Estimated reading time: 6 minutes

EPTE Newsletter from Japan - IPC EXPO/APEX 2008

A three day conference and exhibition for IPC Printed Circuits Expo, APEX and the Designers Summit 2008 began on April 1 at the Mandalay Bay Resort & Convention Center in Las Vegas.   I have not attended the IPC EXPO for almost three years, and this show has grown significantly since my last visit.  Nearly five hundred American and foreign companies and organizations reserved booths.  There were not too many foreign visitors, and the majority of attendees were North Americans.   There were some visitors from India, as well as several companies who reserved booths.  The influx of people at the show from India represents the successful expansion for the electronics industry over the last three years in this country.  The technical conferences drew more visitors from mostly the Asian and European circles.

Judging from the size of the exhibition and number of the visitors, one could not presume there is any down turn in the American economy; however, most "water cooler" conversations centered on the slowing demands.  There were also several rumors running rampant about more bankruptcies, closures and lay-offs ahead for the industry; nothing concrete...just rumors.

Companies representing the assembling and inspection segment occupied more booth spaces than companies from the printed circuit board arena. Major assembling machine companies such as Panasonic, JUKI Assembleon and Samsung reserved large spaces to demonstrate their latest machines.  One representative from a machine company told me there were not many inquiries for high-speed machines used in large volume productions, but there is a remarkable demand for the small but flexible machines used for prototype and small volume productions in North American market.

Lead-free soldering is a hot topic (no pun intended) and remains a major issue with assembling of printed circuit boards. The predominant soldering material suppliers such as Senju Metal, Nihon Almit and Nihon Superior secured relatively large booths and featured products from the second generation of lead-free solders with capable reflow furnace lines.

The inspection systems category was also promoted at the exhibition with products from major players such as machine giant AOI, Orbotech and Camtek. They all demonstrated their latest machines.   I also noticed many small booths with spin off and relating products for tooling as well inspection and repair parts for printed circuit board assembly. 

Unfortunately, representation from the printed circuit board industry and related materials and machines was minimal. There were a few large PWB manufacturers such as EIT and Sanmina SCI, and several manufacturers and agents representing Chinese board manufacturers. I checked out their booths, but didn't observe any innovative or new technologies.

Drilling machine vendors such as Hitachi Via Mechanics, Pluritec and Excellon also featured their machines.  Laser drilling is now very popular to generate micro via-holes, and many machine manufacturers have capitalized on its approval and displayed their new laser systems. They also hedged their bet by demonstrating the micro via-hole capabilities from mechanical drilling machines. One of the manufacturers stated that 50 micron drilling is possible by mechanical drilling for ultra thin substrates.    

Other categories that include materials such as copper laminates and manufacturing equipment used for the exposure and wet processing lines had minimal representation. I wandered by many smaller displays for copper foils; solder mask materials, shielding materials and resistance/capacitance materials for embedded passive circuits.

The majority who participated at the exhibition and technical conference were from foreign companies.  Contributions from American companies continue to diminish as volume production continues to shift over to lower labor cost areas such as Asia and Eastern Europe. However, I believe opportunities for American companies to become technology leaders do exist even though Japanese companies hold onto the lead position in the circuit board industry. The American circuit board industry need to take the bull by the horns on a national level and develop a think tank with one objective: become global industry leader.   

Dominique K. Numakura

DKN Research, www.dknresearch.com

Headlines of the week

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

1.      Taiyo Yuden (Major passive component supplier in Japan) 3/26

Will open the 4th manufacturing plant of MLCC (Multi-Layer Ceramic Capacitor) in China. The new subsidiary also has marketing responsibilities in China.

2.      DENKA (Inorganic electronic material supplier in Japan) 3/26

Plans to increase the manufacturing capacities of the circuit boards. The demands of aluminum metal base, Al N base and Si3N4 base circuits have been booming with power electronics applications.

3.      Dai Nikko Engineering (EMS company in Japan) 3/26

Will found assembling subsidiaries in Vietnam. China operations will be consolidated to one or two locations. It had over 400 million dollars revenue in 2007.

