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The 53,000 sq. ft. facility will house R&D and applications engineering for the company's die attach, semiconductor underfill, encapsulant and semiconductor mold compound products.
The company's electronics assembly materials headquarters will also move to the site.
"Combining the research and development operation with applications engineering has many benefits," says Dr. Larry Crane, global director of semiconductor research, development and engineering, in a press statement. "This shared expertise gives us the ability to enhance the coordination of customer projects, streamline product introductions, build and test parts for customers and bring advanced materials to market more quickly."
The facility houses a cutting-edge R&D lab, including an analytical and failure analysis lab. It boasts a 5,000 sq. ft. Class 10,000 cleanroom, for semiconductor applications, and a 2,000 sq. ft. surface mount production line.
Henkel said it plans several new facilities worldwide.
"Doing business with reference customers such as NASA Ames Research Center and the University of Minnesota Supercomputing Institute, we value highly that Solectron does such an excellent job at producing our PCBAs and performs NPI activities in its facility in Milpitas," said Dick Harkness, vice president of manufacturing operations, SGI. "Having an EMS partner with a robust, near-market manufacturing capability enables us to quickly react to customer needs and offers an added level of supply chain security for mission-critical government accounts."
In all, SGI presented five Outstanding Supplier Awards in fiscal 2004.
US Patent 6,819,004 covers an epoxy-fluxing technology that enables no-flow underfill. The methods and materials covered within the patent permit attachment of flip chips to electronics assemblies sans underfill adhesive processes.
Kester is offering licenses for the patented technology.
In a press release, Kester said the novel technology halves the number of process steps by eliminating a steps for flux residue cleaning, capillary underfill lengthy dispensing and capillary underfill post-curing.
Central to the technology is the use of epoxy that acts as a flux during the initial soldering and then acts as an adhesive during encapsulation. The soldering or fluxing operation and encapsulation have been combined into a single stage. The patent for this technology not only covers the material but also the application such that the flip chips could be attached to the substrate simultaneously with the remainder of the surface mounted devices, Kester said.
"This patent reflects Kester's dedication to continuous innovation, which is our competitive anchor. We are very pleased that Kester's invention has been recognized by the United States Patent and Trademark Office," said Brian Deram, vice president of research and development.
Kester is actively marketing several formulas that are covered by this newly issued patent under its trademarked "SE-CURE" line. Users, the company said, are indemnified from the method of use claims covered by this patent. Licensing opportunities are available, Kester said.
ORLANDO, Jan. 4 -- A subsidiary of Dover Corp. has purchased Datamax Corp., a supplier of bar code and RFID printers. Financial terms were not disclosed.
Dover is a $5 billion OEM of industrial equipment. Among its holdings is Universal Instruments.
Dover previously announced plans to expand its subsidiary structure from four to six market segments and realign its 49 operating businesses into 13 business groups.
HERNDON, VA, Jan. 3 — The National Electronics Manufacturing Initiative consortium today changed its name to the International Electronics Manufacturing Initiative, or iNEMI.
"As a member-driven organization, we evolve to meet the demands of the changing industry landscape, which means our focus is becoming more global," says Jim McElroy, executive director and CEO, in a press statement. "[W]e have chosen a new name that retains some of our hard-earned brand recognition while signaling our move to a broader geographic scope."
McElroy said the iNEMI board has consistently guided the consortium toward a more global perspective. The organization opened its membership to all North American companies in 1996 and in 2004 actively recruited international participation in several activities.
Furthermore, the 2004 iNEMI technology roadmap marked the first time the group actively recruited participation from Asia and Europe.
The consortium has also revised its bylaws amd meeting structure to incorporate companies in Asia and Europe.
The PPM Project, sponsored by SMART Group and the U.K. Department of Trade and Industry, seeks to measure defect levels of tin/lead and lead-free assemblies. The groups will use parts per million defective as the main metric. Companies across Europe will be included in the study, which will be based on existing product acceptability methods to ensure results can be easily compared.
In a press statement, the groups said that "a common question is, How does my process compare with other companies' in terms of yield? The information did not exist or was not easily available to small and medium volume companies until the launch of the project."
IPC and IEC standards will be used to support the PPM evaluation, the groups said.
