2015 Magazine Archives

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FEATURES

COMPONENT SELECTION
01005: Size Does Matter
Designing PCBs with 01005 components involves tighter constraints in regard to component spacing, layout, and other related considerations, as well as access to higher levels of automation at assembly.
by Arbel Nissan

FLEX DESIGN
Designing Flex Circuits for Wearable Electronics
The human body has very few flat, rigid surfaces, and standard PCBs don’t easily conform to its various contours. This is where flexible circuitry really shines. But while flex circuits are able to conform to the many twists and turns of a human body, they still have limitations.
by Mark Finstad

01005 REWORK
What You Cannot See Can Be Hand Soldered
The extremely small size of an 01005 package presents unique production challenges when it comes to board and pad design, board fabrication, stencil design, solder paste selection, stencil printing placement process, and the reflow process, pushing the limit of current practices. This leads to many situations where rework will be required, no small feat given that dust particles might be as large as the pad itself. Yet, contrary to widely held opinion, a variety of viable 01005 hand soldering rework methods do not rely on capital intensive, difficult to operate, complex rework systems.
by Paul Wood And Bob Wettermann

INSPECTION
Zooming in on Digital Microscopes
If a picture is worth a thousand words, a live high-definition video or high-resolution still is priceless, especially when inspecting small devices, producing documentation or describing problems to multiple viewers simultaneously – even those connected remotely via the Internet.
by Chrys Shea And Kristoffer Tømmergaard

FIRST PERSON

• CAVEAT LECTOR
  Data driven.
  Mike Buetow

MONEY MATTERS

• ROI
  Looking inside.
  Peter Bigelow
  

• FOCUS ON BUSINESS
  Avoiding the commodity pitch.
  Susan Mucha

TECH TALK

• SCREEN PRINTING
  Tooling block height.
  Clive Ashmore
• DEFECTS DATABASE
  Underfill voiding.
  Dr. Chris Hunt
• TECH TIPS
  The hidden corruption of dirty tweezers.
  Karl Seelig and Tim O’Neill
• TEST AND INSPECTION
  What’s in your boundary scan toolbox?
  Jun Balangue
• GETTING LEAN
  Lean cells for the “fat” factory.
  Michael Ford

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