Author Archives: Mike

About Mike

Mike Buetow is president of the Printed Circuit Engineering Association (pcea.net). He previously was editor-in-chief of Circuits Assembly magazine, the leading publication for electronics manufacturing, and PCD&F, the leading publication for printed circuit design and fabrication. He spent 21 years as vice president and editorial director of UP Media Group, for which he oversaw all editorial and production aspects. He has more than 30 years' experience in the electronics industry, including six years at IPC, an electronics trade association, at which he was a technical projects manager and communications director. He has also held editorial positions at SMT Magazine, community newspapers and in book publishing. He is a graduate of the University of Illinois. Follow Mike on Twitter: @mikebuetow

Tighter Ratio Rules Ahead?

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The long-held area ratio rule (the ratio of aperture size and stencil foil thickness) of 0.66 is under attack from all sides, it seems.

Writing this month in CIRCUITS ASSEMBLY, columnist Clive Ashmore explains that improvements to the shear thinning capability of the print stroke can reduce the area ratio to 0.40. This is an important development because tighter ratios offer greater latitude in stencil design. The rule today is that, since a larger component generally requires more paste volume than a smaller one, one or the other suffers: Optimize for the larger part and print quality suffers on the small aperture; optimize for the smaller ones and the larger parts are starved of paste. With the lower ratio however, as Ashmore notes, 0.3 mm CSPs could be placed beside large tantalum capacitors without penalizing one or the other.

Next week at SMTAI in Orlando, Rockwell’s Kevin Liticker will present his work evaluating several stencil technologies including “PhD,” fine grain stainless and nickel stencil, and aperture forming methods like pulsed YAG laser, fiber optic laser (with and without electropolish) and electroform as they relate to paste transfer efficiencies for small apertures. I’m not going to give away the store, but he found some evidence that the release characteristics of fine grain material may be superior as apertures shrink.

I strongly suggest checking out both engineers’ work.

US to China: Ours is Bigger

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Two things jump out in this article about the the US manufacturing economy and the world’s greatest engineering school, MIT*.

First, that manufacturing as a percentage of US economic output is on a short-term rise, albeit a slight one, growing to 13% of the GDP in 2009 from 12% in 2002. (Annoyingly, this chart shows up only in the pay version of the online article.)

Second, in whole numbers, at $1.854 trillion, the US manufacturing output in 2009 actually was larger than that of China’s, which weighed in at $1.695 trillion. This backs up what proponents of US manufacturing have been saying all along: that the domestic manufacturing sector remains bigger — in this case, by some $159 billion — despite the general perception.

Ironically, the point of the article — that, as it did in the early 1990s, MIT has formed a blue-chip committee to study the role of manufacturing in the US economy — falls short by acknowledging no one knows whether the original study had any impact.

*Said with disdain appropriate of a University of Illinois graduate.

**GDP per World Bank figures.

US to China: Ours is Bigger

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Two things jump out in this article about the the US manufacturing economy and the world’s greatest engineering school, MIT*.

First, that manufacturing as a percentage of US economic output is on a short-term rise, albeit a slight one, growing to 13% of the GDP in 2009 from 12% in 2002. (Annoyingly, this chart shows up only in the pay version of the online article.)

Second, in whole numbers, at $1.854 trillion, the US manufacturing output in 2009 actually was larger than that of China’s, which weighed in at $1.695 trillion. This backs up what proponents of US manufacturing have been saying all along: that the domestic manufacturing sector remains bigger — in this case, by some $159 billion — despite the general perception.

Ironically, the point of the article — that, as it did in the early 1990s, MIT has formed a blue-chip committee to study the role of manufacturing in the US economy — falls short by acknowledging no one knows whether the original study had any impact.

*Said with disdain appropriate of a University of Illinois graduate.
**GDP per World Bank figures.

Mixed Appreciation for Depreciation

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For some 15 years, the electronics manufacturing industry has pushed for changes to the US capital equipment depreciation laws.

In fits and starts, various groups have converged on Washington and lobbied legislators to shorten the five-year cycle for fully depreciating new machines, saying the move would make the US more competitive with other manufacturing-reliant nations. Thanks in part to 9/11 and subsequently in response to economic cycles, lawmakers have from time to time accelerated the schedule to three years and raised the amount small businesses could write off.

This week, President Obama offered full capital depreciation (and also said he would make permanent the much-sought-after research and development tax credit), but with a catch: American businesses would no longer get tax breaks to launch operations offshore.  “There is no reason why our tax code should actively reward them for creating jobs overseas,” Obama said.

