Circuits Assembly Online Magazine - News

News

The Surface Mount Technology Association (SMTA, Minneapolis, MN) Medical Electronics Symposium will take place May 19-20 at the Marriott Minneapolis Airport Hotel in Bloomington, MN. It will explore devices, components, packaging and assembly technologies. The conference chairman is Jeff Kennedy, Manufacturers' Services Ltd., and technical sessions include design/reliability, manufacturing techniques and requirements, process and quality control, packaging, sensors/microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) and business/regulations.

Also featured during the program will be a Plenary Session, NEMI Medical Sector Roadmap, presented by Terry Dishongh of Intel Corp. A keynote presentation will be given by J. Doug Field, vice president of product development and chief engineer for Segway Co., which is known for the world's first self-balancing, electric powered personal transporter.

A second Plenary Session on Medical Product Outsourcing and Technology Trends will be presented by Keith Robinson, Frost & Sullivan, and a concluding roundtable discussion will focus on trends and challenges associated with bringing new products to market and working with multiple partners in a complex supply chain. The panel will expose barriers to entry of service to the medical sector and the unique challenges associated with supporting the medical products manufacturing process.

www.smta.org/education/symposia/symposia.cfm

The IPC Association (Northbrook, IL) recently commended DEK's (Zurich, Switzerland) technological advances with its new via fill process. Awarded a slot in the Innovative Technology Showcase at the APEX exhibition in Anaheim, CA, DEK's 100% fill technology was described by the judges as groundbreaking.

As part of the new and emerging technologies showcase, the process delivers 100% fill of substrate vias with no voids and minimal surface residue. This Pro-Flow-based process offers solutions to problems such as insufficient fill, voiding, poor throughput and excessive handling of product.

The fully enclosed head is used in conjunction with a dedicated tooling fixture that ensures complete fill of vias in the minimum of print passes (typically two), with a paste pressure of 2.5 bar and a print speed of 25mm/s. In addition, the print material has been shown to have a life of over three months in the transfer head.

Traditional manual or squeegee-based systems are less clean and operator-friendly, and take multiple passes to push material into vias. They can also use a vacuum table to pull material through, resulting in both voids and inadequate deposition.

With results in throughput of over fives times faster than traditional squeegee-based fill processes, the system is repeatable and offers accuracy.

DEK is a global provider of advanced pre-placement manufacturing solutions and innovative deposition technologies for a wide range of electronic materials.

www.dek.com

In a move to help customers speed time to market and reduce manufacturing costs, Dow Corning Corp. (Midland, MI) has launched the External Equipment Provider Alliance with nine companies from the electronics assembly and packaging industry. Under the new alliance—the first of its kind in this market—Dow Corning will work with member companies and customers to streamline the integration of materials and equipment used in board-level assembly and back-end packaging, resulting in standard equipment or customized solutions that help customers meet production goals more quickly and efficiently.

The network of member companies includes Asymtek (A Nordson Company), Bartec Dispensing Technology, DEK, Fluid Research Corp., Lambda Technologies, Liquid Control Corp., Precision Valve & Automation (PVA), Scheugenpflug AG and Sieghard Schiller GmbH & Co. KG. As providers of meter-mix, conformal coating, fluid delivery, rapid curing, stencil printing and robotic xyz positioning, these companies have all demonstrated expertise in applying and handling Dow Corning's silicone and organic materials.

Under the alliance, Dow Corning will leverage member companies' expertise to simplify the procurement, integration, start-up and optimization of materials and processing equipment. By working together, alliance members can help customers address any number of challenges—from choosing the right combination of equipment and materials for a new process to delivering turnkey production packages. The alliance will also provide a lead contact who will work directly with the customer, coordinating the alliance's resources to develop business solutions.

Tom Cook, Global Industry Executive Director, Electronics & Advanced Technologies Industries, Dow Corning, said, "Dow Corning will partner with customers to provide as little or as much assistance as they need, helping them achieve day-to-day objectives as well as key, long-term business goals. The beauty of an alliance like this is that it gives customers access to more resources than any single supplier could deliver alone."

