News
NORTHBROOK, IL, Aug. 27 -- August orders for rigid circuit boards rose 8.7% while demand for flex circuits showed signs of weakness, according to the latest 90-day moving average of North American manufacturers.
"Both rigid and flex shipments are rebounding from the recession and are showing strong growth, but flex is growing at a faster rate than rigid," IPC said in a press release.
For all board types, shipments rose 33.6% and bookings were up 9.8% vs. a year ago, said IPC, which administers the monthly poll. The figures may include some sales of products built offshore and brokered by the surveyed companies.
The August book-to-bill ratio was 1.05 for rigid, up 0.06 points sequentially. The B2B for flex circuits fell precipitously, from 1.57 last month to 0.98 in August.
The book-to-bill for all board types rose fell 0.06 points to 1.04.
The ratio is calculated by averaging the number of orders booked over the past three months and dividing by the average sales billed during the same period. A ratio of 1.04 means that for every $100 in shipments, $104 worth of PCBs were booked. An increasing ratio is generally considered a sign of a market poised to rise.
Year-to-date shipments are up 34.7% and bookings are up 38%. Combined August shipments rose 13.8% sequentially, while bookings fell 0.3%.
August rigid shipments were up 21.9% and bookings 8.7% over last year. Year-to-date, rigid shipments are up 25.1% and bookings are up 21.1%. Among those surveyed, rigid shipments rose 15.2% sequentially and bookings were 7.6% higher.
August flex shipments were up 75.2% yet bookings slumped, falling 19.3% vs. last year. Year-to-date, flex shipments are up 77.4% and bookings 100.7%. Sequentially, flex shipments rose 8.5% and bookings dropped 27.1%.
Flex sales, which include some value-added services, make up about 17% of total PCB sales in the IPC poll.
The data come from a sample of North American rigid and flexible PCB manufacturers.
Come November, Cookson will raise IPA flux prices 70 cents per gallon, in response to the volatility of petrochemical prices on the world market. The company said that isopropyl alcohol prices have risen 78% since June 2003
"Faced with this significant rise in petrochemical-based solvent prices, we were forced to announce this limited price increase on alcohol-based flux products," said Mitch Holtzer, global product manager-flux products.
Cookson said the decision would not affect pricing for its water-based VOC-free flux line.
ATLANTA, GA, Sept. 23 — More than 50 exhibiting companies will display and demonstrate their products, services and technologies for the PCB design industry during the ninth annual PCB Design Conference East 2004.
Scheduled for October 4-8 at the Radisson Hotel in Manchester, NH, the event includes a two-day exhibition and a five-day conference of technical courses centered around the theme: "Education for Your Most Pressing Design Challenges: Including Lead-Free, Embedded Components, High Speed and PCB Design Fundamentals."
Special events that are free to registered attendees include "The Impact of Lead-Free on PCB Design" keynote address by Joseph Fjelstad, a co-founder of Silicon Valley startup SiliconPipe and Tessera's first fellow; an opening night reception in the exhibit hall; and the Brew-ha-ha Party at Jillian's in downtown Manchester, featuring food, drink and music by the Porch Dawgs (an infamous blues band made up of musically-inclined PCB industry professionals).
The following products and/or services are among the many to be featured at the show:
· Calumet Electronics Corp. (Booth 302) will feature lead-free surface coatings, including an electroless nickel/immersion gold (KAT Process) alternative to HASL and Presa RGA-14, an immersion silver process.
· ChipData's (Booth 120) PkgXpert 2.5 helps electronic OEMs and contract manufacturers to streamline the board manufacturing process by creating a specification-driven, standardized package geometry library that can be shared and regenerated whenever specifications change.
· Dynamic Details (Booth 119) will feature Stacked Microvia Technology (SMV), which improves routing density and design flexibility.
· Intercept Technology (Booth 101) will demonstrate and announce the release of Pantheon v5.0, Mozaix v2.1 and INDX v2.1.
· Polar Instruments (Booth 105) will feature the enhanced stackup builder SB200a v2.0, which now interfaces to the industry standard Si800m impedance solver to offer brilliant stackup graphics plus stack, drill and impedance data in a variety of file and print formats. A free reader allows users to easily share this high quality stackup presentation with anyone.
· Sovereign Circuits (Booth 214) will feature the addition of immersion silver finish to their product offerings.
· T-Tech (Booth 201) will feature QC Trace Cam, an integrated inspection system specifically for applications requiring magnified inspection area. Easy to install, QC Trace Cam allows real-time viewing of traces.
· Zuken USA (Booth 202) will feature CADSTAR 7, a PCB Desktop Solution that delivers a powerful price/performance package for PC-based PCB design. Zuken USA also will feature CR-5000, which incorporates the latest technology requirements (embedded components, RF design and design re-use) within a constrained design process methodology.
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