By Sjef van Gastel, Marina Nikeschina, Rita Petit
Published by RTFB Publishing
7 chapters, 230 pages

When you pick up this book for the first time its print quality, illustrations and feel are great but it's the content that counts. If you just flick through the book quickly you may dismiss it, but don't. Read a couple of sections if you have the opportunity. I would strongly suggest that the publisher makes a few pages available online to tempt the potential customer, not just the usual overview.

The chapter "Application Analysis" is very interesting and many consultants charge a lot for this information. Basically the authors have analysed products from different market sectors, consumer, phones, computers, and communications, industrial and automotive. They have looked at the board size, component count, number of component types, type of component and pitch. This analysis allows them to look at the requirements of production equipment today and in the future. You could also define most other production equipment, not only placement, with this approach. It is, however, the same methodology that most process engineers use to select equipment.

A section covers the issues surrounding 0201 and even 01005 chip components, their justification and use in design plus the issues they will bring in manufacture. 0201 will become a reality for engineers in the next few years so the more information and experience that can be gained will set you in good stead for the future. To date this reviewer has not seen many issues with 0201 assembly; just lucky with his initial design rules. We will be running 01005 parts in the near future with lead-free, hopefully we can gather useful information from the chapter and see the outcome.

There is also a fair bit of coverage on advanced assembly like chip scale and flip chip assembly. This outlines the requirements of design, process and quality, in this case focusing on the impact of resist open and closed pads. The conclusions in this section provide specific recommendations for equipment accuracy based on the trials outlined. With the increasing availability of bare die, flip chip starts become a possible reality in mainstream assembly.