Tag Archives: 2014

The Best-Read PCD&F Articles in 2014

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As we did with CIRCUITS ASSEMBLY on Monday, here’s the list of the best-read new articles at PCDandF.com this year.

Leading the pack was IMI president Peter Bigelow, whose piece “When ‘Scaling Up’ Leads to ‘Belly Up’ ” received the most hits of his 10-year career as our columnist.

Next up was “A Two-Team Race?” Dr. Hayao Nakahara’s annual list of the largest PCB fabricators.

Coming in third was “Design for Reliability with Computer Modeling.” Dr. Randy Schueller and Cheryl Tulkoff, both with DfR Solutions, explained a new CAD tool that imports design files and quantitatively predicts product life.

They narrowly beat out “Magnification vs. Resolution in Visual Examination Specifications,” by Louis Hart of Compunetics and consultant Robert Simmons.

Coming in fifth was “Design Practices for Panelization and Depanelization,” by Phil Lerma, fabrication manager at NexLogic Technologies.

In sixth was Patrick Carrier’s “Maximizing Capacitor Effectiveness,” the first of multiple contributions from Mentor Graphics.

Next was “Power Electronics Packages with Embedded Components – Recent Trends and Developments,” by Lars Boettcher, Stefan Karaszkiewicz, Dionysios Manessis and Andreas Ostmann, who summed the work of a cross-industry team’s development and testing of a PCB-based embedded chip technology for an under-the-hood automotive application.

They were followed by “Qualification vs. First Article Inspection,” authored by Charles Hill and Karen Ebner of Raytheon.

The ninth most-read piece was “Effectively Managing PCB Design Constraints,” by John McMillan of Mentor Graphics.

And closing out the Top 10 was yet another Mentor offering, “Passing Electrical Signoff,” by Rod Dudzinski and Minoru Ishikawa.

The top written staff articles were “The One-Stop SoCal Shop,” senior editor Chelsey Drysdale’s look inside Murrietta Circuits, and “Good Values in Vegas,” our staff writeup of the 2014 IPC Apex Expo trade show.

We want to thank all our contributors from last year, and especially our loyal readers. Happy new year!

2014: The Year of the Deal

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Today brings to an end one of the most fascinating years of acquisitions since the crazy Internet era of late 1990s and 2000.

Unlike that episode, however, 2014 was a much more orderly state of affairs, and while some of the deals were not foreseen, the pricing (and volume) were within the realm of reason.

To recap:

  • TTM Technologies announced it would buy Viasystems, bringing to a close one of the most talked-about chapters in PCB industry history. The deal has cleared all but the last few regulatory hurdles, and is expected to close in mid 2015.
  • Rogers will buy Arlon, merging two leading suppliers of high-frequency laminate materials, and perhaps further complicating the supply chain for some of the smaller fabricators that lack the purchasing power of the major players, not to mention consolidating the RF/microwave product supply base for the US Defense Department. Given its shoulder shrug of TTM’s Chinese ownership, will the DoD even bat an eye over this, or will it be concerned enough to throw a wrench in the deal?
  • On the assembly side, ASM purchased DEK, which had been readied for sale since late 2011. The acquisition gives ASM top-of-the-line print-to-placement equipment offerings and positions it to compete with the major Japanese players such as Panasonic, Yamaha, Juki and Fuji.
  • Nordson acquired Dima Group, stretching its traditional dispensing and, later, AOI and test focus into SMT placement. Will Nordson keep the pick-and-place lines, or package that unit up and sell it?
  • Likewise, Amtech Systems has a pending agreement to buy BTU, stretching its semiconductor and solar production focus to include SMT reflow.
  • And just yesterday Kulicke and Soffa made a deal to buy Assembleon for $98 million in cash. While Assembleon had been expected to be acquired since Philips first put it on the block several years ago, K&S’s entry into the printed circuit board equipment space was unforeseen. Does it plan to continue to roll up other companies (Speedline?) and build a worthy competitor to ASM?

Most of the major deals that took place in 2014 happened on the supplier side. Does that presage a similar consolidation on the manufacturing end in 2015? Will some of the units long-rumored to be in play (Multek, Hitachi) finally be consummated? Will EMS, which took a breather in 2014 after major deals involving Natel (Epic), Benchmark (Suntron, CTS) the year before, catch a new spark?

We can’t wait to find out. Happy New Year!