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Sanmina-SCI Corp. (San Jose, CA), an electronics contract manufacturer, announced that seven of its medical device manufacturing facilities have been certified for ISO 13485 or 13488 as well as for Canadian Medical Devices Conformity Assessment System (CMDCAS) by TUV Rheinland of North America Inc. (Newtown, CT), a compliance engineering and independent testing services provider. The TUV quality sanctions augment earlier facility registrations for all seven facilities by the United States Food and Drug Administration (USFDA).

According to John Hendrick, executive vice president of Sanmina-SCI's Medical Systems Division, ISO 13488 certifications have been granted to facilities located in Alabama, China, Ireland, Singapore and Sweden while ISO 13485 certifications have been granted to facilities in California and Israel. The Israel facility was granted ISO 13485 certification by the Standards Institute of Israel, which plans to transition its certification to TUV Rheinland later this year.

Hendrick said, "By the end of the third quarter 2004, we expect to earn two more TUV certifications—one for an additional facility in Alabama and another for a facility in Mexico—which will expand TUV quality certifications to nine Sanmina-SCI medical facilities worldwide."

According to TUV Rheinland, the ISO 13485/13488 quality standards are specific to medical device quality systems and supplement the more generic ISO 9001 and 9002 standards that apply to many industries. The company also notes that the European Union (EU) has issued a number of directives that set forth compliance criteria for medical devices destined for the European market. These directives apply to a number of medical products, including active implantable medical and in vitro diagnostics devices. With its recent certifications, Sanmina-SCI is positioned to comply with EU directives, since a significant portion of demonstrating EU compliance depends on the prior establishment and independent assessment of quality systems.

www.sanmina-sci.com

The book-to-bill ratio for April 2004 remained positive at 1.11, just slightly down from 1.12 in March, according to IPC (Northbrook, IL). The ratio is calculated by averaging the index numbers for orders booked over the past three months and dividing by the average index numbers for sales billed during the same period. A ratio greater than 1.00 suggests that current demand is ahead of supply, indicating probable near-term growth.

Shipments in April increased 41.3% from April 2003, and orders booked increased 63.6%. PCB shipments are up 34.7% year-to-date, while bookings are up 47.1%.

The April shipment index was 131.4, down 13.3% sequentially, and the booking index was also down, decreasing 15.2% to 136.3.

The index shows how current shipments and bookings relate to an index point. In this case, 1992 was chosen as a stable growth year for U.S. PCB manufacturers. A shipment index number of 117.0, for example, indicates that shipments are 17% higher than average shipments for the same time period in 1992.

According to data reported by current participants in the monthly survey, their shipments increased 30.9% in April 2004 year-on-year and their orders booked increased 49.8%, with year-to-date shipments and bookings rising 30.4% and 43%, respectively.

The information is based on data provided by PCB manufacturers that participate in IPC's monthly statistical program. These companies reportedly represent approximately 60% of the U.S. IMS industry.

www.ipc.org

Sponsored by the ESD Association (Rome, NY), the 2004 EOS/ESD Symposium will package research, technology and education into one international electrostatic discharge (ESD) event Sept.19-23 at the Gaylord Texan Resort and Conference Center in Grapevine, TX.

The program is organized in three special interest tracks: ESD Test, Failure Analysis and Systems; Factory, Materials and ESD Control; and Device, Design and Technology. Attendees will be able to customize their experience along their specific areas of interest.

This year's symposium features 51 papers to be presented in 10 parallel technical sessions: MR Heads - Processing; RFIC and Novel Protection Devices; System Level and Other ESD Issues; On-Chip Protection Strategies, Physics and Modeling; Tester - Device Effects; Analysis and Modeling of ESD Design Failures; Factory and Materials; Characterization of On-Chip Protection; Novel TLP Testers; and Magnetic Recording Heads.

The technical sessions also feature the award winning paper from the 2003 RCJ EOS/ESD Symposium-Japan: ESD Protection Design Using a Mixed-Mode Simulation for Advanced Devices by H. Hayashi, S. Kuroda, K. Kato, K. Fukuda, S. Baba and Y. Fukuda of Oki Electric Industry Co., Ltd.

The week's events open with three full-day ESD tutorials. An additional 17 tutorials will be offered throughout the week, covering topics such as Air Ionization: Issues and Answers; Packaging Principles for the Program Manager; Device Technology and FA Overview; Electrostatic Calculations for the ESD Engineer; and Cleanroom Considerations for the Program Manager.

A two-day seminar, ESD Program Development and Assessment (ANSI/ESD S20.20), will take place on September 19-20.

Eight interactive workshops will cover Silicon Technology Scaling and ESD Reliability - Roadmap and Reality; Common Auditing Issues; ESD in Cleanrooms; Can TLP Go Beyond HBM and CDM?; Ionization Issues; Automated Equipment, ESD and Grounding Issues; ESD in Magnetic Recording, and HBM-TLP Testing Miscorrelation: Experiences, Explanations and Solutions.

