The Christopher Group (Santa Ana, CA) has announced the addition of William J. Boyle to their technical staff. Boyle, a graduate of The Catholic University of America in electrical engineering, was most recently employed as an applications engineer specializing in automatic optical inspection products at Teradyne. His responsibilities will include applications, engineering, sales and support of the Christopher Groups' inspection technology product line.
The Christopher Group provides sales, service and support of the Dainippon Screen (bare board) and NSpec (assembly) automatic optical inspection systems; HC 610 hole inspection system, and SmartOptics solder paste inspection and measurement system.
Copyright 2004, UP Media Group. All rights reserved.
Fabrinet (Bankok, Thailand), an engineering and electromechanical manufacturing services company, announced that they have executed on a new credit facility from the Bank of Nova Scotia. The funds will be used to finance the purchase of new equipment to increase the company's capacity to match current revenue backlog for components and subsystems for the fiberoptics, telecommunications, medical and automotive industries. The terms of the loan have not been disclosed.
Fabrinet has received previous funding from the Bank of Nova Scotia. Growth in operations with existing customers and an increase in new customer orders necessitated an expansion of current funding.
"Expanding our international banking relationship with the Bank of Nova Scotia will enable Fabrinet to continue to support our growing global customer base," said Fabrinet Sr. vice president, strategy & corporate affairs, Mark Schwartz. "We are especially pleased to further our existing relationship with one of the premier lending institutions in the world, with regional offices in many of the same cities and time zones as our factories and customer base."
Copyright 2004, UP Media Group. All rights reserved.
Micro Care Corp. (New Britain, CT) has announced two new technologies for cleaning fiber optic connectors. The first innovation is a new Fiber Optic Connector Solvent in a pump-spray canister. The second is a family of swabs specifically designed for cleaning inside tiny fiber optic connectors.
The communications industry has long been bedeviled by the difficulty of cleaning fiber optic connectors. Exacerbating this problem is the continuing trend towards thinner, higher-capacity fiber optic cables and connectors. The labor cost inherent in installing thousands of perfectly clean male and female connectors is becoming a major factor in every large fiber optic installation. Traditional alcohol wipes have failed to deliver the consistent cleaning required.
The cleaning solvent is a nonflammable, environmentally safe, residue-free solvent formulated to clean fiber connector end-faces. The new product, based on a patented azeotrope of Vertrel specialty solvents from DuPont, is SNAP-approved, plastic-safe and double-filtered to 0.2 microns during packaging. It dissolves light oils, salts, grime and uncured epoxies, and—since it also is mildly hygroscopic—it will absorb small amounts of moisture while cleaning. The cleaner can remove the messy but vital silicone pastes used inside the fiber optic cables.
The solvent is packaged in a unique nonaerosol pump spray which is even permitted on board commercial aircraft. Since the container is hermetically sealed, cross-contamination cannot occur, ensuring that clean, pure cleaning fluid is used on every cleaning job. The compact size fits easy in the hand, and makes it easy to fit in tool kits, instrument cases and inspection packages.
Micro Care also has developed a proprietary cleaning swab for fiber optic connectors. The new cleaning sticks are made of a synthetic, extruded polyester. The cleaning sticks come in three sizes, each engineered to fit the most popular sizes of connectors, including the troublesome 0.0125 connectors favored on military projects, and can clean both male and female shaped connectors.
No fibers, binders, adhesives or outgassing contaminates the connector. Since recleaning is rarely required, the cleaning sticks offer time-savings in a complex optical installation.
Manufactured by Micro Care, the products are marketed exclusively by AFL Telecommunications under the Noyes brand.
Copyright 2004, UP Media Group. All rights reserved.
The monthly order index compiled by the Electronic Components, Assemblies and Materials Association (ECA, Arlington, VA) moved upward in January, confirming industry optimism during the last four months.
"The index has been moving up steadily," said Bob Willis, ECA president. "It's not the meteoric boom of the late 1990s, but we might never see that again. This is nice, manageable growth that looks like it will be sustained throughout the year."
Willis says recent news substantiates the upward trend that has been seen in the ECA order index during the last four months. For instance, ECA members, such as Vishay Intertechnology, Littelfuse and KEMET, have reported substantial revenue increases in Q4 2003 compared to Q4 2002. Also, Reuters reports that major electronics manufacturing services (EMS) companies are seeing stronger demand in 2004, helped by an improving economy and a trend to outsource personal computers, servers, cell phones, handheld computers and other electronics gear.
The ECA represents manufacturers and producers of passive and active electronic components, component arrays and assemblies, and materials and support services. It is a sector of the Electronic Industries Alliance, comprising more than 2,100 members that reportedly represent 80% of the U.S. electronics industry.
Copyright 2004, UP Media Group. All rights reserved.
AEGIS Industrial Software Corp. (Horsham, PA) and Cogiscan Inc. (Bromont, Quebec, Canada) have announced that they will demonstrate integration between their products as the Cogiscan material tracking and line control technology is integrated to Aegis' real-time machine monitoring and data acquisition systems.
The combined solution offers control of business processes from the preparation of design and bill of matrials data, to line setup validation, execution and the gathering and analysis of process data. It then yields traceability—effectively closing the informational loop. The technical integration creates the first solution offering the Aegis NPI and MES solutions with the materials and process control solutions offered from Cogiscan.
"When Aegis and Cogiscan solutions combine to create closed loop manufacturing control, it yields more than just an extended range of functions," said Jason Spera, chief executive officer of Aegis, "It delivers new depth of information management through the entire process from end-to-end. It is a platform-independent solution free of proprietary and machine-specific elements to make deployment and scalability simple."
Copyright 2004, UP Media Group. All rights reserved.
Universal Instruments Corp. (Binghamton, NY) and CyberOptics Corp. (Minneapolis, MN) have signed an agreement to integrate the new Embedded Process Verification (EPV) inspection technology from CyberOptics into Universal's electronic component placement systems.
Universal will offer the EPV sensor system as a feature on its recently released platform placement machines that incorporate its new placement head. Introduction of the sensor is currently planned for the second half of 2004.
Ian McEvoy, president of Universal, said, "To achieve the challenging quality goal of less than 10 defects per million for surface-mount circuit board assembly, you have to verify each component placement. The CyberOptics' EPV is the first sensing system to enable this within the placement machine."
Steven Case, CyberOptics' chairman and founder said, "Unlike traditional inspection systems that are positioned after the placement machine in an electronics assembly line, EPV puts the inspection process right at the point of action, inside the pick-and-place machine. Ultimately, defects detected by the EPV sensor may be corrected while the circuit board is still within the placement machine."
Universal Instruments is an electronics productivity specialist, providing circuit, semiconductor and back-end assembly technologies and equipment, integrated system solutions and process expertise to manufacturers in every sector of the electronics industry.
CyberOptics Corp., specializing in optical technology, designs and manufactures a growing range of yield and through-put enhancement tools for the surface-mount electronic assembly equipment and semiconductor fabrication equipment markets.
Copyright 2004, UP Media Group. All rights reserved.
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