Cracks in the BRIC

Posted on July 18, 2012 by Mike

BRIC is the acronym that stands for Brazil, Russia, India and China. Those four nations are seen as most significant of the emerging industrial economies.

They are also learning each other’s tricks — and fast.

China has long insisted that MNCs that want to win cash-rich contracts to build out that nation’s infrastructure come prepared to share that technology with its local contractors. Call it mandatory tech transfer.

Well, Brazil, it appears, is taking the same approach. The country, reports the Wall Street Journal, is holding back more than a billion dollars in financing until Foxconn International Holdings agrees to bring its latest LCD technology to its planned factory in Minas Gerais.

All’s fair in love and trade, I suppose.

Conflict Mineral Regulation: Vote Slated for August

Posted on July 13, 2012 by Chris Jellen

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has announced an open meeting (see below) to vote on the final conflict minerals rule on August 22, 2012.

IPC says it will be making one last lobbying push to emphasize the importance of a phase in period, reasonable treatment of recycling, and other issues of concern. Additionally, they will continue to move forward with drafting of our due diligence guidance document, participation in the OECD guidance pilot implementation, and other tools to help our members.

Finally, assuming regulations are adopted on August 22, 2012, IPC will plan to hold educational seminars in California, Chicago, and Boston in late October or early November.

Other associations and lobbying groups are likely doing the same.

SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION Sunshine Act Meeting

The announcement:
“Notice is hereby given, pursuant to the provisions of the Government in the Sunshine Act, Pub. L. 94-409, that the Securities and Exchange Commission will hold an Open Meeting on Wednesday, Aug. 22, 2012, at 10 AM, in the Auditorium, Room L-002.

The subject matters of the Open Meeting will be:

Item 1: The Commission will consider whether to adopt rules regarding disclosure and reporting obligations with respect to the use of conflict minerals to implement the requirements of Section 1502 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act
Item 2: The Commission will consider whether to adopt rules regarding disclosure and reporting obligations with respect to payments to governments made by resource extraction issuers to implement the requirements of Section 1504 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act
Item 3: The Commission will consider rules to eliminate the prohibition against general solicitation and general advertising in securities offerings conducted pursuant to Rule 506 of Regulation D under the Securities Act and Rule 144A under the Securities Act, as mandated by Section 201(a) of the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act

At times, changes in Commission priorities require alterations in the scheduling of meeting items. Keep your eyes peeled and/or subscribe to this blog — or to IPC updates or the like.

New EU RoHS 2 Guidance FAQ

Posted on July 13, 2012 by Kal

Guidance document in the form of a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) for the RoHS Recast has been published. The RoHS Recast entered into force on July 21, 2011, and requires Member States to transpose the provisions into their respective national laws by January 2, 2013, less than 6 months away.

Restriction of the Use of Certain Hazardous Substances (RoHS) started as a UK directive and has been adopted by the EU. (It’s up to member states to determine compliance details such as implementation and enforcement.) The Directive is part of the European Union’s lateral waste management legislation. RoHS applies to equipment as defined by a certain section of the WEEE directive.

RoHS applies to the following categories:

Large household appliances
Small household appliances
IT & Telecommunications equipment (infrastructure equipment is exempt in some countries)
Consumer equipment
Lighting equipment—including light bulbs
Electronic and electrical tools
Toys, leisure, and sports equipment (including video games)
Medical devices (exemption removed in July, 2011)
Monitoring and control instruments (exemption removed in July, 2011)
Automatic dispensers
Semiconductor devices

One of the prime objectives of RoHS 2 is to address concerns related to the increasing volume of waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) arising in the EU. Hazardous substances in this type of equipment could be released during waste management processes and could give rise to damage to human health and the environment. The most effective way to address this concern is to restrict the use of the hazardous substances at the point of manufacture.