The company has been organizing the alliance over the past year and has selected members based on its long-term relationships with these and other companies throughout the board-level assembly and back-end packaging industry. Dow Corning plans to expand the alliance to other electronics market segments, such as wafer-level and front-end packaging.

www.dowcorning.com/electronics

Photocircuits Corp. (Glen Clove, NY) has announced the realignment of its tooling and manufacturing operations to accommodate rapid growth in its high mix and quick turn business that will increase from $50 million sales in 2002 to an expected $100 million this year. The growth in number of customers to nearly 500, with concomitant increase in part numbers and layers processed, has driven significant changes in the front-end and operational structure of Photocircuits' business.

The company has opened its second offshore tooling center, established to support the increase in tools required by growth in high mix, quick turn business. This newest Tooling group, located in the Philippines, joins the ranks of the groups operating in New York and Costa Rica. All three groups will continue to work under the direction of the Pre-Production Engineering staff in New York and Georgia.

By transferring much of its high-volume backlog to its Peachtree City, GA, operation, the company has made available in Glen Cove substantial manufacturing capacity and the focused technical resources needed to satisfy demands of the high mix, rapid-response marketplace. With the recent installation of new imaging and laser drilling equipment, Photocircuits has increased capacity for conventional and HDI multilayer products.

John Endee, president of Photocircuits Corp., has also announced the promotion of Mike Fuggini to the newly created position of director of operations. Fuggini has been with the company for more than 20 years, most recently responsible for managing the company's process engineering staff and environmental compliance activities.

Fuggini's promotion is an organizational change necessitated by the mushrooming growth in Photocircuits' high mix and quick turn business. He will focus on operational enhancements of the Glen Cove factory producing low volume, quick turn and high technology parts. Fuggini will refine the manufacturing systems to minimize work in progress, continually reduce set-up times and enhance manufacturing capabilities within each process center.

The company has also promoted Steve Graves to the position of national sales director. Graves is a 19-year veteran of Photocircuits' sales organization, most recently managing selling efforts in eastern North America, the Caribbean and Europe.

www.photocircuits.com

Dynatech Technology Inc. (Horsham, PA), the North American distributor for Samsung surface-mount technology equipment, has signed a distribution agreement with Aegis Industrial Software Corp. (Horsham, PA) to sell and install Aegis's CircuitCAM and CheckPoint software on Samsung equipment.

"It's more than one-stop shopping for our customers," said Mike Foster, director of sales for Dynatech. "With both companies located in the same corporate campus, customers can get their training for the equipment and the software on the same business trip. Customers will benefit from having the training on each system essentially at the same time, making it easier to retain the information and become more productive more quickly when the systems are installed in their plants."

In the market for small to medium electronics manufacturing services (EMS) and original equipment manufacturer (OEM) shops, the Samsung Techwin line includes the newly introduced CP60L compact high-speed chip shooter, CP45F full vision assembly system and a variety of entry-level placement systems, plus machine-control software that can tie into line manufacturing and enterprise information systems. As the North American distributor, Dynatech Technology also provides 24/7 service with a guaranteed 30-minute call-back time.

Manufacturing and process engineers use CircuitCAM to convert CAD design information into visual assembly documentation, reports and optimized machine programs that include the generation and optimization interfaces for the pick-and-place insertion process, inspection and test machines. Users can operate the MS Office suite and programs such as AutoCAD directly within the software environment, and they can transfer documentation into programs such as Word and Excel. Data stored by the software enters a relational database, such as Access, which can be used in stand-alone mode. CheckPoint provides bill-of-materials, revision control and management capabilities.

"This new relationship with our neighbors down the road enables Aegis to further enhance our off-line machine programming capability and better integrate Samsung equipment users into our NPI and MES solutions," said Jason Spera, chief executive officer of Aegis.

www.dynatechsmt.com

www.aiscorp.com

FCI (Etters, PA), a manufacturer of connectors and interconnect systems, has won a substantial victory in its patent infringement suit involving FCI's ball grid array (BGA) connector technology brought in the U.S. against Hon Hai Precision Industries (Foxconn, Tucheng, Taiwain).

On Feb. 13, after a two-week trial in San Francisco, CA, a jury returned a verdict finding Hon Hai liable for infringement of two FCI patents relating to its BGA connector technology.

