News
The Kester lab will use a SlimKIC 2000 and Navigator tools for defining process windows and selecting ovens or wave solder recipes.
"We are excited about this opportunity to work so closely with Kester Europe. Kester's solutions are in line with KIC's high standard of quality, and we feel that the SlimKIC 2000 and Navigator tools will help Kester elevate their solutions and customer service to the next level," said Bjorn Dahle, President of KIC.
BOSTON, Nov. 4 -- Airlift capacity throughout the Asia Pacific has been relatively static but rising fuel prices and delays in major ports are trouble spots, a major freight forwarder said this week.
In its monthly report on airlift conditions, Trans Global Logistics says escalating fuel surcharges, strong demand for space fueled by delays at Long Beach and higher export volume from Asia
Peak season conditions exist in most markets with the greatest demand in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Korea, Trans Global says. Charter space is limited and the cost of a charter is more than $400,000, the firm says.
In Shanghai, new capacity is helping to handle the significant growth of export volume. But Hong Kong is struggling to meet demand as lift capacity is down about one-third.
"As you make plans to move your shipments during
the next few weeks, anticipate longer transit times and higher costs
for space and fuel. If you have large-sized or "hot" shipments, try to
book them as early as possible," Trans Global says.
While the main drivers remain mobile phones, display interconnects, digital cameras and PDAs, new applications are emerging in the medical, aerospace and military markets, BPA predicts that these markets will remain relatively small.
The demand for hard disk drives and optical media drives is also increasing for portable consumer goods, A/V and computers . However, says BPA, the net effect for volumes will be negligible as the smaller size of flex boards used will offset higher demand. Furthermore, the costs of flex-rigid PCBs outweigh the benefits in most portable consumer applications.
Discrete flexible circuits and connectors will continue to be used in most mobile phones for the next thrree to five years. Many Asian producers are developing and sampling innovative lower-cost technologies that show promise, BPA says.
Asia (excluding Japan) produces the largest volumes of FPC, having overtaken Japan last year. The fastest-growing country in Asia is China, who has increased its share of Asian production from 8% in 2000 to 17% in 2003. China is expected to account for 29% in 2008.
Sher has 20 years of sales and marketing management at companies like Applied Materials, where he was senior director of marketing, and Synexis, where he was as well as a chief marketing officer. He has an MBA from Adelphi University and a bachelor's of science from New York State University.
He will report to Ken Bliss, president and CEO.
Bliss makes carts for SMT manufacturing.
San Diego, Nov. 5 -- FocalSpot Inc., a provider of BGA/SMT inspection and rework, named Jeff Herberg global customer support manager and Glenn Olaes x-ray product line manger.
Herberg has 20 years of experience in : field service, applications engineering, technical training and sales support with GenRad/Nicolet Imaging Systems and Teradyne.
Olaes has eight years experience in : applications, customer support and regional sales management with Nicolet Imaging Systems/SRT, GenRad, Teradyne and VJ Electronix.
SIA expects that 2004 year-on-year growth rate will be 28.5%. More than 50% of the semiconductors sold in 2004 will go into products purchased by consumers, a ratio that will grow as consumers embrace portable digital media, SIA said.
Lower demand for memory devices and passives in 2005 will offset modest improvements in microprocessors, logic and DSPs.
The event, one of the world's largest for electronics manufacturing and components, will be held Nov. 9-12, in Munich.
Eazix Inc., the design service and original design manufacturing arm of IMI, will be represented by its distributor, MEV Elektronik Services Gmbh.
In a press statement, IMI president and chief executive Arthur R. Tan said, "Electronica offers a great opportunity to showcase our complete, cost competitive, and high value electronics manufacturing solutions and introduce ourselves as a reliable partner of European OEMs."
IMI, an ISO 9001, ISO 14001, and QS 9000 company, has over 1 million sq. ft. of manufacturing space and 12,000 employees. For a Circuits Assembly interview with Tan, click here: http://circuitsassembly.com/cms/images/stories/pdf/0410/0410finepitch.pdf.
Word from Taiwan is that flip-chip substrate capacity might be maxed during the first half, due to heavy demand for for graphics chips and chipsets. Rumors of price hikes of up to 10% abound.