The new RoHS 2 FAQ This new Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) document aims to help economic operators interpret the provisions of RoHS 2 in order to ensure RoHS 2 compliance. However, as the Directive being addressed only to the Member States, the rights and obligations for private parties exclusively flow from the measures enacted by the authorities of the Member States to implement it.

The FAQ is considered a ‘living document’ and may be revised in the future, according to the experience with the implementation and review of RoHS 2. The FAQs reflect the views of DG Environment and as such are not legally binding, it’s important to note that binding interpretation of EU legislation is the exclusive competence of the Court of Justice of the European Union. These FAQs should be read in conjunction with the general principles of the New Legislative Framework (NLF) and the Commission’s guide to the implementation of directives based on the New Approach and the Global Approach also known as the Blue Guide.

Where to get the RoHS 2 FAQ Seems obvious but it’s important to say it: the FAQ document may undergo significant changes moving forward, as events warrant. But it’s a solid start. As far as the new guidance goes, remember to submit your comments by September 14, 2012.

Get the document here: http://ec.europa.eu/environment/waste/rohs_eee/pdf/faq.pdf

Apple: OEM Again?

Posted on July 11, 2012 by Mike

We tend to think of Apple the company as a design innovator and a great marketer. What we don’t think of Apple as is a manufacturer.

We should.

Per its 10-K, Apple ran up a tab of some $4.6 billion in capital expenditures in 2011, of which no less than $4 billion was for manufacturing and tooling. Keep in mind that this is a company that has no manufacturing facilities.

Apple went from a traditional OEM to a design/marketing company to one that owns everything from chip design to effectively owning the plants that build its products. It’s an OEM again.

So sure, Apple and Foxconn are tied at the hip. But the 10-K gives us a better glimpse as to why: Apple owns the lines. It’s one thing to move a program. It’s another to replace a factory, especially one with a hundred thousand workers.

Apple is the most valuable company in the world. It dominates its supply chain like no other. Sooner or later, the rest of the industry will copy its methods. The OEM as manufacturer will be back in vogue.

Talking Cleaning with Mike Bixenman

Posted on July 6, 2012 by Dr. Ron

Folks,

There is a lot of interest in cleaning PCBs assembled with no-clean solder pastes. Recently I discussed the topic with my good friend Mike Bixenman of Kyzen.

Dr. Ron (DR): Mike, many of the best performing lead-free and lead containing solder pastes today are no-cleans. They have been designed to solve assembly problems like graping and the head-in-pillow defect. For the vast majority of applications, the small amount of residue left by a no-clean is not a problem. However, some assemblers want the performance of no-cleans, but need to clean the no-clean residue as they have extreme reliability or cosmetic requirements. Are there cleaning solutions for these situations?

Mike Bixenman (MB): Absolutely!

DR: Can you tell use a little bit about these cleaning solutions?
MB: Several factors come into consideration when engineering electronics assembly cleaning agents. Design factors include the soil make-up, heat exposure, Z-axis clearance under bottom termination components, material compatibility, and cleaning equipment. Typical process goals require that all flux be removed in one cleaning cycle, shiny solder joints (no chemical attack to the alloy), fast production speed, no material effect to labels and other materials of construction, long chemistry bath life, and low operating concentrations.

Cleaning solutions vary depending on the cleaning equipment. For solvent systems, a solvent cleaning agent is needed – with properties that allow for non-flammability, constant boiling mixture, and being environmentally-friendly to workers and the environment. For solvent cleaning agents that are rinsed with water, the cleaning agent requires a solvent mixture that can be rinsed with water while matching up to the soil and cleaning equipment. For aqueous cleaning agents, the cleaning agent is engineered with properties that provide solvency for the soil, polarity for inducing a dipole and/ or to oxidize and reduce the soil, low surface tension to reduce the wetting angle, buffers to stabilize pH, defoaming to reduce the tendency to foam at high pressures, and inhibitors to widen the passivation range on metallic alloys.