Attendees also will have the opportunity to visit exhibit booths displaying ESD control products and services. The exhibits are open to anyone interested in EOS and ESD; symposium registration is not required to attend the exhibits.

Other events include a Welcome Reception, an Awards Breakfast, a Professional and Technical Women's Reception, the ESD Association Annual Meeting and Luncheon, Authors' Corners to discuss the technical papers with the authors and ESD training presentations.

The detailed program is available at: www.esda.org/symposia.html.

www.esda.org

Hover-Davis, Inc. (Rochester, NY) has hired Darrell R. Tullar as Marketing Manager. In this new role, Tullar will lead global technical and promotional marketing activities and strategies. His focus will be on market growth and increasing sales.

Tullar comes to the company with over 24 years of experience in the electronics industry. He has held positions in customer service, product management, marketing and sales, while at Motorola, Universal Instruments & PMJ Automec.

www.hoverdavis.com

The Surface Mount Technology Association (SMTA, Minneapolis, MN) is co-locating its annual conference, SMTA International, with the Assembly Tech Expo on September 26-30, in Rosemont, IL.

Many events are planned for industry professionals who have an interest specifically in lead-free soldering technology. To help industry professionals prepare for the 2006 deadline, this year's event will feature eight short courses, close to 40 technical papers and a Lead-Free Soldering Symposium.

The short courses will cover: Lead-Free Solder Joint Reliability; Lead-Free Conversion Project; Real Time Process Control, Including Lead-Free; Lead-Free Rework; Lead-Free Surface Finishes; Implementing Lead-Free at Your Facility; The Real Cost of Lead-Free; and Ten Steps to an Effective RoHs Compliance Process.

The technical papers will cover printing, selective soldering, moisture-sensitive devices (MSD), rework, ball grid array (BGA), flip chip, harsh environments, surface finishes, automated optical inspection (AOI), x-ray, tin whiskers, lead-free materials, processes and reliability.

Organized by Dr. Paul T. Vianco of Sandia National Labs, the symposium will provide technical information on alternative materials systems, tin whiskers, lead-free processing techniques and the growing knowledge base of lead-free solder joint reliability, as they related to lead-free technology.

Additionally, a free session entitled "Lead-Free: Where Are We Right Now?" will explore the transition from standard leaded solders in a volume-manufacturing environment with papers from Agilent, Flextronics and Indium Corp. of America. The SMTAI Opening Ceremony will focus on RoHS Compliance.

www.smta.org/smtai/index.cfm

The National Electronics Manufacturing Initiative's (NEMI, Herndon, VA) Tin Whisker User Group has released a draft proposal of tin whisker acceptance test requirements. As part of its efforts to help suppliers and users minimize the exposure to problems associated with tin whiskers, the group has developed the document to provide testing requirements and acceptance criteria for evaluating devices with tin finishes in high-reliability applications.

As the electronics industry moves toward lead-free assemblies, a simple manufacturing solution is to use pure tin, or alloys with high tin content, as coatings on lead-frames. However, tin is known to be susceptible to the formation of needle-like protrusions, or whiskers, and tin whiskers are a reliability concern. They can cause electrical shorts, disruption of moving parts or degraded RF/high-speed performance. Tin whiskers may grow between adjacent conductors of different potentials and cause either a transient short circuit if the whisker is burned open, or a permanent short if the whisker remains intact. At shorter lengths, whiskers may create a stub-type effect that degrades performance of high-speed/high-frequency circuits. Additionally, whiskers can potentially break loose and, as debris, cause mechanical or other electrical problems.

"System developers face two key problems," said Joe Smetana, principle engineer, advanced technology for Alcatel and chair of the NEMI Tin Whisker User Group. "First, there is no scientific consensus on whisker formation and growth fundamentals, despite five decades of research. Second, there is no standard set of tests that can accelerate whisker formation and growth and relate these tests to field conditions with any reasonable degree of certainty. These issues make it difficult for developers to safely specify tin-based lead-free finishes for components used in their products, particularly those concerned with high-reliability or design life of more than five years."

NEMI has previously published recommendations for test conditions for evaluating tin whisker growth and for mitigation practices to help prevent whisker formation. The latest publication combines practices established by the previous documents and adds information such as test lengths, failure criteria, number of parts and additional bias voltage testing. It provides guidelines for post finishing inspection and preconditioning; outlines a flowchart for acceptance requirements; provides a framework for a qualification test report; and defines requirements for process controls and periodic testing.

The Tin Whisker User Group has scheduled a meeting on June 2, in conjunction with the IEEE Electronic Components and Technology Conference (ECTC), in Las Vegas, NV. The group will review the proposed test requirements with suppliers and solicit feedback on the practicality of implementing the various recommended mitigation and testing approaches. Supplier inputs during the meeting will be considered by the User Group for possible modifications to the test requirements.

The draft of the NEMI acceptance test requirements document is available at http://www.nemi.org/projects/ese/tin_whisker_activities.html.

www.nemi.org