The PPM Project is part of LeadOut, an effort to inform and prepare electronics manufacturers for lead-free products. Results will be available from the LeadOut Website soon. For more information contact technical@smartgroup.org.
The agreement is subject to approval by Tecnomatix shareholders and regulatory authorities.
Under the terms, Tecnomatix shareholders will receive $17 per share in cash, a premium of 39% over Tecnomatix's average closing price over the last 60 trading days.
Tecnomatix's board has unanimously approved the deal.
The domestic book-to-bill ratio was 0.96, down from 1.05 in October. November marked the first time the indicator dropped below 1.0 since April 2003, said IPC, which tracks the data.
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.
Separately, the ratios were 0.88 for rigid PCBs and 1.28 for flexible circuits.
Despite the November dropoff, rigid boards, which are estimated to make up about 82% of all domestic PCBs, are showing some improvement. Year-on-year rigid shipments are up 17.8% and bookings are up 8%, while flexible shipments have grown 72.5% and bookings are up 88.7%.
Combined, shipments and bookings are up 28.5% and 24.8%, respectively, this year. Sequentially, shipments dropped 5.2% and bookings fell 23.3%.
Flex sales include some value-added services in addition to the bare flex circuits.
In a statement, IPC cautioned that month-to-month comparisons should be made with caution as they may reflect cyclical effects.
PLAINVIEW, NY, Dec. 27 -- Aeroflex Inc. said today it received $13.6 million in radio test set orders from the Army, Army National Guard and the Air Force.
Beginning in May, the company will start shipping the sets over a 14-month period.
The order brings the company's military communications orders to $22 million for fiscal 2005. The company booked about $414.1 million in sales in 2004.
Areoflex makes testing and microelectronic products for the aerospace, defense and communications markets.Chrys Shea of Cookson Electronics won for Best of Conference, Alan Donaldson, Intel Corp., won Best of Proceedings, and Lars Boettcher, Fraunhofer IZM Berlin, won Best International Paper.
The awards are chosed by attendees and recipients win $1,000.
Shea was awarded Best of Conference Paper for "Optimizing Stencil Design for Lead-free SMT Processing." The paper identifies optimized stencil aperture geometries and explores the lower spread of lead-free alloys on some alternate surface finishes.
Donaldson's paper, "Hot Air Lead-free Rework of BGA Packages and Sockets," presents rework profiles and a process developed based on actual package reliability tests.
Boettcher's paper, "Development of 3D-Redistribution and Balling Technologies for Fabrication of Vertical Power Devices," which reveeals the development of a 3-D wafer-level redistribution process based on fully additive metal deposition.
The SMTA is seeking papers for its 2005 conference in September. Abstracts will be accepted through Feb. 7 at www.smta.org/smtai/call_for_papers.cfm.
METHUEN, MA, Dec. 28 -- Infineon Technologies and Parlex Corp. have struck a deal to jointly manufacture and sell substrates for secure mobile electronic identification products. The companies will set up a JV to supply substrates for Infineon's Flip Chip on Substrate program, and to outside customers.
The joint venture will be headquartered in Hong Kong with manufacturing facilities in China. Operations are expected to begin in April.
Under the terms of the agreement, Parlex will have a 51% equity share with Infineon holding the remaining share. Infineon will also pay Parlex $3 million.
Parlex's Shanghai flex circuit plant will also provide certain services which will be paid for by the JV, the companies said.
The electronics manufacturer lowered its fourth-quarter earnings to $5.4 million from $11.5 million. In fiscal 2003, Sanmina-SCI posted a quarterly loss of $85.7 million.
The company also revised its 2004 loss to $11.4 million, about double its earlier reported loss of $5.3 million. Sanmina-SCI reported a loss of $137.2 million in the previous year.
The adjustments were recorded in Sanmina-SCI's fourth quarter and included stock-based compensation charges of $2.4 million, an increase in interest expense of $2 million from certain acquisitions and restructuring charges of $1.1 million.
Sanmina-SCI said adjusted earnings, which exclude unusual items, were not affected by the accounting charge. In October, the company posted adjusted earnings of $41.8 million, and $128.9 million for fiscal 2004
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