FEATURES

• Life After Lead
  The Greening of Electronics
  After a half-century of reliance on lead, we have entered an era where we are flying mostly blind. This is just the first of a sweeping wave of environmental impacts on product design and product life.
  Dan Shea

• Cover Story
  Improving Hand Soldering Operational Costs and Process Control
  Equipment purchase decisions for soldering stations should guarantee high process stability at low running costs. Advances in intelligent equipment mean manual soldering and process control can finally go hand-in-hand.
  Mark Cannon, Bob Klenke and Phil Zarrow

• RoHS Best Practices
  Getting RoHS Ready
  The E.U. RoHS directive, which goes into effect this month, is hardly the only environmental law with which manufacturers must comply: everywhere in the world legislation looms on the horizon. Five steps to preparing your company on a global basis.
  Dave Purvis

• Annual Buyers Guide
  Circuits Assembly's Annual Guide to Products and Services

FIRST PERSON

• Caveat Lector
  Happy hangovers?
  Mike Buetow

MONEY MATTERS

• Focus on Business
  Account acquisition at EMS firms.
  Susan Mucha

• Global Sourcing
  International procurement hubs.
  Craig Schuster

TECH TALK

• On the Forefront
  Manufacturing's rising costs.
  E. Jan Vardaman

• Screen Printing
  Board transport systems.
  Clive Ashmore

• Soldering Tips
  How to analyze and restore storm-damaged boards.
  American Competitiveness Institute

• Wave Soldering
  Hole-fill solutions.
  Gert Schouten

• Test and Inspection
  Board stress models.
  Gary St. Onge and Jesse Carpenter

• Countdown to Pb-Free
  Tomorrow's environmental priorities.
  Joe Johnson and Bob Pfahl

• ESD Basics
  Compliance verification programs.
  David E. Swenson

• Process Doctor
  'Staging' a clean process.
  Terry Munson

• Equipment Advances
  DEK's post-print verification system.

• Technical Abstracts

DEPARTMENTS

Industry News
Market Watch
Assembly Insider
Ad Index
Semicon West Product Spotlight
Classifieds

On the cover: A new soldering station adds process control to the labor-intensive operation. (Photo courtesy ERSA GmbH )