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EPTE Newsletter from Japan - TPCA Show 2007 - Continued

TPCA Show 2007 (continued)

The Taiwan Printed Circuit Association Show 20007 needed more floor space compared to previous years to accommodate the increase in the number of vendor participation. Machine suppliers for assembling machines and test equipment reserved a significant amount of space, and many people noted a lot of Taiwanese machine manufacturers had relatively large booths to display their new products. Some foreign machine suppliers such as Orbotech, an Israel AOI machine company and Schmid, a German wet process supplier secured their own space at the show, but many foreign machine companies arranged to share booths with local trading companies such as Ofuna, WKK and Daidalos.

Competition has heated up between Taiwanese and foreign machine manufacturers. Previously, the Taiwanese machines use to have a reputation of being sub par with low reliability. The machines designs were actual copies from foreign manufacturers and their structures were very similar; unfortunately, the Taiwanese products were not as reliable. However, they have made significant improvements over the years. There are now many reliable machine suppliers in Taiwan that can meet the needs for printed circuit manufacturing and the assembling processes that include NC drilling machines, exposure machines, wet processing lines, heat presses, screen printers, punching presses, SMT mounting machines, soldering furnaces, board testers, etc.

On the surface, the machines made in Taiwan do not appear efficient; however, it is not big issue when they are up and running. Productivity from them is almost equal to the foreign manufactured machines. Automations, HDI capabilities and reliability from the Taiwanese machines still lag behind the machines from Japanese or European companies, but the technical gaps are decreasing. I observed a couple of unique machines made in Taiwan for the manufacturing process of flexible circuits, especially for the coverlay lamination. Company representatives reported the machines are now exported to Japan and Korea.

Huge advantages the Taiwanese manufacturers have over foreign companies are their communication skills with buyers from China, which boasts the largest PWB market in the world, nowadays. Most of the major manufacturers within the Chinese PWB market are Taiwanese and their decision makers are also Taiwanese. Taiwanese machine manufacturing representative have built strong rapports with these key people. Taiwanese machine manufacturers will be tough competitors for the Japanese and European manufacturers in the future.

I was a little bit disappointed with the representation from material suppliers and PWB manufactures. Last year's show included many of these suppliers; however, this year not too many of them participated. There were major copper foil suppliers at the show, but not many laminate suppliers. There were more than ten adhesiveless flexible copper laminate suppliers at the TPCA Show last year, but only three companies this year (one of them was a new face). A friend commented that the flex business has been sluggish for the past year, and budget constraints were the reason for these companies not renting booths. On a positive note, three new flexible circuit polyimide film suppliers reserved booths at the show.

PWB manufacturers were not very aggressive promoting their new technologies, and many big Taiwanese PWB manufacturers had the smallest booths in the show. Some of them had no samples to display or representatives to promote their technologies and products. It may true that the target customers of TPCA Show are these PWB manufacturers, so PWB manufacturers do not expect to see their customers, actually assemblers and OEM manufacturers in Taiwan.  

Anyway, I have learned a lot of things about the PWB and related industries not only in Taiwan, but also from the Asian market during the show under a Typhoon warning.

Dominique Numakura, DKN Research (dnumakura@dknresearch.com)

Headlines of the week

(Please contact haverhill@dknreseach.com for further information of the news.)

1.       Seiko Epson (Major electronics company in Japan) 9/26

Has developed a new bumping process with plastic resin core for COG assembling. The volume production will start in 2007.

2.       TDK (Major component supplier in Japan) 10/3

Will acquire 74.3% share of MPT (Magnecomp Precision Technology), major head device supplier in Thailand for hard disc drives.

3.       Hitachi Cable (Major cable and substrate supplier in Japan) 10/3

Will invest about 2 billion yens to strengthen the manufacturing capabilities of TAB, COF and BGA substrates in Kofu Plant.

4.       Sharp (Major electronics company in Japan) 10/3

Has developed a new blending technology of the bio-plastic resins with poly styrene resins for housing of home appliances.

5.       DSM (Plastic resin supplier in Holland) 10/5

Has developed a new heat resistant engineering plastic resin "PA4T" with an excellent dimensional stability for lead-free applications.

6.       Murata (Major component supplier in Japan) 10/10

Has developed the world smallest wireless antenna (13 x 40 x 3 mm) for NFC base cellular phones. Murata already started the volume production.

7.       Nikkei Shimbun (Major newspaper in Japan) 10/11

Major electronics manufacturers in Korea will start the volume production of the next generation OLED.

8.       Kyocera (Major electronics company in Japan) 10/11

Has unveiled the new poly-silicon base solar cell with the world highest conversion efficiency. (18.5%)

9.       Anritsu (Test equipment manufacturer in Japan) 10/13

Has commercialized a set of new temperature sensor and thermometer for the control of soldering tools designed for lead-free soldering.

10.   Fuji Film (Major camera and film supplier in Japan) 10/13

Will start the photo printer business for home use.

11.   Kuraray (Major plastic material supplier in Japan) 10/13

Has developed a new conductive fiber introducing nono scale particle of copper sulfates.

12.   Nikko Metal (Major supplier of non-iron metals in Japan) 10/13

Plans to expand the business of thin stainless steel foils in electronics market. The production capacity will be doubled to 250 tons per year in the next 3 years.

Interesting literatures about the packaging industry

Articles of DKN Research

1. (New) "Screen Printing for High-Density Flexible Electronics", Robert Turunen, Masafumi Nakayama and Dominique Numakura, Printed Circuit FAB, October, 2007

2. (New) "Total Process Solution for the High-Density Multi-layer Flexible Printable Electronic Circuits", (Japanese only) Dominique Numakura, Denshi Zairyo, October, 2007

3. (New) "The latest electronics package, Part XXXI, Cellular Phones", Dominique Numakura, Electronics Packaging Technology, October, 2007 

4. New "Coombs' Printed Circuits Handbook, 6th Edition, Part 15-Flexible Circuits", Dominique Numakura, McGraw Hill, New York, September, 2007

5. New "DKN Research Develops Film Base Connector", Circuits Assembly, September, 2007.

6. "Flexible Circuit Materials", (Japanese only) Dominique Numakura, Denshi Zairyo, April, 2007

7. "Business Trends and Technology Trends of the HDI Flexible Circuits -

Roadmap for the Ultra High-Density Advanced Flexible Circuits", Dominique Numakura, KPCA, October 31, 2006

From the Major Industry Magazines

1. "Using Physics of Failure to identify Root Cause of Printed Board Failure", Craig Hillman, CircuiTree, August, 2007.

2. "Using AOI in the 01005 Assembling Process", Owen Sit and Joshua Petras, Circuits Assembly, September, 2007.

3. "Corner and Edge Bond Dispensing for BGAs", Al Lewis, SMT, September, 2007

4. "OPTOELECTRONIC SUBSTRATES - Will it happen?", Jack Fisher, Printed Circuit Design & Manufacturing, September, 2007.

5. "Single Wafer Surface Conditioning", Scott Drews, Advanced Packaging, August/September, 2007

7. "Under the Hood, Efficiency vs. Speed", presented by EE Times and Techonline, October 8, 2007

8. "Tape Substrate Manufacturers Have Been Facing Conversion Phases", (Japanese) The Semiconductor Industry News, September 26th, 2007