Circuits Assembly Online Magazine - Features

According to IPC (Northbrook, IL), the North American IMS/PCB Industry book-to-bill ratio for January remained positive at 1.08.

The ratio is calculated by averaging the index numbers for orders booked over the past three months and dividing by the average index numbers for sales billed during the same period. A ratio of more than 1.00 suggests that current demand is ahead of supply, which indicates probable near-term growth.

Shipments increased 28.4% from January 2003 and orders booked increased 19.8% year-on-year. The shipment index was 118.1, down 6.5% from December 2003 and the IMS/PCB booking index was 125.2, down 8.7% sequentially.

The index shows how current PCB shipments and bookings relate to an index point. In this case, 1992 was chosen as the index point because it was a stable growth year for U.S. PCB manufacturers. A shipment index number of 117.0, for example, indicates that shipments are 17% higher than average shipments for the same time period in 1992.

Percentages based on the index numbers reflect changes in the size of the industry. Data reported by current participants in IPC's monthly survey, however, tell a different story. These participating companies report that their shipments increased 25.1 percent in January 2004 over January 2003, and that their orders booked increased 18.2 percent in January, year over year.

Together, these figures show a North American PCB industry that has contracted, but the companies that remain in the industry are doing better than last year.

The information in IPC's monthly industry statistics is based on data provided by PCB manufacturers that participate in IPC's monthly IMS Statistical Program. The companies reportedly represent 60% of the U.S. IMS industry.

www.ipc.org

UP Media Group Inc. (Atlanta, GA) has announced the details for two technology presentations that will take place at the 13th annual PCB Design Conference West (PCB West) on March 15-19 at the San Jose Convention Center in San Jose, CA.

To kick-off this year's conference, the PCB Technology Forum and Welcome Luncheon will take place on Monday, March 15, from 12-1:30 p.m. Joseph Fjelstad, co-founder of Silicon Valley startup SiliconPipe and author of An Engineer's Guide to Flexible Circuits, will make a technical presentation on "The Benefits of Three-Dimensional Partitioning of Printed Circuit Signal Routing."

According to Fjelstad, it is often assumed that copper is just too slow for electronics applications requiring high speeds; however, the truth is that copper can transmit signals at near the speed of light if properly configured. Fjelstad's presentation will focus on an innovative process being developed at SiliconPipe. This creative destruction involves splitting an integrated circuit (IC) package I/O by launching high-speed signals through the bottom of the package, while routing lower speed power and ground signals through the bottom of the package. Signal strength and integrity should be improved, and with the high-speed I/O more accessible, the IC can be tested with full parametrics at full speed.

Conference attendees taking one of six Professional Development courses taught on Monday, March 15, may attend the PCB Technology Forum and Welcome Luncheon for free. All others who wish to attend the event may do so for a fee of $25.

A second technology presentation will be held on Thursday, March 18, from 11: 15 a.m. to 12:15 p.m., and attendance is free to all registered conference and expo-only attendees. Eric Hills, the applications engineering manager at Endicott Interconnect Technologies, will make a technical presentation on "Meeting the PCB Needs for High-Speed Data Transmission."

According to Hills, achieving data rates of up to 10 Gb/s requires close attention to transmission line geometries, dielectric properties and via utilization, as well as a physical design awareness that is not usually required. His presentation will address the methods for ensuring that the interconnections are suitable for high speeds, and how to accomplish this with traditional (i.e., cost-effective) techniques that provide maximum wiring efficiency. Special focus will be placed on the advantages that certain transmission line and via structures provide for such high-speed connections.

Before founding SiliconPipe, Fjelstad was with Tessera, where he was the company's first fellow. He is the author, co-author or editor of several books and numerous articles on electronic manufacturing. Fjelstad is also a prodigious inventor, with more than 150 U.S. patents issued or pending.

Formerly the product manager for PCBs at EIT, Hills has held positions at IBM as applications engineering manager for ceramic packaging and as new products program manager for PCBs and electronic assemblies. He has a B.S. in chemical engineering from Penn State.

UPMG is a privately held company that specializes in magazine publishing and trade show and conference production. UPMG currently publishes two high-tech magazines: Printed Circuit Design & Manufacture (www.pcdandm.com) and Circuits Assembly (www.circuitsassembly.com). In addition, UPMG produces two annual conferences and trade shows for the design and manufacture industry—PCB Design Conference West (www.pcbwest.com) in the Silicon Valley area, and PCB Design Conference East (www.pcbeast.com) in the Boston, MA, area. UPMG also hosts the PCB Design Conference Road Series (www.pcbshows.com) of courses in cities throughout the U.S.

www.pcbwest.com

FEINFOCUS (Stamford, CT), a manufacturer of x-ray inspection systems and tubes, and GOEPEL electronic (Jena, Germany), a vendor of electronic and optical test and inspection systems, have combined their 30 years of test and inspection experience with a recent technology partnership.

The new cooperation and development project has resulted in the launch of the OptiCon X-Line inspection system, which was unveiled at Productronica 2003. The new system combines automated optical inspection (AOI) and x-ray inspection technology for the automated analysis of hidden solder joints.