Bough Lin, chairman of Siliconware Precision Industries Ltd., reportedly told DigiTimes that demand for flip-chip substrates will be over 10 million units per month, 70 to 80% of which could be consumed by ATI Technologies and Nvidia combined. The two firms combined demand was five to six million units per month this year, DigiTimes said. And VIA Technologies and Silicon Integrated Systems will need 300,000 to 400,000 units per month, Lin reportedly said.
Phoenix Precision Technology, Taiwan's largest flip-chip substrate supplier, will double its capacity to five million units per month by the end of February, Lin told DigiTimes.
Griffin, GA - The new CAMX standards for factory-level data exchange were the focus of a two-day workshop sponsored by IPC (ipc.org), the trade group that helped author the specs. While several leading firms are touting the promise of CAMX, the jury remains out on whether the drivers are in place for widespread adoption.
The seminar took place Oct. 20-21 at NACOM, a tier-one automotive supplier. Most attendees were already involved in the CAMX (Computer Aided Manufacturing using XML) API project headed by Georgia Tech's Manufacturing Research Center. These participants - Agilent, Asymtek, BTU, DEK, Orbotech, Panasonic, Pillarhouse and Universal - shared specific experiences with CAMX implementation. NACOM also detailed its switch to CAMX-compliant manufacturing during a facility tour.
Lacking, however, was the type of attendees the seminar was developed for - that is, OEMs and other companies that have yet to jump on the CAMX bandwagon. The open-architecture standards have been slow to catch fire, possibly due to integration costs, security fears, the general market dive that shrunk IT budgets, the lack of hard numbers on ROI and the availability of competitors that provide proprietary software.
According to Thomas Baggio, an engineering manager at Panasonic, and David Hicks, CEO of Nematron Corp., a high-end control systems provider, the real drive is lacking because an end-user push has yet to materialize. This group of early adopters is betting that the market and demand will tick up. At worst, the adopters already have platform-independent process control machinery in place to offer the kinds of integration, flexibility, traceability and data control advantages that manufacturers need more than ever.
BANNOCKBURN, IL, Nov. 3 - A group of leading vendors of solder today released white paper findings that "no significant difference" exists between a trio of heavily researched lead-free alloys. The lead-free pastes were found to result in less bridging but more voiding than a tin-lead eutectic control, the authors wrote.
In a 16-page report, the IPC Solder Products Value Council announced results of a down-select process of six tin-silver-copper solder pastes and subsequent PCB assembly comparing three of the alloys and a tin-lead solder paste.
The SVPC is made up of 17 solder vendors who aim to achieve worldwide consensus on a standard lead-free alloy. The paper details the second of a three-phase, $1 million program testing tin-silver-copper alloys.
Five solder manufacturers submitted paste samples for the anonymous testing, which was conducted by an independent party. The pastes studied: • 96.5/3.0/0.5 Tin/Silver/Copper. • 95.5/3.8/0.7 Tin/Silver/Copper. • 95.5/4.0/0.5 Tin/Silver/Copper.
Engent AAT,of Norcross, GA, tested one alloy per vendor using tin-lead eutectic paste as a control. Testing was performed on FR-4 boards using surface finishes of immersion silver, OSP, electroless nickel/immersion gold (ENIG) and bare copper and components with tin and tin-silver-copper finishes. Tests performed included: reproducibility of printed paste volume, solder paste wetting and spread, interconnect voiding.
Next, two major EMS companies, Flextronics and Solectron, built a total of 200 assemblies each, using the three SAC alloys and a tin-lead control. The companies then studied the three pastes for testability, rework and repair, handling and storage, printing, reflow and cleaning. There was "no significant difference" between the lead-free solders, they found. However, in general the tin-lead paste outperformed the lead-free alloys.
According to the report, "Submitted samples ... showed that, in general, the lead-free pastes were not as well-defined or as repeatable as tin-lead solder paste nor was their slump performance as good as tin-lead solder paste. This was most likely due to the use of a generic print process that was not optimized for each material.
The lead-free pastes also resulted in less bridging but more voiding than the control paste, the paper notes.
