Printed Circuit Design & Manufacture articles from March 2006

Printed Circuit Design & Manufacture archives from March 2006

Offshoring: friend or foe?(OUR LINE)
March 1, 2006... LAST month Fresh Del Monte Produce Inc. announced its pineapple operations in Hawaii will cease by mid 2008. The reason? According to the Associated Press, the company stated it is "no longer feasible to grow pineapple in Hawaii because it can...

Production index slows in January.(MARKET WATCH)
March 1, 2006... TEMPE, AZ -- The PMI index of U.S. manufacturing started 2006 the way it ended 2005: on a downward trend but still well above breakeven. The January PMI was 54.8%, down 0.8 points from the revised December figure, according to the latest...

Phones hitting limits.
March 1, 2006... EL SEGUNDO, CA -- Global mobile-phone unit production growth will decelerate to 4.9% growth in 2006, rising to 850 million units, up from 810 million in 2005. Shipments rose 30% in 2003, 25.1% in 2004 and 13.6% in 2005. Revenue is expected to...

PC demand remains healthy.
March 1, 2006... SAN FRANCISCO -- Fourth-quarter sales of PC units topped even the most positive expectations, rising 17% worldwide year-over-year. In January, Chris Whitmore, an analyst with Deutsche Bank Equity Research (www.db.com), said recent remarks...

PCB West turns 15.(SHOW BUSINESS)
March 1, 2006... The year 1992 doesn't really seem that long ago, but consider that children born that year are ready to enter high school. Ross Perot was running for president, and another George Bush was president. And the first PCB Design Conference was held...

Reflections: a show is born.
March 1, 2006... It's hard to believe that we're celebrating the 15th anniversary of the PCB Design Conferences. It doesn't seem like that long ago that we held the first show in San Jose at the Fairmont Hotel. The idea for the show was born in 1991, when...

Mentor up 3% YOY.(AROUND THE WORLD)
March 1, 2006... WILSONVILLE, OR -- Mentor Graphics Corp. has reported record fourth quarter revenue of $221.3 million, up 3% from the prior fourth quarter. Bookings were up more than 5% from the fourth quarter of 2004, a news release stated. "We were...

December book-to-bill: rigid flat, flex down.(UPS AND DOWNS)
March 1, 2006... BANNOCKBURN, IL -- The North American rigid PCB industry book-to-bill ratio for December 2005 remained at 1.09, but the North American flexible circuit book-to-bill ratio dropped to 0.95. According to IPC, the combined (rigid and flex) industry...

M-Flex Q1 sales, income up.(FLEXING MUSCLES)
March 1, 2006... ANAHEIM, CA -- Multi-Fineline Electronix Inc. reported that net sales for the fiscal first quarter ended December 31, 2005, increased by 66% to $139.7 million from $84.4 million for the first quarter of fiscal 2005. Net income for the fiscal...

Rogers welcomes new finance VP, CFO.(AROUND THE WORLD)
March 1, 2006... ROGERS, CT -- Rogers Corp. has hired Dennis Loughran as vice president of Finance and CFO. He will be responsible for overseeing the company's financial operations worldwide and helping the company achieve its future strategic objectives. ...

Cadence Q4 revenue up 10% YOY.(MORE MONEY)
March 1, 2006... SAN JOSE -- Cadence Design Systems Inc. reported fourth quarter 2005 revenue of $378 million, an increase of 10% over the $343 million reported for the same period in 2004. Cadence had a net income of $27 million in the fourth quarter of...

Optimal Corp.(FACES)
March 1, 2006... Optimal Corp. has appointed former Cadence executive David DeMaria as its new CEO. DeMaria has over 20 years of experience in the EDA industry. While at Cadence, he held many different positions, including executive vice president of the...

PerkinElmer Inc.(FACES)
March 1, 2006... PerkinElmer Inc. has named Df.Aaron Geist as vice president, business development for the company. He will be responsible for developing PerkinElmer's partnerships and acquisition opportunities. Geist previously worked at Robert W. Baird where...

ESI Inc.(FACES)
March 1, 2006... ESI Inc., a provider of production laser systems for micro-engineering applications, named Tom Wu as vice president of worldwide sales. Wu will report directly to ESI President and CEO Nick Konidaris. Prior to joining ESI, Wu was vice president...

Applied Wave Research Inc. announced that Andrew Corp. selected AWR's Microwave Office and Visual System Simulator products in a recent competitive tool evaluation.(IT'S A DEAL)
March 1, 2006... Applied Wave Research Inc. announced that Andrew Corp. selected AWR's Microwave Office and Visual System Simulator products in a recent competitive tool evaluation. Andrew designs multi-carrier radio-frequency power amplifiers for...

Lenthor Engineering, a designer, manufacturer and assembler of rigid-flex and flex PCBs, reported that Orion Registrar Inc. has assessed the Quality Management System in place at Lenthor Engineering and found it to be in compliance with the following Quality Standard, ISO 9001:2000.(IT'S A DEAL)
March 1, 2006... Lenthor Engineering, a designer, manufacturer and assembler of rigid-flex and flex PCBs, reported that Orion Registrar Inc. has assessed the Quality Management System in place at Lenthor Engineering and found it to be in compliance with the...

Shanghai Automotive Industries Corporation (SAIC) has purchased Mentor Graphic's Volcano network design and testing tools to design automotive vehicle networks for SAIC's self-branded platforms.(IT'S A DEAL)
March 1, 2006... Shanghai Automotive Industries Corporation (SAIC) has purchased Mentor Graphic's Volcano network design and testing tools to design automotive vehicle networks for SAIC's self-branded platforms. SAIC will use the Volcano Network Architect and...

