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News

WOODRIDGE, IL – Morey Corp. and GE’s Asset Intelligence division have signed a multi-year deal under which Morey will supply development engineering, manufacturing and logistics services in support of AI’s telematics products. No other terms were announced.

Morey will provide product roadmap support and will help prioritize and implement product enhancements and support development of new products. The EMS provider will supply low-to-medium volumes of products to AI, including prototyping services as required.

ATLANTA – UP Media Group has announced this year’s Free Tuesday lineup at PCB Design Conference West 2007.

PCB West takes placed March 25-30 at the Santa Clara (CA) Convention Center. Free Tuesday takes place March 27 between 8 a.m. and 11 p.m.

The day includes a keynote address by Henry Potts, vice president and general manager of Mentor Graphics’ Systems Design Division.

Also offered: 13 free technical sessions and the products and services exhibition. That night, there is an Opening Night Networking Extravaganza (happy hour on the show floor at 6 p.m., Casino Night and the Dawg House Lounge from 8 – 11).

For session times, speakers and exhibitor information, visit www.pcbwest.com.

THIEF RIVER FALLS, MN – Digi-Key Corp. will distribute Souriau’s circular and rectangular connectors, tools, accessories and contacts, the companies announced.

Separately, Digi-Key said it will distribute CSR products in North America, including BlueCore3 (Bluetooth v1.2 compliant), BlueCore4 (Bluetooth v2.0 and EDR compliant), Bluetooth development kits, software and accessories.

Finally, Digi-Key will distribute products for Amphenol Commercial worldwide, including D-sub, mini SAS, SFP, Infiniband, USB and RJ45 connectors.

No other terms were disclosed.

LOS ANGELES -- Last week’s Apex trade show was among the best I can remember for new equipment, materials and software. So much so, I would add, there is far too much to talk about here.

But I’ll take a shot.

IRVINE, CA – Henkel will expand its existing plant in Pune, India, adding a solder paste blending facility for its Multicore line of solder pastes.

PLANO, TX -- Rapid Tooling has received ISO 9001:2000 certification, the company announced today.

The certification recognizes the company's quality management system conforms to ISO standard requirements.
The certificate was issued by Quality Management Systems.

Rapid Tooling provides engineering services and hard tooling for electronics assembly and semiconductor packaging.

LOS ANGELES – Cimnet Systems Inc. and Direct Logix are now offering a bundled version of the companies’ respective engineering planning and management software.

The companies announced the move at a press conference during the IPC Apex show this week.

The combined solution is said to completely automate front-end operations, from quoting to pre-production engineering and design.

The bundled front-end automation tool includes Cimnet’s i-Quote Web-enabled PCB quotation system, and Direct Logix’s CAM Automation, Design Rule Check Analysis and Engineering Flow Control tools.

“This is a very powerful solution backed by two vendors that are directly focused on the unique needs and business requirements of leading PCB manufacturers around the world,” said Cimnet general manager Mehul Davé.

Cimnet is supplier of ERP software and services for the PCB industry. Direct Logix provides engineering procedure management software.

MINNEAPOLIS -- Dr. Denis Barbini took home top honors at the SMTA Pan Pacific Microelectronics Symposium last month. The paper, "Lead Free Wave Soldering: Process Optimization for Simple to Highly Complex Boards," won Best of Conference, as rated by attendees. The paper covers how critical wave soldering parameters correlate and provide information necessary to make educated decisions in selecting materials.

Barbini is advanced technology manager at Vitronics-Soltec, and a member of the SMTA board.

LOS ANGELES – Valor Computerized Systems announced the implementation of vPlan, its new process engineering software, at EMS provider Mack Technologies.

Mack beta’d vPlan, and the results led to a corporate-wide order once the product was released, Valor said.

In a press release, Steve Barbera, VP of technical operations at Mack, said, “vPlan’s ability to autogenerate machine data on the fly for multiple machine types saves us a significant amount of debug time on the production floor, improves our SMT line efficiency, and makes it extremely easy to adopt new SMT machines and transfer jobs between lines and even sites. It allows us to focus on our business-critical functional workflow rather than deal with low-level scripting at the CAM level.”

LOS ANGELES -- Texmac Inc. today announced complete testing and programming services using Takaya APT-series flying-probe systems.

The new services are available to users of Takaya systems and to any electronics manufacturer that needs fixtureless test.

Services offered include simple program preparation and CAD conversion, full program development and debug, and complete board testing.

Texmac is the exclusive authorized distributor of Takaya flying probers in North America.

LOS ANGELES – iNEMI today announced its 2007 iNEMI Roadmap will be available to industry next month. The latest edition of the biennial document charts electronics manufacturing’s technology and infrastructure needs through 2017. It also discusses market convergence, miniaturization, harmonization of environmental requirements, migration of manufacturing and R&D, reliability, printed electronics and more.

LOS ANGELES -- Traffic was up somewhat on the second day of the IPC Apex show, to the relief of exhibitors who were beginning to show some frustration with the downtown Los Angeles site.

Purchasers take note: Cookson’s Steve Corbett and Henkel’s Pat Trippel separately stressed that the precious metals markets are running wild. “The tin market situation is scary,” noted Corbett, noting the shutdowns in Indonesia and market uncertainty in Bolivia – two primary suppliers.