The final report is due in early 2005 and will include results and analysis of long-term and thermal-shock reliability testing.
"The SPVC is moving forward to complete this very detailed reliability testing program, in what we hope will be an alloy that industry can use with confidence," said Peter Palmer, SPVC chair and vice president of global marketing at Cookson Electronics.
SAN JOSE, Nov. 1 -- Global semiconductor sales rose to $18.4 billion in September, a sequential increase of 1%, the Semiconductor Industry Association reported today. Sales of PCs and cellphones appear to be stronger than expected and are boosting sales of microprocessors, DSP, flash memory devices and DRAMs.
Worldwide chip sales for the third quarter were $55.2 billion, up 3.2% from the second quarter and 27.4% from last year. Worldwide sales were up 33.2% for the first nine months.
"Despite evidence of an ongoing inventory correction in some segments of the industry, the September sales figures reflect continuing growth in demand for semiconductors," said SIA president George Scalise. "September is traditionally one of most consistently strong months for microchip sales as manufacturers of electronics products gear up for the holiday season.
"Slower growth or declining sales in a few market segments are signs of a continuing inventory correction by both semiconductor producers and customers. The ongoing inventory correction in these segments was the major factor in the September growth rate coming in near the low end of the historic range," Scalise said.
Chip sales in Europe and Asia were up 4.1% and 1.6%, respectively, while sales in the Americas and Japan declined 1.7% and 0.5%, respectively.
SMTA Seeks Papers for Medical Electronics Symposium
11-02-2004
Minneapolis, MN -- The SMTA has issued a call for papers for the Medical Electronics Symposium to be held April 26-27, 2005, in Minneapolis, MN. Papers can be submitted until December 3.
Topics for the conference may include:
- Assembly Technology Challenges
- Manufacturing/Equipment Requirements
- Design Challenges: Power Management and DFX
- Assembly Failure Analysis Case Studies
- Six Sigma Projects
- Lean Manufacturing Projects
- Process Validation and Requirements: Qualification, Traceability, and Control
- Advanced Packaging for Medical Electronic
- Components/Packaging and Assembly Materials
- Substrate Materials
- Emerging Technologies for Medical Electronics
- Sensors/MEMS/Nanotechnology
- Business Regulations / Barriers to Entry for Medical Assembly
- Challenges in Outsourcing Medical Assembly
- RoHS and Environmental Constraints for Medical Products
The conference will explore medical electronic devices, components, packaging, assembly and business issues for major categories, such as diagnostics, imaging, monitoring, life support, implantable products, personal monitor/delivery devices and disposable electronics. Products addressed range from complex, powerful and expensive diagnostic machines to simple, mass-produced, use-once sensors.
Submit abstracts and inquiries to SMTA director of education Kristin Nafstad: kristin@smta.org. Include the paper title, author's name and complete contact info.
www.smta.org/education/education.cfm#call
The results include a $23.1 million charge for the impairment of goodwill and a $1.8 million writeoff of
customer
lists associated with the acquisitions of ETMA and AVT, respectively.
TFAS also took a $1.6 million charge for excess inventory and
transition issues relating to completion of the move of the display
business from the company's factory in Manila to a factory in Beijing.
For
the quarter, the cost of sales was $42.5 million, up from $41 million
last year. Gross margin was a loss of 0.1, versus 1.4 last year.
Jack
Saltich, president and chief executive, said in a statement, "We have
been concentrating our efforts this year on streamlining our global
manufacturing operations and correcting issues in our Redmond factory.
Optimizing our global infrastructure has taken a significant effort. I
believe we are starting to see success from these endeavors."
Separately, TFS named Leslie Honda regulatory affairs director, a new post. Honda was vice president of quality and regulatory for ClearMedical Inc., a medical devices reprocessor.
Press Releases
- SIA Applauds CHIPS Act Incentives for GlobalWafers Projects in Texas and Missouri
- ROCKA Solutions Continues Expansion in Brazil with New Location in Manaus
- Juki America Announces New Regional Sales Manager for the Southwest Territory
- WittcoSales Welcomes New Team Member to Enhance Customer Experience and Service