The most critical property is the nature of the soil. As soldering temperatures rise and the time exposed to higher temperatures increase, solder paste material supplies must improve the oxygen barrier and prevent flux burn out. This requires higher molecular weight compositions that may change the nature of the soil and the cleaning solution needed to remove the soil. Other factors such as processing conditions and how these conditions can change the soil’s cleaning properties must be considered. For example, excessive exposure to heat may polymerize the flux residue rending the soil uncleanable. To better understand and plan for these factors, solubility testing and matching the cleaning agent to the soil assist formulators in designing cleaning agents that are effective on a wide range of soldering material residues.

DR: What type of equipment is typically needed?
MB: Two key factors must be matched to clean:
1: Potential energy of the cleaning agent for the soil and
2: Kinetic energy of cleaning machine for delivering the cleaning agent to the soil necessary to create a flow channel needed to rapidly displace the soil.

The cleaning machine requires energy to deliver the cleaning fluid across a distance and create enough force to deflect fluids under the Z-axis. The capillary attraction for moving the cleaning fluid into an out of tight gaps is created by fluid flow, spray impingement pressure and surface tension effects. When cleaning under tight standoffs, cleaning agents that wet (form small droplets) improves capillary action, penetration and wetting of the residue. The solubility rate is dependent on the soil, temperature effects and concentration of the cleaning agent needed to dissolve the soil. Hard soils clean at a slower rate and remove the soil in a concentric (tunneling effect) manner. Soft soils clean at a fast rate and remove the soil in a channeling (multiple tunnels) effect.

The Z-Axis gap height has a direct correlation to the energy required to penetrate and remove the soil under components, time required to clean the soil and wash temperature. The irony is that lower Z-axis gaps increase capillary action of the flux for underfilling the bottom side of the component. When this occurs, flux residue dams up and closes any flow channels under the component. Research findings indicate that high pressure coherent spray jets are needed since energy drop is less and defective energy is higher. The wash time needed to clean under a 1 to 2 mil gap as compared to a 4 to 6 mil gap can range from 4t o 8 times longer. Higher wash temperatures increase the softening effect and aid in penetrating and removing the soil. The net effect is that, as components decrease in size, the Z-Axis gap height reduces and the cleaning factors needed to clean the soil increase. These effects favor spray-in-air cleaning equipment over immersion cleaning equipment.

DR: How are the results of cleaning assessed, so that we know that the boards are truly clean?

MB: The first level that we judge cleaning performance by is the visual presence of the residue post cleaning. Most cleaning processes have no problem with removing surface residue from the assembly. The issue is the residue under the bottom side of the component. This complicates the issue since the residue under a specific component is where most failures occur. These site-specific failures may reduce the confidence in existing IPC standards that correlate anion and cation ionic residues over the entire board surface area. So, when designing the cleaning process, we use test cards with bottom termination components and judge cleaning performance by the level of flux residue remaining under those components. To achieve this value, all components are removed and the surface area of the residue under components is graded and statistically analyzed.
Let me finish by adding that highly dense interconnects assembled onto circuit boards is advancing at a rapid pace. Traditional SMT component spacing between conductors was larger. No-clean post soldering residues posed minimal risks to reliability. The information age has spoiled us in expecting higher functionality in smaller spaces. As assembles reduce in size and increase the levels of functionality, cleaning becomes more important. I hope that the cleaning factors discussed in this interview provide insight into cleaning process design considerations that may be of help.

DR: Mike, thanks. Who should folks contact if they would like more information on cleaning boards assembled with no-clean solder pastes.
MB: Thanks for letting me share with your readers. I would be glad to help anyone with the cleaning challenges they face. Contact me at [email protected].

Cheers,
Dr. Ron

Electrolytic Ambiguity

Posted on July 6, 2012 by Duane

I’ve written about ambiguity a few times before, like this post about fiducials. But I’m not talking about the PCB today. I’m talking parts. More specifically, I’m talking about silkscreen markings for your parts on the PCB.

