POULTNEY — Contract electronics manufacturer Vermont Electro-Mechanical Assembly Services (AVEMAS) will move its manufacturing operations by next year

The firm will make the move with help in part from a $600,000 loan from the Vermont Economic Development Authority. The funds will go toward renovating an old pump-making factory.

The company currently employs 48 workers in Middlebury, VT, and plans to add six to 10 jobs within three years.

Its customer base is 70% industrial, plus some medical and military customers.

DUBAI, UAE -- Touchmate will launch a series of mobile phones, PCs, IT peripherals and consumer electronics products, expanding its portfolio to over 200 consumer electronics products, the company said last week.

The UAE based company plans to make itself a one-stop shop for resellers in the UAE.

Touchmate is owned by Quality Gulf.

LITTLETON, MA -- VJ Electronix has relocated to a new state-of-the-art facility here that is close to double the size of its old plant, in Shirley, MA.

The new factory is two stories and features 30,000 sq. ft. of manufacturing and R&D space, plus 7,000 sq. ft. of office space.

The address of the new site is 234 Taylor St., Littleton, MA 01460; 978-486-4777.

VJ's corporate address remains at 89 Carlough Rd. in Bohemia, NY. Invoices and payments should continue to be sent to this address.

In a statement, general manager Don Naugler said, “VJ Electronix’s relocation is a strategic move designed to better serve our customers and to more fully develop our products and technologies. The expanded facility allows us to offer a wider range of cost-effective and leading-edge solutions.”

VJ designs and builds x-ray inspection technology and rework systems.

SCHAUMBURG, IL -- Motorola has signed a multiyear deal to use JTAG boundary scan test systems from Asset InterTech.

Under the deal, announced by Asset, the company's ScanWorks test system will be implemented in Motorola sites worldwide.

Steve Harrison, a test engineer in Motorola's Networks Division, said, "We felt it would be advantageous over the long term if we were to standardize on the ScanWorks platform at this time."

Rome, NY – The ESD Association’s annual symposium focused on electrical overstress (EOS) and electrostatic discharge (ESD) will be held in Tucson, AZ, on Sept. 10-15.
 
The EOS/ESD Symposium is a week of tutorials, technical sessions, workshops and exhibits. For individuals interested in professional certification and general education, over 20 tutorials cover ESD basics for program manager, ESD on-chip protection in advanced and RF technologies, air ionization, EOS/ESD failure models and mechanisms, in-plant ESD survey and evaluation measurements, CDM design and characterization, and more. Also offered is the two-day S20.20 seminar on developing and implementing and ESD control program.
 
This year’s technical sessions offer over 50 presentations from international authors. Papers address issues such as on-chip RF, on-chip physics/modeling, system level ESD, factory and materials, and on-chip CMOS.
 
This year’s symposium offers two extra workshops which will begin on Tuesday evening followed by the normal set of workshops on Wednesday afternoon. Some workshop topics include: ESD control and design for sensitive devices; CDM at the nanoscale frontier; ESD auditing; and layout for ESD and latch-up robustness.
 
Authors’ Corners provide access to technical paper authors for discussion.
 
A featured plenary speaker Win Maung, senior member of technical staff at Texas Instruments will present “Consumer Connectivity Solutions” on September 12.
 
Many of the tutorials earn credit for one of the professional certification programs sponsored by the ESD Association: ESD Certified Professional-Device/Design and ESD Certified Professional-Program Manager. The ESD Certified Professional-Program Manager exam will be held in Anaheim and is open to individuals who meet the requirements set out by the ESD Association, including prior registration with association headquarters. The association has also extended an offer to certified NARTE engineers who wish to earn Program Manager certification (for details visit www.esda.org/certification.html).
 
Exhibits are open to the public and do not require symposium registration.
 
Other events include the Welcome Reception, Awards Breakfast, Professional and Technical Women’s Reception, Attendee Lunch, and the ESD Association Annual Meeting and Luncheon.
 
For symposium information visit esda.org/symposia.html.