The jury also found the infringement to be willful and that Hon Hai is liable for multi-million dollar damages as a result of its infringement of FCI's patents.

The infringing sockets are used in computer notebooks, desktops and servers that use BGA socket technology.

Jean Lucien Lamy, FCI chairman and chief executive officer, said, "We will continue, in this instance and in any other cases that should arise, to pursue all legal means to protect our intellectual property."

BGA patented technology from FCI is currently licensed worldwide to Tyco and Molex for socket applications.

www.fciconnect.com

www.foxconn.com

Valor Computerized Systems (Yvane, Israel), a provider of productivity increasing engineering software solutions to the electronics design and manufacturing industry, has reached an agreement with Jabil Circuit Inc. (St. Petersburg, FL), a top-tier electronics manufacturing services (EMS) provider. Trilogy 5000 will be implemented at a majority of Jabil's manufacturing and service facilities located in Asia, Europe and the Americas to increase efficiencies in new product introduction (NPI), design for manufacturability (DFM) and assembly process optimization. The deal marks the largest software deployment in Valor's corporate history.

The engineering system selected by Jabil covers the full scope of the assembly engineering solution for an integrated, efficient and productive CAD to DFM to assembly process.

Chris Singleton, global director for manufacturing engineering at Jabil said, "We will be able to accommodate customer ECN's easier and faster as well as provide a higher level of DFM service for customers. Jabil expects Trilogy tools to reduce the engineering process time for new jobs. This is particularly important to our growing high-mix business and will enable us to accelerate new product introductions."

www.valor.com

www.jabil.com

Assembleon (Eindhoven, The Netherlands, a designer and manufacturer of surface-mount pick-and-place equipment for the global electronics industry, and Tecnomatix Technologies Ltd. (Herzlia, Israel), a provider of manufacturing process management (MPM), have announced an agreement to offer a replacement to the CIMbridge software tool with eM-Assembly Expert, from Tecnomatix Unicam, for all Assembleon customers.

Under the terms of the agreement, the software tool—a key component of the printed circuit board (PCB) assembly and test solution suite from Tecnomatix Unicam—will replace the platform currently being used by Assembleon customers. Since acquiring the CIMbridge business unit from Genrad in October 2002, Tecnomatix has been committed to a transition plan to upgrade CIMbridge users to a more advanced, integrated programming platform.

Assembleon customers will also benefit from eM-Document Expert, a subset of the software that automates the creation of method sheets and other documentation for electronic assembly operations.

The programming front-end will interface with Assembleon optimizers and line balancers for all Assembleon machines. Expansion of the platform to other MPM solutions is available directly from Tecnomatix.

www.tecnomatix.com

www.assembleon.com

Visiprise Inc. (Atlanta, GA), a provider of manufacturing execution systems for electronics, automotive, aerospace and defense industries, has been selected by Actia Group (Toulouse, France) to provide quality and production management control for its manufacturing plants in Tunis, Tunisia and Colomiers, France. Operating in 13 countries, Actia Group is a manufacturer of vehicle electronics and diagnostics for major automotive and aerospace original equipment manufacturers (OEMs).

Visiprise Manufacturing, the manufacturing execution software, links OEMs and electronics manufacturing services (EMS) suppliers and provides visibility during the manufacturing process, thereby accelerating new products to market and reducing overall manufacturing costs.

"Actia Group chose Visiprise Manufacturing to handle complex control, tracking and traceability requirements during the manufacturing process," said Robert Consoli, vice president of worldwide sales, Visiprise. "As a supplier to major automotive and aerospace OEMs, Visiprise provides Actia Group with the tools needed to control and to gain visibility of critical routing, repair loop and non-conformance information during the manufacturing process."

Visiprise is a provider of software solutions for real-time visibility and control of manufacturing operations for discrete manufacturers. Its flagship solution is a Web-based, collaborative manufacturing execution system (MES) that helps manage and track the entire production process. It is the industry's only independent platform technology for manufacturing execution.

www.visiprise.com

DEK (San Jose, CA), a high accuracy mass imaging solutions provider, has taken electroform stencils to the next level by incorporating an exclusive, sophisticated aperture height control method to their production of Eform stencils.

