50 Years – One Mission: Tomorrow's Technology Today
The Birth of LPKF – And Where We Are Today
In 1976, Jürgen Seebach had a problem every innovator knows: The tools available to him couldn't keep up with the forward-looking ideas in his mind.
The 41-year-old engineer was developing a futuristic designer lamp with an integrated digital clock. But his progress stucked at PCB fabrication level. Every design iteration meant five days waiting for a specialized etching lab. For someone building the future today, that was unacceptable.
So he grabbed a handheld milling cutter and carved the circuit traces directly into copper. It worked. And more importantly: he discovered what he'd created wasn't just a simple workaround – it was a solution that was able to eliminate an industry-wide bottleneck.
That solution had a name every german engineer could fall in love with: Leiterplattenkopierfräse (LPKF) – PCB plotter machine. And the principle behind its birth became our mission:
Tomorrow's Technology Today
This is more than a tagline. It means three principles that defined LPKF in 1976 and drive us today:
1. Pioneering with productive impatience
Innovation moves fast. Manufacturing processes can't afford to be the bottleneck. Tomorrow's technology needs to be available now – not after weeks. We find solutions that speed up development and manufacturing processes.
2. Understanding the bigger picture
Jürgen didn't just solve his own problem. He saw the broader opportunity: every engineer, every R&D lab faced the same limitation. Pioneers recognize when a solution can become something bigger and enter the markets with revolutionizing approaches.
3. Scalability far beyond the own garage
A prototype solution isn't enough. Tomorrow's technology must scale from the lab bench to the production floor. From one unit to a million. From concept to commercial reality. That’s what LPKF offers.
Where We Are Today
Fifty years later, LPKF still works where process bottlenecks hold innovation back. But the frontiers have changed:
Advanced Semiconductor Packaging: Glass interposers and heterogeneous integration require micron-level performance in materials conventional methods can't process reliably. LPKF's laser solutions enable high-precision glass processing – crack-free, high-throughput, ready for volume manufacturing.
Industrial Electronics Manufacturing: As electronics push into tighter tolerances, cleaner processes and denser assemblies, LPKF's laser-based solutions bridge prototyping flexibility and high-volume SMT-line production reliability for a wide variety of applications.
Thin-Film Laser Scribing: Leading precision and throughput for photovoltaic module production, where laser scribing directly impacts energy conversion efficiency – ready for next generation panels including perovskite based material.
PCB Prototyping: From chemical-free in-house prototyping to the discovery of new inventions – we haven't forgotten where we started.
50 Years - One Mission
LPKF is not a start-up company. We're a company with a global presence and 50 years taking complex manufacturing processes from laboratory concepts to production-ready systems. With partnerships across industries such as semiconductors, electronics, automotive, medical and photovoltaics. With proven expertise in laser precision, materials, and scale.
But we've stayed pioneers.
Because the questions Jürgen Seebach asked in 1976 are still the right questions today:
What's holding innovation back? And how can we remove it?
In 1976, it was five-day PCB turnaround.
In 2026, it's glass processing for semiconductor packaging to move Moore’s Law.
50 Years. One Mission: