Latest Articles

A Greener, Money-saving Approach to Dealing with Waste

EMS firm Sanmina has a high technology manufacturing facility in Huntsville, Alabama, where it produces state of the art PCBAs on several advanced SMT lines, for some of the world’s leading medical and defense companies. Here's how the company was able to manage its hazardous waste disposal and be certified by ADEM, one of the strictest state regulatory agencies in the country.

SMT Magazine August Issue Tackles War on Process Failure

Based on our survey, there are four major issues when it comes to quality and process failure: poor process control, poor training of employees around quality, inability to quickly identify where and how waste is being created, and poor technical support from suppliers. The August issue of SMT Magazine features several though-provoking articles tackling the war on process failure in manufacturing electronics assemblies.

Understanding Parylene Deposition

Parylene's deposition process is unique among conformal coatings. Unlike others that start as a liquid, get deposited and dry, it starts as a solid, turned into a vapor, and then deposited onto the substrate. This article explains this unique method as well as its real advantages.

Fairlight: An Iconic Name in Digital Audio

Fairlight Instruments became one of the biggest names in the recording industry with its digital sampling technology in 1975. Forty years later, the company is still leading with a full line of products that their technologists design, engineer in house, and produce with a network of EMS companies. In this interview with I-Connect007's Barry Matties, Fairlight's Emilijo Mihatov shares insights and strategies for succeeding by thinking differently.

Connector Cleanliness and Flux Entrapment

Plated through hole connectors can present special challenges when it comes to assembly cleanliness and reliability. Cleanliness of the raw part, processing parameters and chemistry selection can all negatively affect the reliability and robustness of the interconnect system. This article will discuss some common issues and how to resolve them.

Localized Contamination Can Cause Big Problems

In today's electronics manufacturing environment, assemblers continue to overlook areas of localized contamination that are capable of causing product failures. By neglecting to examine especially sensitive, critical, or tightly packed areas on an assembly, opportunities for electrochemical failures loom. This article talks about a case study involving a visible white residue and dendritic growth in a connector area, and the analysis done to determine its cause and implications.

ROSE – What Does the Data Mean and When Is It Useful?

Profound changes in the processes and materials used in the electronic assembly industry have a significant impact on the usefulness of ROSE testing. This article will discuss what ROSE test results really mean and when they are—and more importantly, are not—useful.

Meeting High-Speed Demand with Optical Circuits

In an interview with I-Connect007 Publisher Barry Matties, Felix Betschon of vario-optics discusses the advancements in optical circuit boards, and explains the core advantage of this technology and what circuit designers must do to add optical circuits into their design disciplines. He also talks about the opportunities for this new technology, and what's driving customers to consider adopting it.

EchoStar: The Future of Supply Chain Management Done Right

EchoStar isn’t your typical OEM—they take supply chain management to a whole new level. Barry Matties was able to visit Echostar's EMS partner in Shanghai, DD & TT Electronic Enterprise, to take a look at what they are doing, and find out about Echostar's supply chain management strategies.

Cutting Cost, Not Price

In any supply chain survey, the issue of cost comes up repeatedly. This article explores the downside of focussing on price and suggests some of the practical ways you can reduce costs without having a negative impact on your product.

EMI-caused EOS Sources in Automated Equipment

Electrical overstress causes damage to sensitive components, including latent damage. A significant source of EOS is high-frequency noise in automated manufacturing equipment. This article analyses sources of such noise, how it affects components and how to mitigate this problem.

IPC-A-610: What's New With Rev F?

Why are new revisions created anyway? Can’t IPC just issue updates to the existing revision? Who defines what the changes are going to be and who approves of those changes? Why can’t they make changes for all the new technologies available? And the best question of all: Why does my product have some conditions that are not covered in the documents and specifications? Leo Lambert explains.

Pad Cratering Susceptibility Testing with Acoustic Emission

Pad cratering is difficult to detect by monitoring electric resistance since it initiates before an electrical failure occurs. This article presents the results of pad cratering susceptibility of laminates using the acoustic emission method under four-point bend and compares the AE results to the pad-solder level testing results.

Masking for Parylene Deposition

Parylene conformal coating does an incomparable job of protecting product substrates from harsh, unpredictable operating environments. But inappropriately applied parylene can have an adverse effect on the functionality and performance of an assembly or component. Ensuring proper implementation of masking can help address this.

Residues Can Cause Low Voltage Electronics to Ignite

This article dispels the myth that low-power devices such as remote controls have insufficient energy to be a source of ignition. It also discusses why leakage current, even in low voltage/low power applications, can be sufficient to eventually ignite proximate fuel and lead to sustained fire in PCBA surfaces.

Benefits of Soldering with Vacuum Profiles, Part 2

Part 1 of this article series explained the continuously increasing requirements for void-free solder joints in electronics manufacturing, amid the relentless introduction of new variants of bottom-terminated components. This article takes a closer look at the soldering process with a focus on vacuum profiles, as well as an evaluation project and the obtained soldering results.

China Electronics Manufacturing Industry Welcomes New Era

NEPCON South China 2015 will connect upstream and downstream players in the electronics manufacturing equipment and automation technologies industries, and provide the best possible platform to showcase industry progress, conduct exchange and advance trade.

A Rework Dilemma: PCB Shields

RF shields minimize radio frequency noise to prevent it from affecting the sensitive and critical electronic components beneath the shield, as well as from interfering with neighboring devices or other systems in the vicinity. This article talks about the challenges associated with reworking RF shields on wireless device PCBs.

A Look at the High-Reliability Interconnect Market

In an interview with I-Connect007, Mark Cormier of Miraco Inc. discusses his company's activities and capabilities, the latest trends and drivers in the high-reliability segment, and their strategies when it comes to managing their assembly work as well as their audit processes to find EMS providers.

The Theory Behind Tin Whisker Phenomena, Part 2

In the second part of this article series, Dr. Jennie Hwang writes that a plausible theory of tin whisker growth can be postulated through deliberating the combination and confluence of several key metallurgical processes.

Industry 4.0: Who Benefits?

After many cycles of ROI justification have occurred already in most PCB assembly manufacturing companies, people are realizing that innovation and investment in new systems may affect them in ways that are less than optimum, resulting in certain groups within the organization resisting pretty much every major innovation. Along comes Industry 4.0, which could certainly trigger a significant amount of “automated” objection from the shop floor.

Things to Consider when Choosing a Parylene Coating Service Provider

Choosing parylene gets you half way to protecting your company's products with the best possible conformal coating. To close the circle, unless you have invested in the proper equipment and training, you also need to choose the right service to apply the coating. This article lists some of the attributes that you should look for when seek your Parylene coating service provider.

I-Connect007 Survey Finds Lowering Cost, Automation among Key Supply Chain Concerns

To really provide relevant discussions and insights on one of the most important aspects of a company’s business—the supply chain—I-Connect007 did a survey to find out our readers' top supply chain challenges, and what they would like to learn about supply chain management.

Color Logical Analysis Approach for LED Testing in Manufacturing

The complexity of test development for LED test and long LED test execution times in production are big challenges faced by the PCB manufacturing industry. This paper introduces a color logical analysis methodology to achieve zero additional test development and no extra test execution time.

Reliability Study of Bottom Terminated Components (Part 2)

In the finale of this two-part article series, the authors discussed their thermal cycle tests, as well as the impact of solder voids in the thermal pad of the BTC. They also touched on BTC thermal modeling, as well as determined the acceptable amount of solder voiding in a thermal pad for devices with power dissipation greater than 3W.

Reliability Study of Bottom Terminated Components (Part 1)

This article series discusses bottom terminated components (BTC), and the stress and strain on these components when it comes to solder joints. In Part 1, the authors look at the impact of large voids at the thermal pads of BTC components and their impact on solder joint reliability.

Parylene and Wearable Devices

The life of a wearable device is harder than it might seem. It could be exposed to summer in Phoenix or winter in Minneapolis. It also gets exposed to corrosive spray when it is taken to the beach or on a boat. Considering such challenges, this article talks about why Parylene is the most appropriate choice for conformal coating compounds when it comes to protecting wearable devices.

EIPC Summer Conference: Day 2

Refreshed after an excellent conference dinner, and for most, a good night’s sleep, delegates returned for the second day of the EIPC Summer Conference in Berlin, continuing the theme of improving profitability through technical leadership and innovation to meet future market requirements, with sessions on materials and processes for high performance PCBs and advanced material testing strategies to meet OEM and ODM needs.

Beating the Supply Chain Challenge

SMTC’s Seth Choi, vice president of global supply chain management and procurement—who is also responsible for strategic sourcing, pricing, assurance of quality, speed-to-market, and the continuity of supply in order to support global SMTC procurement strategies—discusses how the supply chain has evolved over the past few years; the role of a supply chain manager in an EMS company; how SMTC is lowering their procurement costs; and what strategies they’ve set up in place to ensure the integrity and security of their manufacturing value chain.

EIPC Summer Conference, Berlin: Day 1

Berlin, capital of Germany and a world city of culture, politics, media and science, was the venue for the 2015 EIPC Summer Conference, which attracted delegates from sixteen countries, including Russia, Hong Kong, Japan, Israel, USA and Canada, as well as the European Union, to experience a programme of 21 technical presentations over two days. Also included was a visit to the Berlin laboratories of Fraunhofer Institute, Europe’s largest application-oriented research organisation.

Characterization of Solder Defects in Package-on-Package with AXI Systems for Inspection Quality Improvement (Part 2)

In Part 2 of this two-part article series, the authors discuss the highlights of AXI with planar computer tomography (pCT), as well as present the results of their experiments on AXI 5.

Characterization of Solder Defects in Package-on-Package with AXI Systems for Inspection Quality Improvement (Part 1)

As solder joints in a PoP device cannot be inspected by optical means, X-ray inspection mostly is the only way to assure their quality nondestructively. The first installation of this two-part article series describes a series of studies on automated X-ray inspection (AXI) technology to quantify solder defects in a three-level Package-on-Package (PoP) device.

A Review of the Opportunities and Processes for Printed Electronics (Part 5): The Future of PE

In the final part of this article series, Happy Holden writes that whether one of the technologies mentioned or technologies yet to be developed will dominate the future of printed electronics is an open question. What is a bit more certain is that flexible base materials printed using printed electronics solutions and processed in roll-to-roll fashion will be an element of successful future technologies.

A Review of the Opportunities and Processes for Printed Electronics (Part 4): Applications

In Part 4 of this five-part article series, Happy Holden talks about the market applications for printed electronics. He writes that while there are several areas for application of PE solutions, such as in sensing, identification and security, and power, it is the display segment that is considered to be the most interesting potential application.

A Review of the Opportunities and Processes for Printed Electronics (Part 3): Materials, Process Developments

In Part 3 of this article series, Happy Holden highlights the different material and process developments for printed electronics. He also notes how some suppliers have addressed the conductivity problems by using new binder formulations for the ink.

A Review of the Opportunities and Processes for Printed Electronics (Part 2): Printing Technologies

In Part 2 of this article series, Happy Holden explains that the selection of printing method to use is determined by requirements concerning printed layers and properties of printed materials, as well as economic and technical considerations for printed products.

A Review of the Opportunities and Processes for Printed Electronics (Part 1)

As microsystems continue to move towards higher speed and microminiaturization, the demands for interconnection are opening up new opportunities for "innovative" interconnects. In the first part of this five-part article series, Happy Holden gives a brief background on printed electronics, as well as presents key technologies that are being employed for PE production.

Inspection: The Last Line of Defense

Traditionally a non-value-added step, inspection is still the best, last line of defense against defects and a bad reputation. In this interview by I-Connect007 Publisher Barry Matties, Viscom’s Guido Bornemann discusses the true value of inspection and how to best use the tools to prevent defects, including head-in-pillow, from being shipped to customers.

In-Circuit Pin Testing: An Excellent Potential Source of Value Creation

In-circuit pin testing (ICT) is a common method of inspecting electronic assemblies to measure the effectiveness of the assembly process and to predict electrical functionality. In this article, Mitch Holtzer talks about ICT and how its accuracy can bring significant competitive advantage to assemblers. He also provides an example of doing ICT in an assembly.

Acoustic Surface Flatness of Components and Boards

Plastic packaged ICs, including BGAs, may experience warping as a result of processing. This article talks about using acoustic micro-imaging tools to measure and map the flatness of the top surface of a BGA package where warping may occur.

Taking the Human Out of Hand Soldering: Is it a Must?

At the recent NEPCON Show in Shanghai, I-Connect007 Publisher Barry Matties stopped by the WKK booth where Japan Unix (represented by WKK in China) was displaying its new robotic soldering technology. In this interview, General Manager Hirofumi Kono explains why this new technology makes so much sense.

American Standard Circuits’ Unique Offerings Contribute to Long-term Success

At the recent IMS RF and microwave show in Phoenix, Arizona, Anaya Vardya, CEO of American Standard Circuits, sat down with I-Connect007's Barry Matties to discuss the current market trends, the company's recent equipment investments, and where American Standard Circuits' growth will likely come from.

In-line Solder Penetration Testing with 3D X-ray Inspection

Although through-hole technology can be considered the oldest assembly technology in the field of PCB manufacturing, it still has its place even in this modern age of surface-mounted technology. To this end, through-hole components were devised for automatic assembly and for high thermal loads in the furnace, which led to the birth of through-hole reflow.

Test Match: Partnering Specialist Boundary-Scan with ICT

Devices like BGAs with inaccessible pins restrict the coverage possible using ordinary flying probe testing. Augmenting flying probe with boundary-scan can help overcome this problem, as well as deliver additional valuable benefits.

New Embedded Component Standard Finalized

Solberg Technical Consulting's Vern Solberg talks to I-Connect007 about the recently launched standard, the IPC-7092, which focuses on embedded component technology. According to Solberg, this new standard took the earlier standards involved with passive devices, and combined it with standards on newer technologies using active devices, to help form components that can be manufactured and placed on layers within the PCB.

In 3D Inspection, Can 'Length = Height' Mean No Escapes?

During the recent NEPCON China show in Shanghai, I interviewed Kobi Ventura of ALeader Europe, an Israeli-Chinese joint venture with ALeader Vision Technology Ltd., which focuses on SPI and AOI inspection equipment. All of the machines are built in a state-of-the-art factory in Guangdong, China. Utilizing a unique length-equals-height modeling approach to inspection, Kobi states that they offer 100% escape-free technology, and it comes with a guarantee.

High-Density Interconnect and Embedded Board Test

Consumers’ insatiable demand for feature-packed, thin, lightweight, and energy-efficient devices is spurring the need for HDI technology. With new electronic functions constantly being integrated into a SoC encapsulated in a less than 0.5 mm pitch array package, the future looks bright for embedded board test (EBT).

Selecting an Automatic Pick-and-Place Machine, Pt. 3

In this month’s installment in this series of columns aimed at helping buyers analyze and select SMT equipment for printed circuit board assembly, Robert Voigt talks about the features that affect decisions on the selection and purchase of an appropriate automatic pick-and-place machine.

Enclosed Media Printing as an Alternative to Metal Blades

The evolution of PCBs in terms of the miniaturization of assemblies, components, and ever-finer feature print patterns has not slowed, and as a result continues to present ever-increasing challenges to the makers of assembly equipment and solder paste printing technology, narrowing the process window. In this article, Michael L. Martel discusses how enclosed media print head technology has kept up to these challenges.