The stencils incorporate provide superior performance and ensure seal contact to the pad, pad paste deposit and a greater percentage volume of paste on pad. The reactive force created by the stencils provides for an even distribution of paste and allows for a more clean release of paste from the aperture. This technology also delivers ultimate control over stencil thickness and uniformity, ensuring paste volume consistency for fine pitch applications. The stencils also improve solder paste release for some of the more challenging lead-free solder paste formulations.

When the stencil process is combined with the new variable aperture height technology (VAHT), it becomes even more powerful.

Richard Tang, DEK global Eform manager, said, "Board co-planarity issues are a prevalent problem. The uneven resist layer causes a poor seal between the board and the stencil, which can result in printing problems. DEK has that problem solved. Our VAHT, an inherent characteristic of DEK's Eform stencils, adjusts for the variances in resist layer heights and provides a uniform seal across the entire board."

DEK's Eform process and inherent VAHT produce stencils that will enable technology for next-generation fine-pitch surface-mount and semiconductor packaging technologies. As the lines between complex surface-mount assembly and semiconductor packaging processes continue to blur, the need for advanced stencil technology becomes even more apparent.

www.dek.com

The International Microelectronics And Packaging Society (IMAPS, Washington, D.C.) has announced that Colonel Danny McKnight, whose heroic exploits as Commander of the 75th Ranger Regiment assigned to Task Force Ranger in Mogadishu, Somalia, were chronicled in the book and movie "Black Hawk Down," will deliver the keynote address at an upcoming IMAPS Advanced Technology Workshop (ATW). The Military, Aerospace, Space and Homeland Security ATW will be held at the Renaissance Harbor Place Hotel, Baltimore, MD on March 28-30.

Col. McKnight recently retired after a distinguished and highly decorated career as a U.S. Army Ranger. His experience represents a lifetime of dedication to the defense of America.

In addition to his expertise in military matters, highlights of his management career include: providing direct financial management, guidance,and oversight of an annual operational budget of approximately $50 million; developing a strategic planning concept and a measurable results program to track its successful implementation for the integration of active and reserve component soldiers as part of the Army's training strategy for the year 2000 and beyond; and directing a staff of more than 300 to provide support for a field force of 10,000 people, who had to meet the training requirements for approximately 250,000 reserve component soldiers.

Col. McKnight's awards and decorations include the Legion of Merit with Two Oak Leaf Clusters; Bronze Star for Valor; Purple Heart; Meritorious Service Medal with Five Oak Leaf Clusters; Army Commendation Medal with Oak Leaf Cluster; Army Achievement Medal; National Defense Service Medal with Bronze Star; Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal with Arrowhead and Bronze Star; Combat Infantryman's Badge; Ranger Tab; Master Parachutist Badge with Bronze Star; and Pathfinder Badge.

Greg Caswell, General Chair of the Workshop, said, "We are extremely proud and honored that one of our country's most distinguished military heroes has agreed to take the time to come and speak at our Workshop."

For more information on the workshop, visit http://www.imaps.org/registration/military2004.htm.

YESTech (San Clemente, CA), a provider of yield enhancement solutions, has announced that it has won a contract to provide automated optical inspection (AOI) technology to Zentech Manufacturing Inc. (Baltimore, MD), a full-service contract electronics manufacturers in the mid-Atlantic region.

Zentech will use YESTech's YTV-2050 AOI system for automated inspection of its printed circuit boards (PCBs), which are used in both military and commercial applications. The system was implemented at Zentech's 42,000 sq. ft. manufacturing facility in Baltimore.

"Our business is doubling in size each year, creating a challenge in terms of the high volume of PCBs that need to be inspected," said Dave Hughes, director of advanced operations engineering for Zentech Manufacturing. "After evaluating AOI systems, I selected YESTech because they are leading the market with innovations such as multi-camera technology and easily took care of 80% of our inspection needs. We assemble thousands of boards per day to IPC 610 class 2 and 3 standards, so our quality and workmanship is critical."

The AOI system provides Zentech with defect detection and repeatability, ease of use and value. Up to eight cameras feature proprietary color megapixel Thin Camera technology, which integrates color, normalized correlation and rule-based algorithms to provide high-speed PCB inspection with exceptional defect coverage and a low false failure rate.

www.yestechinc.com

www.zentechman.com