News
Karl Pfluke has been promoted to the position of market development specialist at the Indium Corp. of America (Utica, NY).
Pfluke, a degreed Manufacturing Engineering Technologist, is certified as both a Powder Metallurgy Technologist with MPIF and a Process Engineer with the Surface Mount Technology Association (SMTA, Minneapolis, MN). He is an active member of the IPC Solder Alloy Standards Development Group and has presented numerous technical papers.
Pfluke has worked at Indium for three years as a technical support engineer and has experience with the full range of interconnect materials and processes. He will remain based at the company¹s corporate headquarters in New York.
Indium Corp. is supplier of electronics assembly materials, including solder pastes, solder preforms, fluxes, lead-free solder alloys, underfill materials and die-attach materials. Factories are located in North America, Europe and Asia.
Copyright 2004, UP Media Group. All rights reserved.
AVX Corp. (Myrtle Beach, SC), a manufacturer of electronic passive components, has landed on Mars. The company announced their contribution to the Mars exploration rover, Spirit, and its twin rover, Opportunity, that successfully drove onto Martian soil last weekend. AVX supplied their CYR20 glass-dielectric capacitors in the mission critical rover lift actuator (RLA) and lander petal actuator (LPA) circuits. AVX has a long-standing relationship with NASA's space programs and has supplied passive components for many missions over the past 20 years.
The fused monolithic construction of the capacitors provide selectrical performance, environmental immunity, stability and retraceability, making them ideal for mission critical applications. The devices are designed to withstand extremely high and low temperatures and exposure to radiation.
The capacitors used in the rover played a vital role in the RLA and LPA electronics. The circuits enable the lander to open and adjust its petals and enable the lift mechanism to raise the rover so its wheels can be deployed to drive onto Martian terrain.
Photo courtesy of NASA/JPL-CALTECH.
Copyright 2004, UP Media Group. All rights reserved.
DEK (Flemington, NJ), a high accuracy mass imaging solutions provider, has announced representative changes in the Pacific Northwest and Southern California regions. DEK's offerings have expanded over the last two years and this growth has resulted in the need for a change in representation in a few select regions.
In the Pacific Northwest, DEK will now be represented by Systems Specialists Inc., an industry leader and representative for many major brands. The 27-year old organization prides itself on superior customer service and technical support and, in their new relationship, will represent DEK in Washington, Oregon and Idaho.
DEK has also announced a representative change in Southern California. Competitive Edge Manufacturing Equipment (CEME) will now represent DEK's complete product line in this territory. CEME will represent DEK in the Southern California counties of San Louis Obispo, Kern, San Bernadino, Santa Barbara, Ventura, Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Diego, Imperial and in Baja, Mexico.
Copyright 2004, UP Media Group. All rights reserved.
Speedline Technologies Inc. (Franklin, MA) has manufactured and shipped its 100th CAMALOT XyflexPro dispensing system. The dispenser was purchased by Mektec Manufacturing Corp. of Thailand.
Mektec produces flexible printed circuit boards (PCBs) for computers, cameras, printers and mobile phones. The company will use the dispenser for flip chip underfill on flexible PCBs. With this purchase, Mektec operates 15 of the new dispensers, becoming the second largest XyflexPro installation in the world.
CAMALOT equipment provides new approaches to surface-mount and component protection. The benchtop, stand-alone and in-line systems dispense solder paste, conductive adhesives, encapsulants and flip chip underfill. The dispensing system has a calibration-free linear gantry drive system, small footprint and many easy-to-add options. The equipment handles surface-mount technology and semiconductor production applications.
Copyright 2004, UP Media Group. All rights reserved.
Siemens Dematic Electronics Assembly Systems (EAS, Norcross, GA) announced its intention to provide comprehensive surface-mount technology process training for the Americas in partnership with the Center for Electronics Manufacturing & Assembly (CEMA) at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT, Rochester, NY).
The training will take place at RIT's CEMA facility, which has a fully equipped surface- mount technology laboratory with screen printing, dispensing, pick-and-place, reflow, rework stations, optoelectronics workstations, wire bonding, test and inspection equipment.
The five-day hands-on course hopes to provide participants with a thorough understanding of surface-mount technology and advanced packaging principles needed for supporting and troubleshooting the surface-mount process. The course will offer extensive discussions on process parameters and process characteristics, as well as identifying and correcting defects.
Professor S. Manian Ramkumar, director of the CEMA at RIT said, "We are very pleased to offer these advanced technology courses in partnership with Siemens Dematic. We understand that these skills are imperative in today's manufacturing environment in order to improve the performance and quality of the manufacturing process."
To find out more about this course, visit www.siplace.com.
Copyright 2004, UP Media Group. All rights reserved.
Electronics manufacturing services (EMS) provider Flextronics (Singapore) has announced results for its third fiscal quarter ended Dec.31, 2003. Net sales reached a record of $4.15 billion, an increase of 18.5% over the previous quarter, and up 7.8% from Q3 2002.
Pro forma net income was $93.9 million, or $0.17 per diluted share, a sequential increase of 97.6% and a year-on-year increase of 41.9%. Including after-tax amortization expense of $8.6 million, previously announced restructuring costs of $49.5 million and litigation settlement costs of $14.4 million, net income in the third quarter was $21.4 million. Last year, the company recorded a third quarter net loss of $6.5 million.
The quarterly results reflect a number of financial milestones, including record inventory turns of 13 times, a cash conversion cycle of 14 days and selling, general and administrative expense of 2.9% of sales. In addition, pro forma cash flow from operations was $356 million, which excludes approximately $68 million of payments for restructuring and other charges.
"As we begin to realize the earnings leverage imbedded in our business, our financial results will continue to improve," said Michael E. Marks, chief executive officer of Flextronics. "The improved operating results are what we expected to begin to see as we emerge from the technology downturn. While we are pleased that our margins, overall profitability, return on invested tangible capital, and many other financial metrics have improved this quarter, we continue to be completely focused on driving additional improvements in our operating performance."
Marks concluded, "Last week's announcement regarding our discussions with Nortel Networks has the potential to be a major transformational event for Flextronics in many ways. As currently being discussed, it has the potential to be the largest program award in the history of the EMS industry, with revenues exceeding $2 billion per year for Flextronics."
The company has increased its expectations for the March 2004 quarter by 10% for sales and 20% for pro forma earnings per share, to a range of $3.4 to $3.6 billion and $0.09 to $0.11, respectively.
Copyright 2004, UP Media Group. All rights reserved.
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