Diodes have a lot of opportunity for ambiguity, as you can read here. There are many ways to mark parts, but fewer ways to clearly mark them. Take a typical electrolytic capacitor. It can be through-hole, SMT metal can, tantalum, or a few other form factors. The capacitor manufacturers aren’t doing any of us any favors insofar as “markation” is concerned.

Check out the image at the right. Yikes! In all cases shown here, I’ve oriented positive on the left, which, according to IPC is pin 1. This is also the zero degree rotation for the centroid value. But, isn’t it nice of those component manufacturers to put the identification bar on the positive side for tantalum capacitors and on the negative side for metal can electrolytics? Not!

So, how should you mark this in the silkscreen on your PCB? For an electrolytic capacitor, the best approach is to mark the positive sided with a plus (+) sign. If you mark pin 1 with the number 1, it can easily be mistaken for the minus sign. If you mark the negative side with a minus sign, it can easily be mistaken for pin 1.

For a metal can capacitor, it is also acceptable to put the notched outline in silkscreen. We still recommend that you place the plus (+) sign on there too.

Duane Benson
I’m just positive I put the negative right on the left

http://blog.screamingcircuits.com/

Litigation: The Next Killer Ap?

Posted on July 5, 2012 by Mike

Apple v. Samsung.

Cisco v. Tivo.

The EU v. Intel.

The lawsuits are piling up as tech heavies line up against each other and, in some cases, nations or even larger economic blocs.

If you are a market share leader, fending off (or filing) lawsuits is routine.

Apple claimed a victory in the US, where courts have banned Samsung’s Nexus smartphone and Galaxy Tab 10.1 after Apple complained of patent infringement. But Apple’s record on (in?) its home court hasn’t extended abroad. British courts have ruled HTC’s mobile devices did not infringe four of Apple’s touchscreen patents, China courts found for a nearly bankrupt company that claimed ownership of the iPad trademark, and Italian regulators have opened hearings over the company’s failure to meet domestic warranty laws.

As companies sue and countersue over technology that becomes ever more complicated, not only are the courts tied up by the endless legal maneuvering, but company engineers get dragged into the fray as well.

So too, it should be mentioned, do governments. But while the US debates measures that would ramp its anti-counterfeiting laws, Europe is taking the opposite approach. The European Parliament yesterday overwhelmingly rejected adoption of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, siding with critics who claimed the bill put too much power in the hands of bureaucrats. “With companies trying to gain any advantage within a fiercely competitive landscape, an increasingly litigious environment seems to be becoming a reality most companies need to get comfortable with going forward,” opined Sherri Scribner, a senior analyst with Deutsche Bank.

Still, as tech companies rely as much on the courts as the computer to wage their market share wars, one wonders: Will the next generation of engineers be pressed into battle to design products … or defend them?

Behind the Sigrity Deal

Posted on July 3, 2012 by Mike

Cadence’s acquisition of Sigrity, announced yesterday, is a big deal for reasons beyond the technology being acquired.

Sure, it’s great for Cadence to gets its hands on Sigrity’s power and signal integrity tools.

But what this move also underscores is something of a recommitment by Cadence to its printed circuit board software. You’d have to go back years to find the last time Cadence completed a significant deal in the PCB space (I’m not including, of course, the failed 2008 “attempt” to purchase Mentor, which eventually cost then CEO Michael Fister his job.)

Cadence’s PCB revenue jumped in 2011, growing by our estimates roughly 23% year-over-year. That makes it by far the fastest-growing player in the PCB EDA space. How long has it been since they could say that?

Coupled with its aggressive support of the IPC-2581 data transfer format, Cadence is showing a newfound vigor toward protecting and even extending its circuit board design position. Mentor remains a much larger competitor in PCB sales, but there are signs of a shift taking place.

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Monthly Archives: July 2012