News
On Feb. 3, 2004, the SMART Group (Bucks, UK) held its 6th annual Lead-Free Seminar at Wycombe Football Club Conference Centre. Delegate numbers were finally cut-off at 173 a week before the event (another 50 engineers wanted to attend). According to the group, the exhibition area could have sold out four times over.
The Department of Trade & Industry (DTI) announced at the event that it would shortly be embarking on a whistle stop trip to the U.S. spreading the WEEE/RoHS status. Steven Andrews and Mark Downs will be speaking at four U.S. seminars, in addition to company visits and meetings and evening discussions. The two will arrive in New Jersey on Feb. 18, then move on to California, Seattle and Chicago.
The visit will complete the DTI coverage of the major markets and suppliers for electronic and electrical equipment (EEE) who have most interest in WEEE/RoHS. DTI approached American Electronics Association (AeA) to get involved with U.S. seminars, after similar initiatives were undertaken in China and Japan.
According to a survey conducted during the conference, most delegates are still conducting investigations on lead free; few had actually built demo or test boards, or selected the lead-free alloy, although most expect it to be tin/silver/copper. Help and advice is still needed, including a a help desk, hands-on experience and regular lead-free forums. When attendees were asked what was needed to get industry moving, the only positive response was for the government to give some financial help, by way of tax benefits, especially in the first year of the changeover from processing with lead solders to lead-free solders.
SMART Group is associated with LEADOUT, a European-funded scheme that will expand the SMART Group PPM Monitoring Project in a lead-free environment. In cooperation with over 20 organisations across Europe, LEADOUT will examine reliability, process change and the training needs of small and medium volume organisations.
Copyright 2004, UP Media Group. All rights reserved.
The Christopher Group (Santa Ana, CA) has announced the addition of William J. Boyle to their technical staff. Boyle, a graduate of The Catholic University of America in electrical engineering, was most recently employed as an applications engineer specializing in automatic optical inspection products at Teradyne. His responsibilities will include applications, engineering, sales and support of the Christopher Groups' inspection technology product line.
The Christopher Group provides sales, service and support of the Dainippon Screen (bare board) and NSpec (assembly) automatic optical inspection systems; HC 610 hole inspection system, and SmartOptics solder paste inspection and measurement system.
Copyright 2004, UP Media Group. All rights reserved.
Fabrinet (Bankok, Thailand), an engineering and electromechanical manufacturing services company, announced that they have executed on a new credit facility from the Bank of Nova Scotia. The funds will be used to finance the purchase of new equipment to increase the company's capacity to match current revenue backlog for components and subsystems for the fiberoptics, telecommunications, medical and automotive industries. The terms of the loan have not been disclosed.
Fabrinet has received previous funding from the Bank of Nova Scotia. Growth in operations with existing customers and an increase in new customer orders necessitated an expansion of current funding.
"Expanding our international banking relationship with the Bank of Nova Scotia will enable Fabrinet to continue to support our growing global customer base," said Fabrinet Sr. vice president, strategy & corporate affairs, Mark Schwartz. "We are especially pleased to further our existing relationship with one of the premier lending institutions in the world, with regional offices in many of the same cities and time zones as our factories and customer base."
Copyright 2004, UP Media Group. All rights reserved.
Micro Care Corp. (New Britain, CT) has announced two new technologies for cleaning fiber optic connectors. The first innovation is a new Fiber Optic Connector Solvent in a pump-spray canister. The second is a family of swabs specifically designed for cleaning inside tiny fiber optic connectors.
The communications industry has long been bedeviled by the difficulty of cleaning fiber optic connectors. Exacerbating this problem is the continuing trend towards thinner, higher-capacity fiber optic cables and connectors. The labor cost inherent in installing thousands of perfectly clean male and female connectors is becoming a major factor in every large fiber optic installation. Traditional alcohol wipes have failed to deliver the consistent cleaning required.
The cleaning solvent is a nonflammable, environmentally safe, residue-free solvent formulated to clean fiber connector end-faces. The new product, based on a patented azeotrope of Vertrel specialty solvents from DuPont, is SNAP-approved, plastic-safe and double-filtered to 0.2 microns during packaging. It dissolves light oils, salts, grime and uncured epoxies, and—since it also is mildly hygroscopic—it will absorb small amounts of moisture while cleaning. The cleaner can remove the messy but vital silicone pastes used inside the fiber optic cables.
The solvent is packaged in a unique nonaerosol pump spray which is even permitted on board commercial aircraft. Since the container is hermetically sealed, cross-contamination cannot occur, ensuring that clean, pure cleaning fluid is used on every cleaning job. The compact size fits easy in the hand, and makes it easy to fit in tool kits, instrument cases and inspection packages.
Micro Care also has developed a proprietary cleaning swab for fiber optic connectors. The new cleaning sticks are made of a synthetic, extruded polyester. The cleaning sticks come in three sizes, each engineered to fit the most popular sizes of connectors, including the troublesome 0.0125 connectors favored on military projects, and can clean both male and female shaped connectors.
No fibers, binders, adhesives or outgassing contaminates the connector. Since recleaning is rarely required, the cleaning sticks offer time-savings in a complex optical installation.
Manufactured by Micro Care, the products are marketed exclusively by AFL Telecommunications under the Noyes brand.
Copyright 2004, UP Media Group. All rights reserved.
The monthly order index compiled by the Electronic Components, Assemblies and Materials Association (ECA, Arlington, VA) moved upward in January, confirming industry optimism during the last four months.
"The index has been moving up steadily," said Bob Willis, ECA president. "It's not the meteoric boom of the late 1990s, but we might never see that again. This is nice, manageable growth that looks like it will be sustained throughout the year."
Willis says recent news substantiates the upward trend that has been seen in the ECA order index during the last four months. For instance, ECA members, such as Vishay Intertechnology, Littelfuse and KEMET, have reported substantial revenue increases in Q4 2003 compared to Q4 2002. Also, Reuters reports that major electronics manufacturing services (EMS) companies are seeing stronger demand in 2004, helped by an improving economy and a trend to outsource personal computers, servers, cell phones, handheld computers and other electronics gear.
The ECA represents manufacturers and producers of passive and active electronic components, component arrays and assemblies, and materials and support services. It is a sector of the Electronic Industries Alliance, comprising more than 2,100 members that reportedly represent 80% of the U.S. electronics industry.
Copyright 2004, UP Media Group. All rights reserved.
AEGIS Industrial Software Corp. (Horsham, PA) and Cogiscan Inc. (Bromont, Quebec, Canada) have announced that they will demonstrate integration between their products as the Cogiscan material tracking and line control technology is integrated to Aegis' real-time machine monitoring and data acquisition systems.
The combined solution offers control of business processes from the preparation of design and bill of matrials data, to line setup validation, execution and the gathering and analysis of process data. It then yields traceability—effectively closing the informational loop. The technical integration creates the first solution offering the Aegis NPI and MES solutions with the materials and process control solutions offered from Cogiscan.
"When Aegis and Cogiscan solutions combine to create closed loop manufacturing control, it yields more than just an extended range of functions," said Jason Spera, chief executive officer of Aegis, "It delivers new depth of information management through the entire process from end-to-end. It is a platform-independent solution free of proprietary and machine-specific elements to make deployment and scalability simple."
Copyright 2004, UP Media Group. All rights reserved.
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