Tech Articles

Building on 27 years in business, ACD is one of the most dynamic and fastest growing design and electronic manufacturing service companies in the greater southwest area of the United States. ACD strives to continually improve its process and ensure that customers receive a high quality product in a timeframe that meets or exceeds expectations.

Juki is the pioneer of the modular assembly line, which it introduced to the market in 1993. Since that time, the company has increased the speed of its machines while maintaining quick changeovers and high uptimes. Renowned for producing reliable, flexible placement equipment that is easy to use and maintain, Juki recently has emerged as a significant player in the high-speed market with the release of a 90K CPH version of its successful FX-3 platform.

Handling parts during assembly can entail a variety of different tools. Larger parts can be handled easily by hand without the assistance of any special tooling. As parts become smaller and more fragile, specialized handling tools become more important. For many decades, the handling tool of choice has been the mechanical tweezer. The tool is simple to use and many people have tweezes at home used for applications from removing splinters to plucking eyebrows. A disadvantage to mechanical gripping, however, is that fragile parts may be damaged or dropped during the handling process.

MX-Design, a leading lighting specialist in Belgium, turns entire façades into LED video screens and produces customer-specific LED lighting systems. Quick turnaround times are important for its business, therefore, MX-Design has installed a flexible SMD assembly line from Essemtec.

In today’s environment, components are sold worldwide through brokers. Metallization quality often is detected only after the components have been delivered. The days when customers ordered components directly from the manufacturer have passed and soldering with lead-free compositions makes everything even more challenging. Now there are even rumours that newly packaged and labelled components may not be as they are marked.

Recently, the editorial team at Electronics Production World caught up with Scott Fillebrown, President and CEO of ACD. In an interesting conversation, Fillebrown filled us in on the company’s past, future and what makes this company stand out from its many competitors.

There is a clear trend in the electronics industry towards greener, more environmentally friendly products. In particular, EU legislation as well as regulations such as RoHS and REACH have increased the focus on environmental and occupational safety concerns within the electronics manufacturing industry. Among other things, the goal is to completely abandon the use of halogen when manufacturing electronic assemblies. In addition to the use of circuit boards without brominated flame retardants and halogen containing components, it involves the application of halogen-free, no-clean solder pastes and fluxes. Since various halogens contained in solder pastes, especially bromides and chlorides, are regarded as harmful to health and the environment, many companies, particularly larger electronics manufacturers, are converting to halogen-free pastes to bring "greener" products to market.

Today we hear a lot about cleanliness and the need for circuit card assemblies (CCA) to meet a cleanliness specification or standard. Unfortunately, there is no industry specification or guideline that outlines what microgram per square inch of Anions (Chloride, Fluoride, Nitrite, Sulfate, Bromide, Nitrate and Phosphate), Weak Organic Acids (Acetate, Formate, MSA, Adipic and Succinic) and Cations (Lithium, Sodium, Ammonium and Potassium) are needed. Does it matter if the CCA was manufactured using a No-Clean Flux? What about a CCA that was manufactured using either an RMA Flux or a Water-Soluble Flux that has been cleaned or washed?

Through a combination of proprietary materials and innovative processes, Terepac Corporation (Waterloo, Ontario) has been able to develop extremely cost-effective miniature electronics with the potential to provide a wide variety of markets with the advantages of silicon at the price of printed circuitry.

Zollner Elektronik AG is the only German company listed among the top 15 electronics manufacturing services (EMS) manufacturers worldwide. The services offered by this company range from the development of electronic/mechatronic products to after-sales services. Just as comprehensive as its services is the range of branches that Zollner works for: these include automotive and industrial electronics, as well as medical technology, aviation, and aerospace or telecommunications among others.

Roberto Segura joined Christopher Associates almost 20 years ago. Today, as the company’s Sales Manager for Latin America, he is responsible for more than 30 percent of the company’s sales. Electronics Production World caught up with him to ask him about his background, his career in Mexico, an upcoming Christopher Associates conference, and a recent partnership with Retronix Mexico.

Root cause failure analysis (RCFA) is the process of determining the source of a problem. In many industries, especially those involving complex machinery, it is common to use root cause failure analysis when problems occur. Why is RCFA so important? Efficiency and accuracy. When it comes to the complicated and expensive machines used in the PCB assembly process, downtime equals increased costs, lost profits, missed deliveries, lost opportunities or all of these. Better efficiency is one of the few ways to compete with lower labor cost manufacturers. With so many machines’ specifications looking so similar on paper, features that allow end users to improve efficiency in the production process are gaining importance in the selection process. The use of RCFA tools can assist in improving utilization, efficiency and maximizing profitability.

In today's electronics industry, the reduced geometries of high-volume components, coupled with ever-increasing demand for faster customer turnaround times, has led to a growing need for automated packaging solutions. While the accurate placement of, and accounting for, thousands of tiny components into packages may seem trivial, the time it takes component manufacturers to perform these packaging tasks without automation can be a bottleneck to business growth. This is particularly true with companies that build components based on customer specifications.

There are numerous trade shows for the electronics manufacturing sector. Some are new, some have been around for a long time, but none of them have the sheer size and presence commanded by Productronica in Munich. Productronica is run every two years, on an alternating cycle with its sister show electronica. It claims to be the only place in the world where you’ll find the entire value chain for electronics manufacturing under a single roof. It is one of the few truly international trade shows remaining in our industry.

Electronics Production World speaks with Martin Gershenson, General Manager of Christopher Associates about recent changes to the company's sales and distribution networks, new suppliers to the company, new AOI models, and how Christopher Associates keeps up with an ever-changing industry. Finally, Mr Gershenson discusses the changes he has witnessed in the industry during his time with Christopher Associates.

Nihon Superior Co. Ltd. is a supplier of advanced soldering materials to the global market. In 1999, Tetsuro Nishimura, President of Nihon Superior Co. Ltd., invented a revolutionary tin-copper-nickel-germanium alloy – SN100C. Twelve years later, the material has grown and succeeded throughout the world to become one of the global industry’s most popular lead-free wave soldering alloys. Although developed initially to address the need for an economical wave solder, it has since been found that its properties also make SN100C an ideal choice for reflow and hand soldering as well as spheres for the attachment of area-array packages.

Sono-Tek is the world leader in the development and application of ultrasonic coating systems for electronics and advanced energy applications. Compared to conventional pressure spraying methods, the company’s ultrasonic nozzles are non-clogging, reduce liquid usage, waste and environmental impact while achieving much more precise, uniform, thin-film coatings.

Over the last number of years, distribution has played an increasingly important role in equipment sales in Europe. One of the fastest growing of these new European Distributors is Etek Europe, and EPW caught up with M.D. Mike Nelson to ask him a few questions.

This week, Electronics Production World spoke with Steve Farragher, International Sales Manager at Europlacer. Steve joined Europlacer in September 2005 as International Sales Manager. The primary task of this role was revitalising the existing Distributor network, identifying and subsequently appointing additional channels to market in other countries with a focus on Eastern Europe, Scandinavia and the Baltics.

These are several possible soldering faults. All of them are related to incorrect parameters for fluxing, preheating and soldering. This verifies the basic necessitiy to monitor and control these process steps in order to achieve the required soldering quality and to avoid costly rework.