Digi-Key Corp. (Thief River Falls, MN) has announced the addition of Tim Sanghera as vice president of semiconductor products. Sanghera brings 15 years of experience in marketing, sales and technology expertise in the semiconductor industry.  His mission will be to enhance the company's semiconductor product portfolio by working in concerted effort with its current supplier base.

Mark Larson, president, said "Digi-Key's strength in the semiconductor area is rapidly growing and we are pleased to have Tim's expertise as part of our team. His knowledge of the industry in general and semiconductors specifically makes him uniquely equipped to further drive sales growth for Digi-key semiconductor vendors."

Prior to joining Digi-Key, Sanghera was the Distribution Sales Manager for the America's at Winbond Electronics and was instrumental in business development and marketing for Mix Signal, uC, Non-Volatile, I/O and Memory products.  Before that, he held positions at Sharp Electronics as part of the Distribution Sales Team, including marketing of key LCD, Opto, Memory and ARM based products.  In total, Sanghera has spent more than 15 years in the Semiconductor Industry in various management positions responsible for the company's corporate and product line marketing, strategy development and corporate technology programs.

Digi-Key Corp. is a full service provider of prototype/design as well as volume production quantities of electronic components. 

www.digikey.com

Copyright 2004, UP Media Group. All rights reserved.

The first annual International Wafer-Level Packaging Congress (IWLPC), co-sponsored by the Surface Mount Technology Association (SMTA, Minneapolis, MN), will be presented at the San Jose Doubletree Inn, San Jose, CA, on Oct. 10-12.  The congress includes three days of technical programming and two full days of exhibits presented by suppliers to the semiconductor packaging and testing industry.

Dr. W.R. "Bill" Bottoms, chairman of Third Millennium Test Solutions, will present the dinner keynote speech on October 11.  The title of his address is "Wafer-Level Packaging: Why and Why Not?" With a Ph.D. from Tulane University, Dr. Bottoms has an extensive background in academia, venture funding and in the commercial semiconductor equipment sector.

After receiving his doctorate in physics, Dr. Bottoms joined the electrical engineering faculty of Princeton University, where he remained until 1976.  He then joined Varian Associates in Palo Alto, CA, as manager of research and development, and he was later named president of Varian's newly formed semiconductor equipment group. After leaving Varian, he was senior vice president and general partner at Patricof & Co.

Ventures Inc., an international venture capital firm. He founded Third Millennium Test Solutions in March 1999.

Dr. Bottoms has also served on a number of government and industry committees and advisory positions, including chairmanship of the subcommittee of the Technical Advisory Committee of the U.S. Commerce Department's Export Control Commission for Semiconductor Equipment and Materials.

Joseph Fjelstad, co-founder of SiliconPipe Inc., and Dr. Ken Gilleo of ET-Trends LLC will co-chair the technical program. Both are widely known speakers on semiconductor packaging and interconnection topics. In addition to its focus on wafer-level packaging, the congress will explore many topics in chip-scale packaging and other advanced packaging processes.

www.smta.org

Copyright 2004, UP Media Group. All rights reserved.

Dow Corning Corp. (Midland, MI), a provider of silicon-based technology, has launched a partnering approach specifically designed to help electronics industry customers solve business problems and seize emerging opportunities. The Electronic Solutions initiative expands the company's value proposition beyond materials and signals a significant shift in the company's business strategy.

Drawing on its 60 years as a materials manufacturer and the capabilities of its partners throughout the electronics industry, Dow Corning can now help customers meet many business challenges, including product and application development; materials, process and equipment integration; facilities design and engineering; and supply chain management (including environmental, health and safety capabilities).

The company has also tapped Arthur Hanlon to lead the solutions strategy. In this role, Hanlon oversees the development of customer-centered solutions across Dow Corning's semiconductor, packaging, systems assembly and subsystems assembly market segments, including emerging business programs.

To date, Dow Corning has helped many companies throughout the electronics industry overcome specific business challenges, including factory and geographic expansions, supply chain optimization, equipment procurement and product research and development.

"Where we once had limited points of contact with customers, typically between our sales person and the company's procurement department, we now interface with companies on multiple levels," said Tom Cook, executive director. "Our engineers work with customers' engineers to troubleshoot process problems on their manufacturing lines, our scientists support customers' scientists in creating new formulations, R&D teams help customers' brand managers create new markets and our business development leaders work with our customer's business owners to outline and develop proposals to meet their significant business challenges."

www.dowcorning.com/electronics

Printing printed circuit boards (PCBs) in highly flexible production environment demands new solutions for efficient use of a screen/stencil printer. Standard inline printers are not ideally suited since various production lines or production cells would need a machine for each section.

The SP500 batch printer from ESSEMTEC (Glassboro, NJ) can be used for printing several lines or cells, as it provides a fully automatic process.

All printing parameters are stored in an internal database and users can also store information such as set up info and solder paste and stencil specifications. The operator can easily select the product and gets all necessary information for setting the new batch.

The printer automatically aligns the PCBs to the stencils with an integrated vision system. The printer can be operated in a manual loading or fully automatic batch-loading mode. The related PCB loading/unloading system automatically feeds PCBs from a rack, prints them and stores them on the same rack. The integrated underside stencil cleaning system makes sure that the batch is properly printed, avoiding blocked stencil apertures. Different cycles can be programmed and three different cleaning modes—dry, wet or vacuum—can be selected and combined.

The complete printing cycle is fully automatic; a full rack of PCBs can be printed and then inserted to a surface-mount device assembly line or cell. Problems with paste drying on the stencil are avoided.

www.essemtec.com