Printed Circuit Design & Manufacture articles from September 2005

Printed Circuit Design & Manufacture archives from September 2005

What China can teach us.(OUR LINE)
September 1, 2005... It was the great currency revaluation that wasn't so great after all. On July 21, the Chinese government announced that it had revalued China's currency, the yuan, which had been artificially pegged at 8.28 per U.S. dollar since 1994. The cheap...

Talking defense.(MARKET WATCH)
September 1, 2005... TALKING DEFENSE Trends in the U.S. electronics equipment market (shipments only). % CHANGE APRIL MAY (r) JUNE * YTD ...

Manufacturing heated up in July.(MARKET WATCH)
September 1, 2005... TEMPE, AZ -- The manufacturing sector grew for the 26th straight month in July, as the slowdown in May is looking more like a blip than a trend. New orders and production both saw higher rates of growth, according to the latest Institute for...

India chasing China in electronics.(MARKET WATCH)
September 1, 2005... SCOTTSDALE, AZ -- India will be the fastest-growing electronics market the next few years, In-Star said last month, with domestic sales growing at a compounded annual growth rate of 23% to US$40 billion by 2010. That's a huge gain from the...

Europe's EMS firms see gains.(MARKET WATCH)
September 1, 2005... BOSTON -- Revenues of Europe-based electronics manufacturing services firms are in recovery, according to a recent research report. Reed Electronics Research (rer.co.uk) says the European EMS market will reach 47.1 billion by 2009, up 139% from...

Tablet PCs a mixed bag.(MARKET WATCH)
September 1, 2005... SCOTTSDALE, AZ -- The tablet PC market is seeing higher shipments but overall success has been mixed, says In-Stat (www.in-stat.com). The research firm forecasts worldwide sales rising from $1.2 billion in 2004 to $5.4 billion in 2009....

Industry market snapshot.(MARKET WATCH)
September 1, 2005... Book-to-bills of various components/equipment. MARCH APRIL MAY JUNE Semiconductor equipment (1) 0.78 0.81 0.84 0.93 Semiconductors (2) 2.2% 6.9%...

Agilent acquires Eagleware.(AROUND THE WORLD)
September 1, 2005... PALO ALTO, CA AND NORCROSS, GA -Agilent Technologies Inc. will acquire the assets and business of Eagleware-Elanix, a provider of system and circuit design software for the communications industry. "Adding Eagleware-Elanix's product line to...

DuPont licenses Sanmina's buried capacitance.(YOUR LICENSE, PLEASE)
September 1, 2005... SAN JOSE -- DuPont Electronic Technologies has inked a deal to license buried capacitance technology from Sanmina-SCI. DuPont Interra HK polyimide laminates will now be available to Sanmina's existing family of licensed PCB manufacturers. ...

Flex raises June book-to-bill.(ODE TO FLEX)
September 1, 2005... BANNOCKBURN, IL -- June's combined rigid and flex book-to-bill rose to 1.13, thanks to a big jump in flexible circuit bookings. The North American rigid PCB industry book-to-bill ratio for June declined but remained positive at 1.01, while the...

Dieter Bergman to keynote PCB East.(Standard Operating Procedure)
September 1, 2005... MANCHESTER, NH -- Industry pioneer Dieter Bergrnan will give the keynote address at PCB Design Conference East, the show's 10th anniversary, in October. Bergman, IPC's director of technology transfer, began his career in 1956 as a PCB...

Mentor adds RoHS compliance function.(AROUND THE WORLD)
September 1, 2005... WILSONVILLE, OR -- Users of Mentor Graphics design tools can now search for RoHS-compliant parts early in the design stage. Using component data captured in Mentor's DMS (Data Management System), LMS (Library Management System) and DxDataBook...

Japan Printed Circuit Association has changed its name to Japan Electronics Packaging and Circuits Association.(IT'S A DEAL)
September 1, 2005... Japan Printed Circuit Association has changed its name to Japan Electronics Packaging and Circuits Association, but the group will continue to be known as JPCA.