Events.(HAPPENINGS)
March 1, 2006... EVENTS 20-23 IMAPS International Conference and Exhibition on MARCH Device Packaging Scottsdale, AZ. Contact: www.imaps.org/devicepackaging. 22-24 CPCA Show 2006 Shanghai, China ...

Ethics on display: often, it's not what you do. It's how you do it.(ROI)
March 1, 2006... ETHICS IS A tough subject to discuss, because it is so subjective. What is ethical to one person may seem unethical to another. To further complicate things, ethics in one culture may be viewed very differently by a neighboring culture. In...

Lead-free product recommendations: an iNEMI task group's review of components, laminates and equipment.(COUNTDOWN TO LEAD-FREE)
March 1, 2006... THE CONVERSION TO lead-free assemblies and processing has been a disruptive and, in many cases, costly process for manufacturers. While many have managed the conversion, it is causing concern among manufacturers producing high complexity,...

A dose of reality: do corners cause reflections? The answers to last month's puzzle may surprise you.(NO MYTHS ALLOWED)
March 1, 2006... IN MY JANUARY column, I offered a puzzle. In the measured TDR response from a seven-segment, closely coupled 50 H serpentine microstrip, it looks like we see the reflections from the six pairs of corners. FIGURE 1 shows the serpentine and...

RoHS and WEEE compliance are changing the way we work: legislation is driving the need for engineering data management.(RoHS AND WEEE)
March 1, 2006... RoHS and WEEE are forcing many changes in the way we specify, design and build electronic products. However, the extent and depth of the change may be more than you think. With the help of a greater abundance of RoHS-compliant parts and...

Optimizing for 10 Gb/sec differential signal transmission: design fixes that work at 'normal' board speeds can cause havoc in the 10 Gb/sec arena. Modifying the trace pair can adversely affect everything from impedance to eye diagrams.(HIGH-SPEED DESIGN)
March 1, 2006... As 10Gb/sec signaling becomes more prevalent in board design, assumptions about what affects high-speed signal transmission may no longer be true. Previously, in the sub 10Gb/sec design era, one of the key trade-offs was balancing the...

Nanotechnology and PCBs: could nano PCB miniaturization allow the IC world to finally merge with SMT?(NANOTECHNOLOGY)
March 1, 2006... I first started working in the wonderful world of high-tech manufacturing (which I now refer to as a disease) in wire and die bonding for the smartcard industry of the early 90s. I left that fledgling industry in the late 90s for the then-more...

PCB Design Conference West 2006 preview.(Calendar)
March 1, 2006... Conference: March 26-31, 2006 Exhibition Hours: Exhibition: March 28-29, 2006 March 28-10 am-6:30 pm March 29-10 am-4 pm Location: Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA...

Cable/connector assemblies.(off the SHELF)
March 1, 2006... Gore has added complete cable/connector assemblies to its online interactive design guide. This provides a menu of connector options to configure a complete Gore High Flex Flat Cable Assembly or Gore Trackless Cable Assembly, with 10-day lead...

Design software.(off the SHELF)
March 1, 2006... Visula 8 is said to feature three core areas of improvement: layout, library tools and CAM tools. Layout developments include enhancements to functionality associated with the use of starpoint components. The use of thermal relief on vias has...

Drill machine.(off the SHELF)
March 1, 2006... The Concept 129 Intelli-Drill now includes a companion database and search utility. These products reportedly provide the tools to inspect and measure internal layer movement. The database is loaded by the CNC-7 controller during panel...

Connector platform.(OTHERS OF NOTE)
March 1, 2006... Amphenol TCS has released its Crossbow connector platform, with Crossbow Matrix for orthogonal midplane architectures, and Crossbow 2 mm+ for standard backplane configurations. The Matrix connector has differential pairs on each side of the...

Packaging software.(OTHERS OF NOTE)
March 1, 2006... Electronics Packaging Designer Version 7.4 reportedly contains more robust, sophisticated algorithms for faster processing, and bond wire optimization and 3D design tools that help reduce design time, improve overall time-to-market and improve...

MCAD system.(OTHERS OF NOTE)
March 1, 2006... The Aegis MCAD system is said to support common mechanical CAD vector file formats, and allow 2D capture from a 3D drawing with the desired user-controlled perspective. A mechanical shape library allegedly permits re-use of commonly used items...

Transceiver.(OTHERS OF NOTE)
March 1, 2006... SFX-TAP4/CR is the newest member of the SFX transceiver family. Developed for integration in flying probe testers, it allegedly offers four parallel independent TAP. Can reportedly be freely combined with all Scanflex controllers on PCI, PXI,...

Modeling software.(OTHERS OF NOTE)
March 1, 2006... Concerto V5 software suite incorporates a new CLASP analysis model based en the Moment Method, said to be ideally suited for applications with large volumes of free space. It also includes improvements to the Quickwave FDTD modeler, the main...

Optocouplers.(OTHERS OF NOTE)
March 1, 2006... The FOD0708 (single-channel) and FOD0738 (dual-channel) 15 MBd optocouplers reportedly offer the industry's highest common-mode noise rejection (CMR) rating, while providing high-bandwidth (15Mbit/s), low-power consumption characteristics. The...

Is schematic-based design obsolete? Schematicless approach makes inroads. But don't write off schematics just yet.(GUEST COLUMNIST)
March 1, 2006... NETWORK ROUTERS, 3G cell phones, high-definition TVs, military display systems, aerospace electronics, and other high-end computer products all have one thing in common--printed circuit board systems replete with high pin-count devices. Based...