Solder Paste Printing: Quality Assurance Methodology

In this article, Lars Bruno and Tord Johnson describes a method to ensure quality secured data from both solder paste printers and inspection machines in electronic assembly manufacturing.

NEPCON China 2015 a Resounding Success in Shanghai

The three-day event was a complete success, bringing together nearly 22,000 trade visitors and high-quality buyers, as well as 450 leading brand names from 22 countries and regions worldwide. NEPCON China keeps up with market trends and gathers resources from all stakeholders to present a comprehensive event that covers SMT, new electronics materials, soldering, dispensing, electronics automation, measurement and other innovative technologies and products across the world.

iNEMI Managing Director: New, Disruptive Technology on the Horizon

Dr. Haley Fu, managing director of Asia Pacific for iNEMI, and Publisher Barry Matties spoke recently. Fu gave her overview of the last eight years with iNEMI along with her opinion of what the most significant changes have been, globally and for the Asia market in particular. She predicts that in the future, the PCB will probably adopt optical architectures instead of copper, because using copper for the trace means that the land space and the property will not satisfy the future high-speed data transport rate.

Miniaturization with the Help of Reduced Component-to-Component Spacing

Miniaturization and the integration of a growing number of functions in portable electronic devices require an extremely high packaging density for the active and passive components. This article touches on the assembly technologies that can be incorporated in a more or less standard surface mount assembly line with minimal equipment and material upgrades.

IPC Plating Sub-committee 4-14: Surface Finish Specifications

IPC specifications are reference documents to be called out by designers and OEMs. Designers may take exception with one or more items in the specification to ensure that the product meets the requirements of its intended use. The acronym AAUBUS (as agreed upon between user and supplier) is part of any specification. Specifications are consensus documents. They are agreed upon by a panel of interested industry participants composed of suppliers, manufacturers, assembly houses (CMs) and end-users. The IPC Plating Sub-committee 4-14 is no exception.

Final Test Solution of WLCSP Devices

The common back-end process flow for mobile WLCSP devices is a single- or dual-insertion test at wafer probe. Since there is no final test prior to tape and reel, this equipment typically needs to provide a 5-side device inspection to identify potential device damage from sawing. The inspection efforts are quite demanding, with defect recognition requirements in the range of only 10 to only 20 microns, resulting in frequent time and cost intense human interaction and support requirements.

BGA or CGA: When Is It Right for You?

In this interview with TopLine President and Founder Martin Hart, I-Connect007 Publisher Barry Matties focuses on column grid array (CGA) and how CGA can solve delamination problems. CGAs, also known as CCGA, are not necessarily new but are making a strong comeback in the high reliability market.

A Look at Saki’s Approach to 2D, 3D and X-ray Technology

At NEPCON 2015, I-Connect007 Publisher Barry Matties sat down with Nori Koike, COO of Saki Japan, to discuss the latest demands for 3D and their approach to inspection. With more than 20 years of experience, they have built a line-up of tools that covers the inspection spectrum. Koike also stresses the importance of using inspection data as a tool to improve and automate the process.

Advanced Business Intelligence Systems are Not a Luxury

Manufacturing companies are experts in conducting ROI analyses when it comes to production equipment, but most of the analysts and executives who prepare and review ROI analyses do not approach the purchase of software solutions with the same rigor.

IMPACT 2015: An In-Depth Look

IPC understands that presenting a unified voice for the electronics industry is essential for advancing policies that affect the industry’s long-term future and strengthens the U.S. and global economy. That is why 22 IPC member-company executives descended on the nation’s capital for IMPACT 2015: IPC on Capitol Hill, IPC’s annual advocacy event.

Advances in Electronics Assembly Technology - SMART Group Seminar Preview

In a preview webinar to introduce the upcoming SMART Group seminar where the latest advances in assembly technology and reliability will be discussed by industry and subject experts, SMART Group Technical Committee members Charles Cawthorne from MBDA and Ian Fox from Controls and Data Services summarized the papers to be presented.
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