|
S.I.D. Ltd. was founded in January 2000, with an ambition to provide a quality service in manufacturing machines to customer requirements. Although we are a relatively new company the two founding directors Alan Jones and David Farmer have over 30 years experience in manufacturing custom made machines.
Managing Director Alan Jones started his career as an Electrical / Electronics Engineer serving an apprenticeship at Wiggin Alloys Ltd., then progressed to Formwood Ltd.
In 1985 at the start of Compact Disc manufacture he joined Nimbus Records at Monmouth. With the manufacture of CD's in their infancy, "in-house" machines were manufactured to allow the manufacture of CD's in batch mode.( typical cycle times of 20 secs were common). A range of pick and place, spin coaters and printers were conceived and manufactured by him during this time.
Two further plants were opened in Cwmbran (Wales) and Virginia (USA) in 1986 and 1987, helping Nimbus to become one of the largest independent manufacturers in the world. In 1987 Alan and David first started working together in Cwmbran. They produced for Nimbus the first in-line and semi-line systems around a Leybold A130 Metaliser system. These were installed in Cwmbran and Virginia and were still in production until only a few years ago, they are now producing discs in the third world.
In 1990 a new generation of spin coaters were developed as ever decreasing cycle times meant existing equipment had limited cycle times. The new spin coater had a cycle time of 3.3 secs and was later sold through Robi Systems as the RN1200/8. Later developments in conjunction with Robi Systems in Switzerland produced the RN1200/6 - sold under licence.
In 1996 as cycle times were still decreasing a twin line was developed, designed, manufactured and commissioned with a cycle time of 1.6secs - fondly known as the " T line " because of its shape. At the time of its conception no " off the shelf " machines were available on the market with a cycle time to match this. Over the next four years this design was refined and a number of machines were manufactured and are all still in production in the UK, USA and Luxembourg. Also during 1996 a new facility was opened in Provo, Utah, USA and all spin coaters and inspection handling equipment installed was designed and built by Alan and David.
In 1998 another new facility was opened in Luxembourg with all the replication equipment being designed, manufactured, installed and commissioned by Alan and David. Numerous other pieces of equipment were manufactured during this period to suit different applications.
During 1999 they project managed the design and build (in association with Singulus Technologies ) of the 3D CD Hologram machine.
In January 2000 they left Nimbus Manufacturing, now Technicolor, to form their own company.
The quality of build and design of S.I.D. equipment, as well as our after sales service has seen us build a strong and loyal customer base. We have never advertised our services (other than this web site), over 70% of our customers are referred to us by recommendations by satisfied customers.
|
