News
BANNOCKBURN, IL – The September 90-day moving average shipments of all types of circuit boards rose 8.5% year-on-year, while bookings fell 0.4%, according to the latest poll of North American PCB fabricators.
A large percentage of the production includes boards built offshore and distributed by North American vendors. According to IPC, 33% of the shipments reported were produced offshore.
The domestic book-to-bill ratio fell 0.05 points to 1.13. The ratio is based on data collected by IPC from rigid and flex producers and is calculated by dividing three months worth of orders by sales. A ratio over 1.0 is considered an indicator of rising demand.
The ratio for rigid PCBs rose 0.07 points to 1.14, while that of flexible circuits dropped 0.42 points to 1.10.
“Rigid PCB sales in October continued a bit below last year, but the increase in bookings suggests that this segment of the industry will have a solid fourth quarter,” said IPC in a statement. “The sudden decrease in October bookings for flex was a surprise, but it is not a cause for alarm. Monthly bookings tend to be very volatile in the flex segment.”
Rigid board shipments, estimated by IPC to make up more than 75% of all domestic PCBs, were down 3.6% in October vs. a year ago. Bookings rose 31.5% during the month.
Flex sales rose 49.1% and bookings dropped 62.7%. Value-added services made up 78% of the shipment value of flex circuits.
Year-to-date, rigid shipments are down 4.6% and bookings are up 1.5%. Flex bookings are up 29.9% and shipments are up 17%. Shipments of all boards are up 1.9% and bookings are up 5.3%.
Sequentially, combined shipments were down 10.2% vs. September, while bookings were down 35.9%. Rigid shipments were down 18.3% and bookings fell 12.8%. Flex shipments fell 14.7% and bookings were down 77.3% vs. September.
Sixty-seven percent of PCB shipments reported was domestically produced. Domestic production accounted for 85% of rigid PCB and 29% of flexible circuit shipments in September, IPC said.
In a statement, IPC cautioned that month-to-month comparisons should be made with caution as they may reflect cyclical effects.
A teardown of Microsoft’s new Xbox 360 Premium video-game console conducted by research firm iSuppli indicates that IBM silicon is a key factor driving the cost and functionality of the product. iSuppli's analysis found the total bill of materials cost for the new Xbox reaches $525, well above the retail price of $399.
The trade group is seeking papers on green electronic product design and manufacturing, SMT and service adaptability, green materials, retrieving and recycling of waste products and other topics.
The conference will be held May 13-14, 2006, in Tianjin, China.
Abstracts of 200 to 400 words should be submitted by Jan. 30, to SMTA administrator JoAnn Stromberg. It is expected that papers will be presented in Mandarin or with translation.
For full details on submitting an abstract: joann@smta.org.; smta.org/education/education.cfm#call.
HP was No. 1 in total worldwide revenue for the three major operating systems of Windows, Linux and Unix individually as well as combined – together, these three operating systems comprise more than 95% of units shipped and 80% of revenue worldwide.
Brundstedt spent the last 21 years with BTU International, most recently as managing director for the Asia Pacific region.
Indium is a supplier of electronics assembly materials, including solder pastes, solder preforms, fluxes, Pb-Free solder alloys, underfill materials, die-attach materials and more.
Green materials include Pb-free solders and solder coatings, and replacements for PBB and PBDE, hexavalent chromium, cadmium and mercury. PBB and PBDE replacements accounted for $3.5 billion in 2003, $4.3 billion in 2004, and $4.7 billion in 2005.
Excluding the May 1, 2005 acquisition of Simclar (North America), revenue for the quarter would have been $14.9 million, up 11.9%, and net income would have been $353,000.
The company took a $820,000 after-tax writeoff of an acquisition in the prior year; excluding that, the net income grew 14%.
For the quarter, electronic systems sales were down 2% percent to $13.7 million. The division posted operating income of $1.9 million, up 18% from a year ago. Customers requested early delivery of product in the second quarter, which reduced third quarter shipments.
For the first nine months of the year, sales totaled $42.3 million, up 21% from the last year while operating income more than doubled, to $6.9 million.
SG Cowen said that inventories at buyers of semiconductors appear low and stable. Inventories at 49 major semiconductor customers fell in both dollar terms and days on a seqential basis, the firm said.
W. Howard Assoc., founded in 1983, is a manufacturers representative focused on RF/microwave, interconnect devices and sensor products.
IMS manufactures quality thick film chip resistors, both standard and custom, for applications ranging from automotive sensors to high frequency microwave and medical equipment.
The report reveals how aperture dimensions must increase to ensure adequate wetting forces and prevent tombstoning as paste-to-pad and component-to-pad offsets occur. Such offsets are unavoidable, implying that manufacturers must re-optimize stencils for Pb-free printing to ensure yield rates comparable to Pb-rich processes. According to the report, this issue is more prevalent with smaller components (0402s and below).
By testing 67 new aperture characteristics, including varying dimensions, aspect ratio, shape and stencil thickness, DEK identified the necessary changes in aperture characteristics. According to the team leader and author of the report, Clive Ashmore, the main concern is to ensure a higher volume of paste to compensate for the lower wetting forces exerted by Pb-free pastes. When placing small chip devices such as passive components, these wetting forces help retain the component during reflow. Slight misalignment between the component, solder deposit and paste leads to imbalance in wetting forces, which increases the risk of tombstoning.
Ashmore, Global Applied Process Engineering Group Manager at DEK Printing Machines, said, “A perfectly centred screen printing process will perform well whether Pb-rich or Pb-free paste is used. But such processes can only be sustained under laboratory conditions, which obviously cannot be provided in a production context. Assemblers must, therefore, take steps to ensure their stencils are optimised for Pb-free printing. Our findings show that continuing to use legacy stencils that meet the Pb-rich design rules will result in significantly higher numbers of defects.”
Understanding Stencil Requirements for a Lead-Free Mass Imaging Process is available at dek.com.
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