Industry supplies the ESRF with advanced technologyI M P A C T O N I N D U S T R Y

S U P P LY I N G T H E ‘F E R R A R I’

O F M O T O R C O N T R O L L E R S

T H E C O M P A N Y

Prime Elettronica was founded by a 25-year-old

employee of a large electronics f irm in 1995, with

the idea of specialising in the f inal assembly (as

opposed to the manufacture) of printed circuit

boards (PCBs). Based near Cornedo Vicentino, Italy,

it currently has 30 employees and a turnover in the

region of €6m.

T H E W O R K

The way in which components such as resistors,

capacitors and microprocessors are assembled

on a PCB greatly af fects the performance of the

f inal device. Prime specialises in this assembly for

small-batch PCBs of high complexity – a market

that larger electronics companies struggle to cater

for cost-effectively. Prime’s first customer was

the Italian National Institute of Nuclear Physics;

shortly af ter, it supplied PCBs for a particle detector

at CERN.

It was while working at CERN that Prime was

introduced to an ESRF employee, who suggested

that the company could participate in a tender

for the supply of a high-resolution motor-control

system, IcePAP. Developed by the ESRF, but used by

many other scientif ic facilities, IcePAP is regarded as

the “Ferrari” of motor controllers, able to drive up to

128 axes of movement while being fully sof tware-

conf igurable and easy to diagnose if problems arise.

Since 2015, Prime has supplied over 2500 IcePAPs.

T H E I M P A C T

“IcePAP was a big tender for us. Our experience

was with electronics but this system also required

integrated mechanical parts fortunately we knew

of a good supplier for those based just 40km away

from us The tender was also interesting because

we were small compared with the other companies

participating in fact I think this why we were

able to keep our costs down and why we won

Of course this was not the f irst time that tenders

had been sought for the supply of IcePAPs and

that was helpful for us because the ESRF knew

exactly what it wanted Comparing our knowledge

with the ESRFs we were able to grow and learn to

present more formally

Andrea Greco founder and director Prime

Elettronica

“With the ESRF,

we were able to grow

and learn.”

Andrea Greco, founder and director,

Prime Elettronica

20 21

P R I M E E L E T T R O N I C A