ELKHART, IN -- CTS Corp., a provider of electronics manufacturing services, will open manufacturing operations in Matamoros, Mexico, the company's fourth EMS factory in North America.

Production is expected to start in the middle of this year and will focus on electromechanical and system integration.

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WILSONVILLE, OR – Mentor Graphics Corporation has released XtremeAR, the company’s second product to use its patented Xtreme design technology. The product is said to enable the simultaneous execution of auto-routing on up to 15 processors, cutting routing times on large boards from days to hours. The reported productivity improvement and design cycle time reduction improves time-to-market for large designs, and also improves quality and system performance by enabling designers to perform several design trials and choose the best results.

XtremeAR is the next application of the patented Xtreme design technology and is targeted at users who are able to autoroute their large boards. The product uses the processors from up to 15 computers on a LAN or WAN network working simultaneously on the same PCB database. This is said to cut routing times by up to ten times and utilize second and third shift computer resources that would ordinarily be idle.
 
"Our unique and patented Xtreme design technology can now help companies who use auto-routing on large, mostly digital boards," said Henry Potts, vice president and general manager of the Systems Design Division. "We worked closely with several of our customers to develop this application and it is meeting their most optimistic cycle time and productivity expectations."

Methuen, MA –  Lightspeed Manufacturing has added a third SMT manufacturing line to its EMS manufacturing capabilities, responding to increased volume and a flood of new orders, according to Rich Breault, president.
 
“Our sales have doubled over 2005, and we needed to add capacity to handle it,” said Breault. “Due to the wide-ranging nature of these orders, we also had to build in the ability to handle a high product mix.”
 
The new line includes an Assembleon flexible pick-and-place system with high-volume placement capability, as do the company’s other lines. “This means that we have plenty of flexibility for offline setup, and can run multiple jobs at once, or switch to another line if there is a hitch so that we don’t have to interrupt production,” Breault added. “Having three identical, top-level machines gives us speed and tremendous flexibility to handle virtually any circuit assembly job.”
 
Lightspeed recently began shipping Pb-free assemblies, as the facility switches over to RoHS-compliant manufacturing.

HUDSON, NH – CeTaQ America has launched a mobile version of its metrology service, bringing machine capability analysis testing and verification services to a manufacturer’s facility.

This portability, says general manager Michael Sivigny, is not only fast and convenient, but is necessary for accuracy, and brings immediate solutions to the customer whose process may be out of control, or who may be experiencing problems due to a production machine being out of calibration.

“Testing directly at the machine also ensures optimum accuracy of the results,” he said. “There is nothing to transport, no risk of test samples moving or repositioning. We bring all of the key technology of our CmController system right to the contract manufacturer’s or OEM’s facility, and perform a complete evaluation and analysis right there on their production floor using our mobile metrology unit. This has tremendous value to the customer, because it provides an immediate solution – and immediate answers.”

He did not disclose the pricing schedule for the service.

The testing firm's novel hardware and software quality tools that analyze machine capability, checking the basic settings and functions of the equipment to identify, control, and correct failures, so that production machines can once again assemble product within the original quality specifications established by the manufacturer.