While I’m at it, here’s an interesting blog item deconstructing the cost savings Apple achieves by manufacturing in China.
(Hint: It’s not as great as you’d think.)
Author Archives: Mike
Apple’s Enablers
Another Apple supplier — this time Pegatron — has blown up. Fortunately this time no one died, but 61 workers were injured, 23 badly enough to require hospitalization.
In the wake of the accident, I’m sure we’ll be treated to all the usual platitudes about how seriously Apple takes its corporate citizenship, an argument that becomes harder to swallow with each passing disaster.
How long are we going to operate under the premise that consumers actually care about where their products come from? “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”
IPC-2581 Update
It’s been a while since I updated readers on the IPC-2581 Consortium. Here’s a few tidbits:
- The group of supporters continues to grow, and a couple large IT and test equipment OEMs are now considering joining. At least one announcement could be coming shortly.
- The verification team, led by Ed Acheson at Cadence, is making progress. They are looking at some designs to use for test runs. At least 10 designs are expected to be validated using the members’ CAD and CAM tools.
- Wise Solutions expects to have an IPC-2581 viewer by January. It will likely be made available through multiple websites.
- The Consortium will have a booth at the IPC Apex show in late February and PCB West in September. Members will also have a poster at Apex and will make a presentation at PCB West.
Here’s a question: Should Mentor or Frontline (which Mentor owns a 50% stake in) join the IPC-2581 Consortium? Feel free to reply here or directly to me if you wish.
December Issue Now Online
The December issue of PCD&F is now available.
Our cover story is a study of a novel halogen-free, phosphorus-free laminate said to be
effective for lead-free processing but without the cost penalty typically associated with such materials.
Other highlights include:
- Dr. Eric Bogatin on channel-to-channel crosstalk
- Lenora Toscano on surface analysis of final finishes
- Considerations for shortening the flex design timeline
- Via capping
And our commentary on the recent Productronica trade show.
Check it out here!
Safe in the Cloud
Data are safer in the cloud.
That’s what tech industry research firm Aberdeen concludes, based on findings from multiple benchmark studies on best practices in content security and security software.
Aberdeen says its analysis shows that users of cloud-based web security had substantially better results than users of on-premise web security implementations when it comes to security, compliance and reliability (and cost, by the way).
Over a 12-month span, cloud-based web security solutions users had 58% fewer malware incidents, 93% fewer audit deficiencies, 45% less security-related downtime, and 45% fewer incidents of data loss or data exposure than did their on-premise web security colleagues.
Extrapolated to the PCB design industry, the report suggests Altium’s move to a cloud-based server environment isn’t as fraught with security hurdles as some have posited.
The Media (Us) Gets Social
Besides this blog, we at CIRCUITS ASSEMBLY are active in a number of other social media related forums.
You can follow Editor-in-Chief Mike Buetow’s steady stream of late-breaking news on Twitter (@mikebuetow).
Or join our LinkedIn groups: CIRCUITS ASSEMBLY, SMT Processing, PCB Test and Inspection, PCB Cleaning, and EMS — Electronics Manufacturing Services.
Finally, you could friend us on Facebook: search CIRCUITS ASSEMBLY.
Each vehicle is different, and each offers access to a somewhat different audience. Twitter tends to be a one-way, or two-way at most, type of communication. We use it more to relay important breaking stories, both reported by us and others. The LinkedIn groups, most of which are new, are more expansive, and intended to drive in-depth technical and market-related conversations. Facebook is less formal, in my opinion, than LinkedIn. The discussions there tend to be simpler in nature.
They all have their place, however, and we’d love to see you engaged in any one of them.
Talking Data Transfer at ZDAC
I had the great pleasure of attending Zuken’s ZDAC users group meeting earlier this month in San Antonio at the invitation of Steve Chidester, head of product marketing, and Amy Clements, marketing/sales manager.
Steve and Amy had asked me to present on electronics data transfer, a subject many readers know has long held my interest.
There were about 100 people who attended the event this year, slightly up over last year. All the usual Zuken folks were there: Gerhard Lipski, GM of Zuken Europe; Dave Gullickson, GM of Zuken USA; apps engineer Griff Derryberry; Humair Mandavia; Sandy Jones; and so on. I also was fortunate to meet with Zuken COO Jinya Katsube and CTO Kazuhiro Kariya.
