield of industrial products will increase to about 98.5% by 2030, greatly reducing the risk of batch defective products.

Process compounding, expanding product function boundary

It is difficult for a single stamping process to meet the needs of 3C connectors with complex functions, and the integration of multiple processes will become the norm in the future. First, stamping and injection molding, electroplating and other processes will be more closely combined. For example, the metal parts will be stamped first, and then the insulating substrate will be directly injected into the mold to realize the seamless combination of metal and plastic, or the wear resistance and conductivity of the connector will be improved by nano-plating technology, and the plug-in life will be extended to more than 150,000 times; Secondly, heterogeneous integration processes such as three-dimensional stacking will be gradually applied, and vertical space will be used for multi-layer interconnection, so that the connector function can be further integrated with chips and packages, the interconnection distance can be shortened, the signal transmission efficiency can be improved, and the requirements of high-performance computing and other scenarios can be met.

Material adaptability upgrade to meet special performance requirements.

3C connectors need to adapt to higher transmission rate and more complex use environment, and the performance requirements of materials are more and more stringent. In the future, the stamping process will optimize parameters for different special materials, such as beryllium copper with good elasticity but high hardness, and further improve the low-temperature stamping process to prevent elastic failure; Aiming at the stainless steel shielding parts with high strength and poor plasticity, the progressive bending process is optimized to avoid cracking. At the same time, in order to meet the requirements of high-frequency and high-speed transmission, a stamping process will be developed to adapt to new alloy materials, so as to reduce the surface damage and performance loss of materials during stamping, and give consideration to conductivity, corrosion resistance and structural stability.

Green transformation, in line with the concept of low-carbon manufacturing

Driven by the "double carbon" strategy, green production has become an inevitable requirement of manufacturing industry. On the one hand, stamping equipment will be upgraded towards energy saving, and low-energy equipment such as servo presses will completely replace traditional equipment, which is expected to reduce energy consumption costs by 15%; On the other hand, the process will reduce the emission of pollutants, such as using environmentally friendly lubricating medium to avoid the environmental pollution caused by traditional lubricants, and at the same time optimize the die design and stamping parameters to reduce material waste. In addition, lead-free and environmentally-friendly nano-coating technology will be promoted for tin plating, gold plating and other processes, which not only meets environmental protection standards, but also improves product performance.

Domestic substitution accelerates, focusing on high-end technological breakthroughs.

As a key basic component in 3C field, the domestic substitution process of connectors is accelerating. In the future, domestic enterprises will continue to exert their efforts in high-end stamping technology, such as overcoming the core design and manufacturing technology of high-density multi-position progressive die and breaking the monopoly of foreign technology. At the same time, in view of the unification trend of mainstream interfaces such as Type-C, special precision stamping process production lines will be laid out to expand the production capacity and market share of high-end terminals and other products. In addition, enterprises will cooperate with scientific research institutions to promote the application of third-generation semiconductor materials in stamping and further enhance the core competitiveness of domestic 3C connectors.