Electropac.(IT'S A DEAL)
September 1, 2005... Electropac has opened a Canadian sales office in Pointe-Claire, Quebec. Guy Arsenault is the manager of the new office's sales team, which will focus on the needs of Canadian customers.

Elektrobit Group plc.(IT'S A DEAL)
September 1, 2005... Elektrobit Group plc has combined its testing and automation solutions business units into a Test and Automation business unit. The group previously operated independently within Elektrobit's products business segment and the merging of the two...

The Eurotech Group plc.(IT'S A DEAL)
September 1, 2005... The Eurotech Group plc (Exmouth, England) has recently changed its entire electrolytic plating line over to M+B Plating racks.

ASUS, Taiwan's largest PC manufacturer, has purchased seats of the Mentor Graphics Expedition design suite.(IT'S A DEAL)
September 1, 2005... ASUS, Taiwan's largest PC manufacturer, has purchased seats of the Mentor Graphics Expedition design suite. This sale includes Mentor's new XtremePCB and DxDesigner. ASUS intends to use Expedition, XtremePCB and DxDesigner exclusively for their...

Janos Technology.(FACES)
September 1, 2005... Infrared optical component supplier Janos Technology has appointed Karl Martinson business development manager for defense and aerospace. Martinson has held executive positions in business development atThermo Opticon Corp., Corning and...

Condor DC Power Supplies.(FACES)
September 1, 2005... Condor DC Power Supplies has selected Elizabeth Seale (pictured, above left) to be director of quality. She will be responsible for all quality and product assurance functions. Seale, who is fluent in Spanish, served as site quality leader for...

GSPK Electronics.(FACES)
September 1, 2005... GSPK Electronics has created the position of sales director for Mark Gibson, who will head the company's UK and global sales functions. Gibson has 15 years of experience at EMS companies such as Sanmina-SCI, and most recently worked at...

Events.(HAPPENINGS)(Calendar)
September 1, 2005... EVENTS SEPTEMBER 11-16 ECIS/ESD Symposium Anaheim, CA Contact: www.esda.org 13-15 Implementing Lean Manufacturing and Beyond Kansas City, KS Contact: www.lean.org/Events ...

Quality should be job 1, even in times of change: it all comes down to attitude. Whether you think you can or think you can't, you're right.(ROI)
September 1, 2005... WHEN ALL IS said and done, quality and change are the most difficult concepts for employees, coworkers and management to understand. Like taxes and death, quality is a given and change is inevitable. No matter how much we talk, listen, think,...

Lead-free standards update: several specs have already been updated, and others are undergoing revisions.(COUNTDOWN TO LEAD-FREE)
September 1, 2005... Ed.: This column can be found in its entirety at www.pcdandm.com. THE EUROPEAN UNION'S Rolls Directive restricting the use of six hazardous substances in electrical and electronics equipment will be upon us in 10 months. Lead, in the form...

TDR for differential pair characterization: not just another abbreviation, TDR is one more tool for analyzing single-ended and differential transmission lines.(INTERCONNECT STRATEGIES)
September 1, 2005... HIGH-PERFORMANCETIME domain reflectometry instruments (TDRs) in conjunction with add-on analysis tools provide a powerful means for fault isolation and signal integrity appraisal of gigabit speed interconnects. These include PCB traces, cables,...

FPGA-on-board design: the secret lies in optimizing pin assignments with concurrent, bi-directional tool flows.(PROGRAMMABLES)
September 1, 2005... In design environments today, there is a widening communication gap between the PCB design teams and FPGA design teams. Because of this, companies miss out on significant system performance gains. The resulting unpredictable design schedules...

Reflecting on mirrored IC pinouts: flipping the die within a package can shrink real estate and the number of vias and layers. But the chip makers will have to get on board first.(PACKAGING)
September 1, 2005... In electronics, printed circuit board design is where the proverbial rubber hits the road. A circuit board designer is constrained by many factors, some of them outside his control. The applications engineers want to cram more and more...