As we’ve reported over at PCDanfF.com, just before ZDAC, Zuken rolled out two new tools: DesignForce, which accelerates prototyping by enabling chip-package-interconnect substrate optimization in a single, native 3D format. The CAD company also released CR-8000, its primary CAD flow. (DesignForce is embedded in CR-8000.) They spent a considerable amount of time discussing those two new tools and their ongoing product roadmap, including CR-5000 Lighting v. 14 next March, which will include a netless router. Zuken says it sees a need to move more information to upstream design, such as system and architecture. The main takeaway was that design makes up 4% of the cost of the process, but it determines 60% of the product cost.
I had about 45 people in my session. There was great interest in the topic, in part because some of the people there have been pushing their companies (RIM, Rockwell Collins, Northrop Grumman, to name but a few) to standardize on IPC-2581. All in all, it was well worth the time.
Also, Zuken is doing a lot in wiring harness design. This is a big market for many EMS companies (especially for military and aerospace work), and there are probably 12 to 15 companies that supply design software for wiring harness. (Some big ones are Mentor, Zuken, Eplan, Autodesk, and IGE-XAO). I didn’t attend the wiring harness design sessions, but it seems the audience was fairly split between the two.
Next year’s event will be held in Newport, CA, around the same time frame (early November).
Productronica: Still the Big Player on the Block
Productronica, the trade show that’s so big, they can only hold it every other year, enters its final day today.
The PCB fabrication exhibits have shrunk over the years and are now down to about one hall (although exhibitors were spread over two, intermingled with large lounge areas and contract assemblers). Like the (much bigger) assembly sections, the exhibitors felt Tuesday’s traffic was slow, but Wednesday and Thursday were strong. While China may have spirited away most of the production, this is still the event outside of the Pacific Rim.
Take a look at PCD&F today; our recap of the fab hall is now up.
DEK’d Out
Great chat with Michael Brianda, president of DEK, at Productronica. Some good insights on the state of the solar market, adding dispensing to the printer, and the franchising of stencil cutting.
Will have the full interview up later today.
Productronica, Day 1
Initial thoughts from Productronica:
Traffic was a bit slow relative to past years. The show itself seems smaller — and again, this is relative, as it remains bigger than almost all the other major electronics assembly trade shows combined — with traditional powerhouses like Siemens, Universal Instruments and other placement companies occupying booths that, while they would still qualify as monstrous at any other show, no longer fill entire halls on their own. (This is a good thing.)
Assembleon introduced its iFlex placement line, consisting of two multifunctional (with up to eight heads each) machines and a high-speed chipshooter. The dual-lane line uses the same feeders as the A series, is well-priced for all regions and is said to be capable of 400 cph placement speeds and less than 10 defects per million.
Speaking of Assembleon, the company reupped its licensing agreement with Yamaha, which, according to CIRCUITS ASSEMBLY sources, is for one year with a one year option. We saw Scott Zerkle, the new GM of Yamaha IM America.
Other products of note on Day 1:
- Juki introduced multiple lines and made upgrades to several others, including a new vision system (called Sentry), which combine multiple cameras in the pick-and-place head with an integrated AOI, all of which reportedly require no additional programming time. Also on display was the JX series of low-cost high-speed placement machines; the JX-200 features a high-resolution camera for vision placement.
- Kyzen debuted the E5321 alkaline cleaner for pallets and general maintenance.
- Speedprint added a glue and paste dispenser to its SP 710 printer.
- Goepel’s Opticon AOI can handle up to 32 devices under test simultaneously.
Notes:
- Chris Fussner, whom readers will remember from TransTechnology, is setting up a US division.
- Aqueous Technologies CEO Mike Konrad says 85% of its customers are cleaning no-clean flux.
- News out of Bangkok is that the flooding was so bad, some factories are soaked even on their second floors. Expect a big wave of new machines to replace the thousands lost in the flood.
- The big drop in the solar market will claim many victims. Some folks think, once all the bloodletting is over, there will be only a handful of companies left. Others aren’t so dire, but the clear consensus is that there is tremendous overcapacity in solar (estimates run north of 35%) and that it will be two to three years before demand and supply reach equilibrium again.
- Most equipment advances seen so far are evolutionary, with incremental improvements in speed and accuracy.