The system, based on the OptiCon series from GOEPEL, provides automatic recognition of shorts and solder bridges, as well as missing solder balls on ball grid array (BGA) and microBGA devices. FEINFOCUS contributed to the development of the system with x-ray tube technology that was implemented according to GOEPEL's specifications. The companies will publish joint technical papers and application findings through the use of the combined technologies.

www.feinfocus.com

www.goepel.com

Three-Five Systems Inc. (TFS, Tempe, AZ), has hired key employees and acquired the customer base of Integrex Inc. (Bothell, WA), a privately-held electronics manufacturing services (EMS) company. TFS will immediately begin working with customers to transfer existing programs from Bothell to the Redmond facility; the process is expected to take approximately six weeks.

The agreement is the second EMS transaction by TFS in the Northwest in the past 15 months. TFS acquired the EMS company ETMA (Redmond, WA) in December 2002 and maintains operations in the Redmond location.

Integrex was founded in 1999 as a full-service EMS company providing turnkey manufacturing services, including design, new product introduction (NPI), printed circuit board assembly (PCBA), system integration, test and after-market support. Primary investors included Benaroya Capital, Fluke Venture Partners and Sunrise Capital. Representatives for the investor group indicated that several companies competed to obtain the Integrex business and TFS was selected because of its existing presence within the Northwest regional customer community, combined with strong offshore manufacturing capability and a solid balance sheet.

Jack Saltich, chief executive officer of TFS, said, "Integrex has penetrated certain market segments, including military applications, that represent target growth areas for TFS. We believe we can expand upon this business by leveraging our manufacturing quality in Redmond with our high volume efficiencies at our Asian manufacturing locations and thereby continue our initiative to become a dominant EMS provider in the Northwest."

TFS is buying the raw material inventory of Integrex as needed to begin manufacturing products for its new customers and is providing Integrex with an up-front, one-time payment to offset customer transfer costs. TFS is not acquiring Integrex's manufacturing facility in Bothell, and it is not expected that the transaction will generate a goodwill asset for TFS.

www.tfsc.com

The Surface-Mount Technology Association (SMTA, Minneapolis, MN) has announced the formation of the SMTA International (SMTAI) technical committee for 2004. The SMTA will again co-locate its SMTAI conference on Sept. 26-30 with Assembly Tech Expo (ATExpo) in Chicago, IL, at the Donald Stephens Convention Center.

The 2004 team of industry professionals includes Gerry Adams; Donald Banks; Dr. Srinivas Chada; Dr. John Evans; Gail Flower; Rich Freiberger; Dr. Reza Ghaffarian; Dr. Ken Gilleo; Steve Greathouse; Lisa Hamburg-Bastin; Jeff Kennedy; Andrew Mawer; Dr. Julian Partridge; Dr. Viswanadham Puligandla; Greg Reed; and Dr. Paul Vianco.

They will be led by veteran conference chair, RadiSys process engineering manager Rob Rowland. Rowland is the primary author of Applied Surface Mount Assembly, and he has conducted classes for the SMTA Academy and the SMTA annual conferences at SMI and SMTAI.

Tracks for this year's conference include Assembly, Business Issues, Components, Emerging Technologies, PCB Technology and Process Control. New topics for 2004 include Design for Success, Battery Interaction, Lean Manufacturing, Medical Electronics, Setup Reduction, Process Modeling and Supplier Engineering.

www.smta.org/smtai/

IPC (Northbrook, IL) has announced the release of IPC-2581, Generic Requirements Printed Board Assembly Products Manufacturing Description Data and Transfer Methodology, and recognizes Valor Computerized Systems Ltd.'s (Yvane, Israel) commitment to this effort.

The IPC-2581 standard is the result of three years of industry effort, initially started by the National Electronic Manufacturing Initiative (NEMI) and then followed by IPC's standardization effort. The standard is in XML schema and was built on Valor's ODB++ format, with added data concepts from IPC's GenCAM standard (IPC-2511B). The committee effort, chaired by Dana Korf, Sanmina-SCI Corp., put the final touches on the IPC-2581 in February.

"By donating their ODB++ format to the IPC committee working on IPC-2581 and by providing volunteer committee support from their development group in Israel, Valor made tremendous contributions to the development of this new standard," said David Bergman, IPC's vice president of standards and technology. "The time and travel commitment to the two-year standard was significant on Valor's behalf, and IPC would like to recognize Valor's support of the industry."

Bergman added, "With the release of the new standard comes the need for implementation efforts. The goal has always been to develop more intelligent data transfer, and now verification vehicles need to be developed, as well as a large numbers of translators. With Valor's support, IPC has completed the format. Next, it's critical that the companies that set the direction for this effort to push for adoption and now commit themselves to use the new format."

IPC plans to include the development of golden boards of product in the IPC-2581 standard format. These examples will facilitate the industry's implementation of the new format. The National Institute of Science and Technology will then check the quality of the golden boards prior to release.

For more information, contact DavidBergman@ipc.org.

www.ipc.org

www.valor.com