OC/LA SMTA Tech Expo a Success in Long Beach

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

On Thursday, November 2, the Orange County/Los Angeles Chapter of SMTA hosted the SMTA Expo and Tech Forum at The Grand Event Center in Long Beach. The Tech Expo featured technical sessions as well as an exhibition of 46 companies, most of which supply products and services to the CM/EMS industries.

The Exhibition Hall

As I went from table to table throughout the exhibition hall, most exhibitors expressed enjoying the networking and sales opportunities afforded by this annual event. Now in its sixth year, the number of exhibitors and attendees has fluctuated in direct correlation to economic conditions from year to year, according to Kathy Palumbo, chapter President. SMTA had a presence to support the event, and greet attendees at the registration table, which was appreciated. The low cost for exhibition, the free parking, free lunch and free admission made it a very high-value, low/no-cost way to gather information and resources in a short 1-day regional venue. Being centrally located in Long Beach made it easy to drive to for both Orange County and Los Angeles residents.

Technical Program

Three technical sessions were offered throughout the event hours that ran from 10am-3pm.

The first session was entitled ASK THE EXPERTS: Meeting the Challenges of Effective Cleaning/Defluxing in Southern California. This was an open forum Q & A that allowed attendees to pepper the panel members with real world questions surrounding cleaning issues currently impacting their businesses. The panel chair was Barbara Kanegsberg, "The Cleaning Lady" of BFK Solutions LLC. She was joined by the following panelists:

• Julie Field, Technical Devices Company
• Naveen Ravindran, ZESTRON Americas
• Gilbert Roberge, Inventec Corporation
• Paul Petruna, Sirco Industrial Inc.

The final technical session was presented by Julie Ellis, Field Applications Engineer for TTM. Her talk was entitled Avoiding Assembly Pitfalls at the Bare Board Design Stage. In her presentation, she helped PCB layout professionals examine ways to optimize their designs in relation to the assembly process.

More SMTA Expo and Tech Forums Coming to a City Near You

If you haven’t had the chance to attend a regional SMTA Expo and Tech Forum, I would highly recommend that you do. You can find information and locations for upcoming Expo and Tech Forums on the SMTA Website. For more information about the LA/OC SMTA chapter visit their website at http://www.laocsmta.org.

Also, keep your eyes open for my upcoming interview articles with OC/LA SMTA Chapter President, Kathy Palumbo and Vice president, Scott Penin as well as Barbara Kanegsberg “The Cleaning Lady” of BFK Solutions.