NTI 100: Asia in the driver's seat: the third time's the charm for Ibiden but PCB makers from Korea and Taiwan enter the top five.(Cover Story)
September 1, 2005... It's tough at the top. The NTI 100 shows that Ibiden reclaimed its title as the world's largest PCB maker in 2004, its third time on top. The winner for 2003, Nippon Mektron, came in a close second, with CMK dropping from No. 2 to third...

Ask the expert.
September 1, 2005... Q: We are looking for a material to be able to form laser microvias that also has CTE control for leadless component attach reliability and is capable of passing a 1 meter drop impact test for handheld personal electronics. What do you...

PCB Design Conference East 2005 Preview.(PCB EAST 2005)(Calendar)
September 1, 2005... Conference: October 10-14, 2005 Exhibition: October 12-13, 2005 Expo Center of New Hampshire Manchester, NH Exhibition Hours: October 12 10 am-6:30 pm October 13 10 am-4 pm CONFERENCE AGENDA MONDAY, OCT. 10 8 am-5 pm...

SFX controller.(off the SHELF)
September 1, 2005... GOPEL Electronic has introduced SFX/USL 1149-(x), a part of the Boundary Scan hardware platform SCANFLEX. The SFX controller supports the serial high-speed interfaces USB2.0 and 10/100 MBit Ethernet and is offered in three performance classes....

Flush-head studs.(off the SHELF)
September 1, 2005... PEM self-clinching flush-head studs can be installed up to 50% closer to the edge of a metal sheet than standard self-clinching studs due to a smaller head diameter. Type FHL (steel) and Type FHLS (stainless steel) flush-head studs mount...

CFD software.(off the SHELF)
September 1, 2005... CoolitPCB is said to enable PCB designers to do their own board-level thermal analyses. Reportedly, users need no expert knowledge of heat transfer or computational fluid dynamics; the user interface steers the user through the solution...

Laminate.(OTHERS OF NOTE)
September 1, 2005... Isola Group has released a new IS640 product, the IS640-333. It has a nominal dielectric constant of 3.33 at 10 GHz and a dissipation factor of 0.0038 at 10 GHz. Available in standard .020", .030" and .060" thickness configurations, with others...

Measurement gauges.(OTHERS OF NOTE)
September 1, 2005... The 200 Series of coating thickness measurement gauges features a scanning option that allows the user to continuously measure large areas with one measurement. It calculates an average measurement, reportedly giving an accurate reading for...

High-frequency simulation.(OTHERS OF NOTE)
September 1, 2005... Ansoft's HFSS v10 includes dynamic-link technology, which is said to allow HFSS to co-simulate with other Ansoft products and extends HFSS applications to include RF/analog IC co-design, EMI/EMC and microwave heating. It reportedly includes new...

EMI shield.(OTHERS OF NOTE)
September 1, 2005... This EMI shielding gasket can be moduled in dimensions as small as 1 x 1 mm. Material is highly conductive foam that can be compressed by more than 50% and there is a conductive self-adhesive strip at the bottom. The shield's smallest width is...

IC Model Library.(OTHERS OF NOTE)
September 1, 2005... The Power IC Model Library for PSpice incorporates over 150 time domain simulation models for power electronic designs and gives designers the ability to plug in a model, representative of the actual IC, and simulate switching performance under...

Runtime estimator.(OTHERS OF NOTE)
September 1, 2005... The DrillRun runtime estimator tells users the time it will take to drill or route any file on any machine. It is said to instantly give hit-count information, travel distances and runtime estimates for a panel. Can reportedly accommodate a...

Master of your domain: everything you ever wanted to know about frequency and time domain--and maybe more.(NO MYTHS ALLOWED)
September 1, 2005... THERE IS NO fundamental difference between the information contained in the frequency domain description and the time domain description of the behavior of an interconnect. The two terms possess everything you could ever want to know about the...