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FlexLink (Göteborg ,Sweden), a provider of flexible conveyor systems, announced the official opening of its new manufacturing facility in Allentown, PA, with a ribbon-cutting ceremony on March 23. Fredrik Jonsson, global managing director, and Dave Clark, president of Americas operations, shared the honor of cutting the ribbon.

FlexLink's Americas headquarters recently relocated from nearby Bethlehem, PA; the move into the new facility has nearly tripled the company's manufacturing and office space. The move and expansion to a larger facility are part of FlexLink's planned growth strategy and has been driven in part by the need for more manufacturing space for its conveyor and automation business.

Clark said, "Our new 58,000 sq. ft. facility will allow FlexLink to provide the industry's best conveying and automation—hardware and software solutions, respectively—to the pharmaceutical, personal care, assembly, automotive, machined parts, electronics, filling and packaging markets. With over 100 employees in the North and South America, FlexLink is poised for substantial growth in 2004."

The new office can be contacted at at 6580 Snowdrift Rd, Allentown, PA, 18016; (610) 973-8200.

www.flexlink.com

The 13th annual PCB Design Conference West 2003, held March 15-19 at the San Jose Convention Center, received positive feedback from attendees and exhibitors alike regarding the five-day conference program of over 35 technical courses and the two-day product and service exhibition. The San Jose, CA-based venue, which is located in the heart of Silicon Valley, provided 1,482 attendees with an excellent setting for instruction, networking and face-to-face marketing opportunities.

"Trade shows and conferences in just about every market have been depressed in the last few years, so it is good to see that PCB design shows are following the same upward trend that we're beginning to see in other markets," said UP Media Group (UPMG, Atlanta, GA) president Pete Waddell. "We also are pleased that so many exhibitors have continued to include PCB West in marketing budgets that remain cautious and tight. Our exhibitors were enthusiastic about the quality of the attendee traffic on the show floor—to the extent that 72% of our 2004 exhibitors have already re-signed for 2005."

"DownStream Technologies decided to exhibit at PCB Design Conference West 2004 because the exhibition provides our company the most targeted access to the PCB design and manufacture professionals that we want to reach," said Rick Almeida, president of DownStream Technologies, an exhibitor. "We are very pleased with the leads that we were able to capture during the two-day exhibition and we've already re-signed for next year's show."

According to Waddell, PCB West conference attendees also were excited by the number and technical depth of courses taught during the five-day conference. Several special events were well attended and received praise from those who participated. These include the PCB Technology Forum and Welcome Luncheon, the Keynote Address by Mentor Graphics CEO Walden C. Rhines on "Breaking the PCB Design Process," the Opening Night Reception, the Pot O'Gold Party and Giveaway extravaganza and the PCB West Book Store, which featured participation by book publishers Prentice Hall and Wiley.

Dates for PCB West 2005 have been announced and the conference will be held March 7-11 at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.

UPMG's next trade show is PCB Design Conference East 2004, which will be held Oct. 4-8 at the Radisson Hotel Manchester in Manchester, NH.

UPMG is a privately held company that specializes in magazine publishing and trade show and conference production. UPMG currently publishes two high-tech magazines: Printed Circuit Design & Manufacture and Circuits Assembly. In addition, UPMG produces two annual conferences and trade shows for the design and manufacture industry—PCB Design Conference West in the Silicon Valley area, and PCB Design Conference East in the Boston, MA, area. UPMG also hosts the PCB Design Conference Road Series of courses in cities throughout the U.S.

www.pcbwest.com

www.pcbeast.com

UP Media Group Inc. (Atlanta, GA) recently announced the winners of the Circuits Assembly 2004 Service Excellence Awards (SEAs) for Electronics Manufacturing Services (EMS) Providers and Electronics Assembly Equipment, Materials and Software Suppliers.

Participating companies' customers rated each company on a scale of 1 (poor) to 5 (superior) in five service categories: dependability/timely delivery, manufacturing quality, responsiveness to requests and changes, technology and value for the price.

From a part of each participant's entry fee, a generous donation of $5,000 was made on the their behalf to the Surface Mount Technology Association (SMTA, Minneapolis, MN) Charles Hutchins Educational Grant. In turn, the $5,000 grant is awarded annually to a graduate-level student pursuing a degree and working on thesis research in electronic assembly, electronics packaging or a related field.

Established in 1997 in memory of past SMTA president and industry colleague Charles Hutchins, the grant is intended for the purchase of technical books and research materials and for participation in conferences related to electronics assembly and packaging, and donations are recognized throughout the year.

