News
UP Media Group Inc. (UPMG, Atlanta, GA) has announced that PCB Design Conference West, the annual West Coast conference and exhibition for printed circuit board (PCB) engineering, design and manufacturing professionals, will return to the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA, on March 7-11, 2005. Long held in Santa Clara, PCB West has been held at the San Jose Convention Center for the last two years.
"The San Jose Convention Center is a terrific venue and we really enjoyed holding the show there," said UPMG president Pete Waddell. "However, there are a lot of positives about the Santa Clara Convention Center that our attendees, exhibitors and staff alike appreciate. For example, the SCCC facility is located just off Highway 101 on Great America Parkway, which results in easy access from all parts of Silicon Valley by rail or car. Parking is free, and two great hotels—the Westin Hotel Santa Clara and Hilton Santa Clara—are literally only steps away from the convention center lobby."
Sponsored by industry trade magazines Printed Circuit Design & Manufacture and Circuits Assembly, PCB West annually provides attendees and vendors with a conference and exhibition for the design and manufacture of advanced circuits, printed circuit boards (PCBs) and related technologies.
PCB West will provide attendees with a five-day conference program featuring a three-day Technical Conference of short courses and papers and two days of in-depth Professional Development Certificate Curriculum courses. The two-day product and service exhibition will be held on March 8-9.
UPMG is a privately held company that specializes in magazine publishing and trade show and conference production. UPMG currently publishes Printed Circuit Design & Manufacture and Circuits Assembly. In addition, UPMG produces two annual conferences and trade shows for the design and manufacture industry—PCB Design Conference West and PCB Design Conference East in the Boston area. UPMG also hosts the PCB Design Conference Road Series of courses in cities throughout the U.S.
Copyright 2004, UP Media Group. All rights reserved.
The National Electronics Manufacturing Initiative (NEMI, Herndon, VA) will sponsor a tin whisker workshop and a component supplier/large user meeting at the upcoming IEEE Electronic Components and Technology Conference (ECTC) in Las Vegas, NV, June 1-4.
An all-day session on June 1 will review all of the NEMI tin whisker project activities to date. Two half-day sessions are scheduled for June 2. Users and suppliers will discuss mitigation strategies and acceptance test plans for high-reliability critical systems applications in the morning session, followed by an open meeting of the Tin Whisker Accelerated Test Project in the afternoon.
With the move toward lead-free electronics, tin is considered a drop-in replacement for the tin-lead finish currently used for component terminations. However, pure tin coatings may have a tendency to grow small filaments, known as whiskers, which could bridge adjacent terminals, causing system failures. NEMI has three projects that are working on various aspects of this phenomenon: accelerated test (attempting to develop tests to predict tin whiskers), modeling (attempting to understand basic cause of whiskers) and a user group (addressing how high-reliability, long-life systems or critical applications can be protected).
The Tuesday workshop will provide an overview of more than three years' work by the three projects, including discussion of an annotated bibliography, a set of tests recommended to JEDEC, basic theories behind whisker formation and how to protect critical applications and systems given what is known today.
On Wednesday, the Tin Whisker User Group will focus on the need for mitigation practices when pure tin is used as a component terminal coating. The concern with tin whiskers in high-reliability, critical systems applications will be discussed, potential solutions outlined and tests to demonstrate compliance will be proposed.
Carol Handwerker, chief of the Metallurgy Division of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), will moderate the Tuesday workshop and Wednesday user/supplier discussions on whisker mitigation and test acceptance. Nick Vo, Motorola, will chair the Wednesday test method standardization evaluation and discussions.
All meetings will be held in the same venue as the ECTC. Anyone registered for ECTC can attend the NEMI tin whisker meetings. Individuals wishing to attend only the NEMI meetings should contact the NEMI secretariat for information (703-834-0330).
Copyright 2004, UP Media Group. All rights reserved.
Electronics manufacturing services (EMS) provider Flextronics (Singapore) has announced results for its fourth quarter and fiscal year ended March 31, 2004. Net sales for the quarter were a record $3.8 billion, a 23% increase over the March 2003 quarter. Net sales for the fiscal year reached $14.5 billion, up $1.2 billion, or 9%, from 2003.
Proforma net income was $72.8 million, or $0.13 per diluted share for Q4, up $47.4 million from Q4 2003. Including after-tax amortization expense of $8.8 million and restructuring costs of $48.0 million, net income was $16.0 million, or $0.03 per diluted share, down from $19.5 million, or $0.04 per diluted share, year-on-year..
"Our financial results continue to improve as we realize the earnings leverage embedded in our business, said Michael E. Marks, chief executive officer of Flextronics. "Quarterly revenues grew 23% on a year-over-year basis, while proforma profits nearly tripled. Both operating margin and revenues were stronger than expected, as the quarter ended less seasonal than expected for handsets and other consumer related products."
Flextronics also announced that it intends to convert all of the outstanding 0% Convertible Junior Subordinated Notes issued in March 2003 into approximately 19 million shares of common stock. The company filed a Registration Statement on Form S-3 to register the shares, and the conversion will be completed after the Securities and Exchange Commission declares the Form S-3 effective. The conversion will not impact Flextronics' diluted EPS, as the stock equivalents have always been included in the diluted EPS calculation.
Copyright 2004, UP Media Group. All rights reserved.
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