Circuits Assembly Online Magazine - Features

MINNEAPOLIS – EMS firm HEI Inc. returned to a profit in its third quarter as net sales rose 14.6%.

For the period ended May 31, the company reported net sales of $10.2 million and net income of $179,000. A year ago, HEI had a net loss of $1.8 million.

SMYRNA, GA – UP Media Group, parent company of Circuits Assembly and Printed Circuit Design & Fab, announced today that “Unlocking the Myths of Heating Technology: A Practical Tutorial,” a one-hour free Webinar, will be held July 31 at 11 a.m. PDT, 2 p.m. EDT and 6 p.m. GMT.

MILTON, NY – Sono-Tek Corp. (sono-tek.com) named to its representatives network SRS and Associates (stonesrs.com) for TN, MS, AL and GA; Murray A. Percival Co. (murraypercival.com) for MI, IN, OH and KY; Technical Marketing Co. (technicalmarketingcompany.com) for MT, WY, UT and CO; Restronics (restronics.com/florida.html) for FL; and Cope Assembly Products for VA, WV, NC and SC. Bennett Bruntil will head the newly restructured organization.

The reps will handle Sono-Tek's solder recovery line of products. There are no announced changes to the company's spray fluxing products reps.

MIAMI – Avnet has completed its purchase of Source Electronics Corp., a provider of outsourced custom IC programming services.

Avnet acquired the company from H.I.G. Capital, a private equity firm.

Source has plants in Brazil, China, Mexico, Singapore and the US, where it provides programming services to OEMs and EMS companies.

HERNDON, VA – A host of major OEM and EMS companies, under the auspices of iNEMI, has outlined a set of recommendations for managing Pb-free alloy alternatives.

The consortium members recommend the following to help manage the use of multiple solder alloys:

Drive convergence of Pb-free alloys.
Develop an industry-standard assessment methodology.
Establish performance guidelines.
Update standards.
Identify and differentiate alloys.

iNEMI members supporting these recommendations include Agilent Technologies, Celestica, Cisco, Delphi Electronics & Safety, Flextronics International, Hewlett-Packard, Intel Corporation, Jabil Circuit, Motorola, Plexus Corp., Sanmina-SCI, Sun Microsystems and Texas Instruments.

INEMI’s recommendations are available at
http://thor.inemi.org/webdownload/projects/ba/Pb-Free_Alloys/Alloy_recs.pdf.