4.      JEITA (Industry organization in Japan) 3/28

January shipment of electronic components of Japanese manufacturers had a negative growth from the same month of 2007. JEITA expects minus growth will be continued next few months at least.

5.      KDDI (Cellular service company in Japan) 3/28

Has announced the recall of cellular phone batteries made by Kyocera/NEC Tokin to avoid fire accidents. Over 2 hundred thousand units.

6.      Hitachi Cable (Major cable and tape circuit manufacturer in Japan) 3/28

Has agreed to acquire the tape circuit business from Casio Micronics. The transaction will be done June 1st 2008. The new name of the company will be Hitachi Densen Film Device, Ltd.

7.      Nikko Metals (Major non-iron metal supplier in Japan) 3/31

Will invest 2 to 3 billion yens to increase the manufacturing capacity of the ED copper foil in Philippines plant 18% to 1000 tons per month.

8.      Sanyo Semiconductor (Major device supplier in Japan) 4/1

Will start the sample supply of aluminum base substrates for the high brightness LED modules.

9.      Fujikura (Major cable and flex circuit supplier in Japan) 4/2

Has transferred all production of wire harnesses from Spain to Romania and Mexico to have lower labor cost. Fujikura plans to increase the productivities 20 to 30% in Romania and Mexico.

10.  Tamura (Major soldering material supplier in Japan) 4/2

Has started the sample supply of the new lead-free solder paste "LFSOLDER TFL-204-151". New paste has much longer pot life during the SMT processing.

11.  DENKA (Inorganic electronic material supplier in Japan) 4/2

Will start the volume production of the power substrates for the LED modules in 2008.

12.  Fujikura (Major flex circuit manufacturer in Japan) 4/2

Has increased the revenue of flexible circuits in 4Q 2007 28.1% to 31.9 billion yens from the same period of 2006. Income also increased 8% to 2.5 billion yens.

13.  Taiyo Industries (Prototype shop of flexible circuits in Japan) 4/2

Has forecasted 6.8 billion revenue for the fiscal year of 2008, 10.3% increase from 2007. It expects remarkable rebounds of test machine business.

14.  Hirafuku Denki (Module manufacturer in Japan) 4/2

Will build a new plant in Hyogo Prefecture for the circuit board assembling of controller modules for automobiles.

15.  Tashiro Denka (Plating shop in Japan) 4/2

Has been increasing the elecroless Au/Ni plating for printed circuit boards. Increase of the plating metals has been pushing up the revenue.

Interesting literatures about the packaging industry

Articles of DKN Research

1. "Screen Printing for High-Density Flexible Electronics", Robert Turunen, Masafumi Nakayama and Dominique Numakura, Printed Circuit FAB, October, 2007, http://pcdandm.com/cms/content/view/3846/95/

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

3. New "Roll to Roll Production of Flexible Circuits, Possibilities and Issues" Dominique Numakura, Joho Kiko, Tokyo, March 2008 (Japanese only)

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

5. New "Screen Printing Process for High Density Flexible Electronics", Robert Turunen, Dominique Numakura, Masafumi Nakayama and Hisayuki Kawasaki, IPC Printed Circuit Expo/APEX and the Designers Summit, April 2008.

6. New "Global Market of Flexible Circuits, Market Trends and Technical Design Trends by Applications", Dominique Numakura, Electronic Journal, February, 2008 (English power point file is available.)

From the Major Industry Magazines

1. "Chip Packaging 2.0 Provides Benefits to Boards Desiners", Martin Hart, CircuiTree, March 2008.

2. "What Drives the Crowd? -A great technical conference and location are most important, readers say." Mike Buetow, Circuits Assembly, March 2008.

3. "Production Mix for Today's Product Mix", Mike Foster and Larry Groves, SMT, February, 2008

4. "Improved INNERLAYER BONDING for Sequential Lamination", Jean Rasmussen, Abayomi I. Owei, Danis Isik, Axel Dombert and David ormerod, Printed Circuit FAB, March, 2008.

5. "IC Package Drives Contact Technology Innovation", Ila Pal, Advanced Packaging, March, 2008

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