The National Association of Manufacturers supports the accelerated depreciation laws (it would be hard to see why it wouldn’t), but reportedly has come out against the other proposed changes to the tax code. As I’m sure NAM is aware, by statute hits to the US Treasury must be made up elsewhere. Politics is the art of compromise and tradeoffs.  I would urge our industry trade groups to collectively agree on what the electronics industry can afford to live with, and what it can’t — and fast. They will be much more effective if they speak with a unified voice.

Kal Kawar Joins Blogging Team

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I’d like to welcome our newest blogger, Kal Kawar of Actio.

A chemical regulations expert, Kal has a bachelor’s in chemical engineering and a master’s in industrial hygiene. His professional experience includes serving as staff industrial hygienist for IBM’s New York semiconductor manufacturing facility, and as industrial hygienist for IBM’s US headquarters. Now executive vice president of Actio, Kal taps more than 20 years’ worth of chemical engineering, industrial hygiene, and environmental engineering experience.  His far-reaching expertise with global regulatory challenges created by EPA, TSCA, REACH, RoHS, WEEE – and hundreds of others – aid in developing Actio software solutions for MSDS management, raw material disclosure compliance, and product stewardship in a supply chain.

Welcome, Kal!

This Part Doesn’t Fit

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For several quarters now, company after company has claimed the widespread shortages of parts is pushing out deliveries and costing them short money.

Sanmina-SCI, Flextronics, Benchmark, Jabil and others have been very specific about the amount of coin they’ve missed out on in any given quarter, but each time they’ve taken pains to explain that those orders have been delayed, not canceled.

Now here’s Sony Ericsson, taking it one step further by claiming the shortage of printed circuit boards and LED screens actually led to canceled or lost orders. That Sony Ericsson outsources smartphone production to, among others, Flextronics and Foxconn,  whose sales continue to rise, adds to the intrigue.

Assuming most electronics orders are zero-sum programs — in other words, if someone loses one, that means someone else won it — my question is, Who won the programs? It must be the company that has all the parts. But if every company is claiming shortages, something’s not adding up.

Does this seem logical?

Reference Designators

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This is not a subject I give much thought to.

For one, we here at Screaming Circuits don’t really care too much what convention you use for your components. We want them to match and be properly formatted when in your BoM, of course. But because we program our SMT machines electronically, we don’t really care if you mix things up; i.e., O instead of R for resistor, or F for capacitor. It’s not a good idea to do that, but we can still build it.

But, if we can build it, shouldn’t anybody be able to build it? And, if anyone can build it, why should it matter? Well, in theory, it shouldn’t matter at all. In practice though, people tend to be human and humans tend to be error-prone. That’s why we have standards, conventions and test procedures — to reduce the chances for errors. We also have conventions for the purpose of distributing bad, overpriced food and educational sessions, but that’s probably a different convention.

It would be kind of like if you drove into a small town and there was a sign at the city limits indicating that in this town, red means go and green means stop. You would have all of the information needed safely traverse the town, but you would still be very prone to go with the green light.

I just recently saw a design where the connectors were labeled U1, U2… Again, we can build this and we did. But, if it comes time to do any rework, or if you want to make some design mods in-house, of if someone else needs to work with the board, they’ll see “U something” and think you’re talking about an IC instead of some sort of connector.

There are some specific industry standard documents covering the reference designator conventions, but I bet it’s one of those things that most people just sort of know, but don’t have the official document to go with it. Wikipedia has a list and a lot of companies probably have their own conventions.

It is easy enough to find these lists of conventions, but it does leave me wondering how some of them came to be. I get “R” for resistor and “C” for capacitor. “Q” for transistor even makes sense, although it’s derived from a property of the device instead of the name as are R and C. But, why “U” for integrated circuit? It used to be “IC”, but that’s fallen out of favor now. Really weird is the inductor. It starts with “I”, it’s inductance value is measured in “henries” and henries are indicated by “L.” Go figure.

Duane Benson
U take the high road and L take the low road

http://blog.screamingcircuits.com

Flextronics Showing PC Muscle

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How can you not like what Flextronics is doing in the computing space right now?

The world’s second-largest EMS player just opened its fourth end-to-end computing campus in China, a one million sq. ft. behemoth that offers complete design and manufacturing services for desktop, computers, notebook products and tablets.

More significant, the move underscores that Flextronics is going right after Foxconn. Unlike some competitors that have chosen to cede entire industries to Foxconn, Flextronics is turning that approach on its head.

While most analysts see computing as a relatively flat industry over the next few years — a prediction that is complicated by the growth of 4G smartphones, which act like de facto PCs — Flextronics has grown its revenue in the segment by taking market share from the very players most saw as the entrenched winners. From practically non-existent a few years ago, Flextronics’ PC segment is expected to nearly double to $2 billion this year and is forecast to hit $4 billion in 2012.

American companies pioneered volume manufacturing. There’s no reason they should not compete in that domain anywhere in the world.