For more information on past recipients, current donors and student submissions, and for making donations securely on-line, visit http://www.smta.org/hutchins/hutchins.cfm.

Cosponsored by Circuits Assembly magazine, the Hutchins Grant is awarded each year at the SMTA Annual Meeting during the SMTA International Conference.

www.smta.org

www.upmediagroup.com

NEPCON Shanghai/Electronics Manufacturing Technology China (EMT China) will be held April 26-29 at the Shanghai Everbright Convention & Exhibition Centre. The Surface Mount Technology Association (SMTA) and the Electronics & Information Industry Sub-Council (CCPIT) of China are co-organizing the high-level surface-mount technology conference.

This year's program will consist of a keynote, technical sessions on lead-free technology and 0201 assembly and two half-day training courses on lead-free systems by industry expert and past SMTA president Dr. Jennie S. Hwang, H-Technologies Group Inc.

The Keynote and technical presentations will be given by the Ministry of Information Industry, Gartner Dataquest, Flextronics International, Indium Corp., ERSA, HITACHI, Kingston Technology Co., EKRA, Daiichi Jisugyo, Fuji, OK Interenational, Siemens Dematic and Solectron.

The first training course, Interconnection Technology and Printed Circuit Board (PCB) Surface Finish and Component Coating is intended to provide broad-based information that enhances technology foundation in preparation for lead-free implementation. The presentation will be comprised of two parts: the first will cover lead-free solder interconnections and the second will address the properties and performance of lead-free PCB surface finishes and the component lead coatings.

The second course, Manufacturing Implementation, will focus on achieving yield, quality and reliability. The course will examine the key process modules, including solder paste printing and reflow, and the system compatibility between the BGA/CSP solder sphere, assembly solder paste, component coating and PCB substrate surface finish.

http://www.smta.org/education/symposia/symposia.cfm#nepcon_shanghai

The National Electronics Manufacturing Initiative (NEMI, Herndon, VA) has issued a set of interim recommendations for lead-free component finishes to be used in high-reliability electronic applications to minimize the risk of failures caused by tin whiskers. These recommendations were developed by the consortium's Tin Whisker User Group, comprised of nine large manufacturers of high-reliability electronic assemblies that annually purchase millions of dollars of components.

The group was organized to define methods and tests that would minimize the probability of tin whiskers creating functional or reliability problems in their products. Members include Alcatel, Celestica, Cisco Systems, Delphi Electronics, HP, IBM, Lucent Technologies, Sun Microsystems and Tyco Electronics. The group consensus is that pure tin electroplating presents a risk in high-reliability applications, and they have outlined cost-effective alternatives—using known mitigation practices and some level of testing—to minimize this risk.

This second interim report updates a report published by the group in June 2003 and presents recommendations for lead-free finishes for a variety of applications. These recommendations reflect the best judgment of the group members, based on their own experiences and the available data. The document outlines specific whisker mitigation guidelines supported by the group.

The document also discusses specific component types, assessing the reliability risk of tin whiskers for each and the various mitigation strategies recommended. The group is currently in the process of extending this work to create a user acceptance specification based on the test methods defined by the NEMI Tin Whisker Accelerated Test Project.

The Tin Whisker User Group's recommendations are available at: http://www.nemi.org/projects/ese/tin_whisker_usergroup.html.

Data I/O Corp. (Redmond, WA), a provider of manual and automated programming systems, announced high volume programming support for Texas Instruments' (TI, Dallas, TX) TMS320F2810 digital signal controller on its Sprint family of device programmers. With this support, TI's automotive, white goods and industrial customers have a programming solution for the flash-based F2810 controller along with the already supported TMS320F2812 controller.

Jennifer Skinner-Gray, TMS320C2000T marketing manager, Texas Instruments, said, "TI continues to work closely with Data I/O to assure that our customers using Data I/O manual and automated programming systems have volume programming support for new C2000 controllers as they become available."

The 32-bit digital signal controllers are digital signal processing (DSP)-based cores optimized for control applications that require the peripheral set and ease-of-use of a microcontroller (MCU). The result is a highly integrated system on chip (SoC)-like device that is able to handle control system processing requirements, as well as replace control system host MCUs.

"We are pleased to announce this support for the F2810," said Bruce Rodgers, Data I/O Director of Semiconductor Relations & Marketing. "The automotive market is an important customer group for our company, and we expect many users will embrace this family of TI devices for their range of applications."

www.dataio.com

www.ti.com