Jersey City, NJ – Cookson Electronics Assembly Materials’ ALPHA Vaculoy SACX lead-free wave solder alloy has been approved for use by LG Electronics DS Division (CD-ROM).
 
Gerry Campbell, a Cookson global product manager, noted that “As leading OEM companies such as LG continue to drive the reduction in the total cost of their lead-free assemblies, we see a continuation of the trend of customers moving away from SAC305 to SACX.”

ANGLETON, TX – Benchmark Electronics, a top EMS firm, expects revenues and earnings per share to exceed the high end of guidance for its fiscal second quarter. The company in April guided for quarterly revenue of $630 million to $660 million.

The company is finalizing its financial closing for the second quarter ended June 30. Results for the second quarter will be announced July 20.

SAN FRANCISCO – Makers of semiconductor production equipment and materials can look forward to the market for their wares growing 19% sequentially this year and 10% next year to reach $40 billion, the highest level since 2000.

The forecast was disclosed this week at the SemiCon West trade show by Strategic Marketing Associates. According to SMA president George Burns, the double-digit growth for this year and next is being fueled by rising levels of new wafer fab construction that began in 2004 and is expected to crest in 2007. “We see the industry bringing 35 new fabs online by end of 2007 with a total equivalent capacity, when fully ramped, of more than 2 million 200mm diameter wafers per month. Representing more than 15 acres of silicon, this monthly output is roughly equal to 18% of industry's theoretical full capacity today.”

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LONDON -- The National Physical Laboratory has launched a six-month study into the use of XRF techniques.

NPL said in a press release that 10 companies have already signed on to participate in the project, which will assess XRF as a means for determining the presence and amount of various hazardous substances.

The protocol would include assessing a range of sample configurations incorporating known issues with RoHS-prohibited contaminants. Samples would be chemically analyzed prior to round-robin testing. After testing, the actual samples used will be chemically analyzed again to eliminate batch variance problems. The final report would include a comparison of XRF techniques and test sites.

The project is scheduled to launch this month July and last six months. The work will be presented to the NPL Soldering Science & Technology Club and disseminated in an NPL Report.

For more information contact Dr. Chris Hunt at chris.hunt@npl.co.uk .

SAN FRANCISCO – A group of 34 U.S. attorneys general on Friday filed suit in California District Court against seven computer memory chip manufacturers alleging the firms violated antitrust laws, and harmed consumers and governmental agencies, by conspiring to fix prices they charged for widely used DRAM chips.

The defendants include Infineon Technologies, Hynix Semiconductor, Micron Technology, Mosel Vitelic, Nanya Technology, Elpida Memory and NEC Electronics America. Also named as defendants were certain subsidiaries that sold and distributed DRAM chips in the U.S. 

Infineon, Hynix, Micron, along with Samsung, control roughly 70% of the U.S. market.

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SAN JOSE – A Lockheed Martin engineer has devised a matrix for gold content and is making the calculator available at no cost. The nonproprietary Excel spreadsheet allows users to plug in solder and gold thickness, plus the pad and component attach geometry, and then calculates the percent-gold, making it simple to determine whether the fillet might encounter gold-embrittlement problems.

Users could also create their own gold thresholds and color schemes.

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Melville, NY -- The North American Components (NAC) unit of Arrow Electronics and China Great Wall Computer Group  have signed a partnership agreement involving manufacturing, logistics and supply of various electronic components.
 
According to the press release, Arrow's OEM clients can have their products assembled at Great Wall Group's facility in Shenzhen, bringing the finished products closer to the Asian market.
 
One of the goals of the partnership is to create a manufacturing facility in China that matches production facilities in North America. "Arrow can now ensure that customers who want to manufacturer their products overseas will have their established manufacturing practices replicated exactly, which eliminates the need to conduct inspections at multiple manufacturing sites," said Steve Ramsland, VP and general manager of Arrow OEM computing solutions, in a statement. "Our global customers now have a cost-effective way to penetrate the Asian market while maintaining the same quality standards they are accustomed to in North America."