FARNBOROUGH, UK – Gen3, Global leader in SIR, CAF, Solderability, Ionic Contamination & process optimisation equipment, is pleased to announce they were again selected by Custom Interconnect Ltd (CIL) as a preferred supplier. CIL, a leading contract electronic manufacturing service provider have acquired a new CM33L+ Ionic Contamination Testing system to complement their purchase of a second MBTech NC25 PCB Cleaning System.

CIL has a long-standing partnership with Gen3 who already have one MBTech NC25 at its state-of-the-art facility. With the acquisition of an additional NC25 and the new CM33L+, CIL expects to significantly improve its PCB cleaning capabilities and throughput, which will enable the company to better meet the needs of its customers and provide the highest quality products possible.

MBTech’s NC25 is able to remove flux and contamination residues from PCBs post-manufacturing and the CM33L+ is subsequently used to measure precise amounts of ionic contamination to verify the age-old question “how clean is clean?”. Gen3’s CM+ series machines are 6 Sigma verified and globally recognised as being THE industry- leading, award-winning and the world’s first combined ROSE and PICT Ionic Contamination Tester.  

"We are excited to expand our partnership with Gen3 and add their state-of-the-art cleaning technologies to our production line," said John Boston, Managing Director at CIL. "We are committed to providing our customers with the highest quality products, and these acquisitions will help us achieve that goal."

The upgraded CM33L+ is particularly noteworthy as it aligns with the work that both Graham Naisbitt, President of Gen3, and Symon Franklin of CIL, have been doing on the IPC committee to improve PCB cleanliness standards. The acquisition will enable CIL to stay ahead of the curve in terms of PCB cleaning technology and contribute to advancing the industry's standards.

The NC25 Batch Cleaner is specially designed around a patented filtration system, providing high cleaning performance.  The system is designed for use with a number of chemistries in a closed-loop configuration that offers optimum performance with minimum waste and hence reduced operating costs. The machine also benefits a unique process of combining forced convection and vacuum to thoroughly dry the PCB’s.

Automating the board cleaning process with machines guarantees a perfectly repeatable cleaning. This avoids the risk of local residues causing faster oxidation over time and the creation of short circuits in the very long term. For more information about Custom Interconnect Ltd, visit https://cil-uk.co.uk/ 

Being a specialist in Quality Assurance for electronic assembly with more than 100 years of combined electronics industry experience, Gen3 is ideally placed to help clients determine the most suitable process control for their production process. To learn more about Objective Evidence, visit www.objectiveevidence.org 

For more information about Gen3, visit www.gen3systems.com 

DERRY, NH – StenTech® Inc., the leading multinational SMT Printing Solutions company, will exhibit at the SMTA Wisconsin Expo & Tech Forum, scheduled to take place Tuesday, May 16, 2023 at the Crowne Plaza Milwaukee Airport. Raza Khan, StenTech’s Central Area Sales Manager, will be available to discuss the unique Advanced Nano Stencil technology.

Advanced Nano is a highly unique coating that is applied to the bottom side of the stencil and inside the apertures, the squeegee side remains uncoated. This coating provides the stencil with anti-adhesion properties. Advanced Nano utilizes a specialized 1-3 um hardened nano coating. This permanent hydrophobic and oleophobic coating repels solder flux, allowing increased transfer of paste.

Advanced Nano increases transfer efficiency up to 25 percent, and enables significantly less bridging due to its paste efficiency benefits. Due to the anti- adhesion or "non-stick" characteristics, underside cleaning is reduced, giving customers a better yield and less expense on rework and touch-up. Stencils coated with Advanced Nano are ready for use just 30 minutes after coating.

StenTech has been leading the way in stencil technology, being the first company to introduce Fiber Diode lasers into North America. With more than 30 experienced CAD designers, their strength is the support they provide in stencil modifications, materials and thickness recommendations. StenTech, incorporates sub-brands, PhotoStencil and ADT and offers a complete array of stencil technology, custom-tailored to suit your manufacturing requirements. They manufacture all types of stencils for the SMT industry.

To learn more, visit www.StenTech.com 

CAMBRIDGE, UK – Artificial Intelligence has come a long way since the success of DeepMind over Go world champion Lee Sedol in 2016; the world is beginning to change according to the new possibilities afforded by AI. From the robust predictive abilities of OpenAI’s ChatGPT – where the AI chatbot can be used for all sorts of purposes, from creating scripts (including malware) to writing academic essays – to AI image generators that are so good that they can win Sony world photography awards, the complexity and capabilities of AI algorithms are growing at a startlingly fast pace. Hardware is hardly divorced from this. As machine learning workloads become more complex and more compute-hungry, so must hardware scale appropriately to ensure cost-efficiency for end users without stalling progress in the software domain. Hardware and software are tightly linked, and it is the matter of control and ownership of AI hardware that is emphasized in IDTechEx’s latest report, “AI Chips 2023-2033”.

The Price of Failure

2016 may have been the year that the world first took notice of the reality of AI, but IDTechEx believes that 2020 will be the year that is remembered as a turning point in technology initiatives across the globe. Chips for AI training – where training refers to providing AI algorithms with large datasets, such that the algorithm can adjust its weights in order to better fit with the provided data – are typically at the most leading-edge nodes, given how computationally intensive the training stage of implementing an AI algorithm is. Intel, Samsung and TSMC are the only companies that can produce 5 nm node chips. Of these, TSMC is currently the only company that is having any real success with securing orders for 3 nm chips. TSMC is a Taiwanese company, Samsung South Korean. TSMC has a global market share for semiconductor production that is currently hovering at around 60%. For the more advanced nodes, this is closer to 90%. Of TSMC’s six 12-inch fabs and six 8-inch fabs, only two are in China and one is in the USA. The rest are in Taiwan. Therefore, the semiconductor manufacture part of the global supply chain is heavily concentrated in the APAC region, principally Taiwan.

Such a concentration comes with a great deal of risk should this part of the supply chain be threatened in some way. This is precisely what occurred in 2020 when a number of complementing factors (such as the COVID-19 pandemic, the rise of data mining, a Taiwanese drought, fabrication facility fire outbreaks, and neon procurement difficulties due to the Russia-Ukraine war) led to a global chip shortage, where demand for semiconductor chips exceeded supply. Since then, the largest stakeholders (excluding Taiwan) in the semiconductor value chain (the US, the EU, South Korea, Japan, and China) have sought to reduce their exposure to a manufacturing deficit should another set of circumstances arise that results in an even more exacerbated chip shortage.

The Prize

But this is not the only reason that national and regional government initiatives have been put in place to incentivize semiconductor manufacturing companies to expand operations or build new facilities. The manufacture of advanced semiconductor chips fuels national/regional AI capabilities. These capabilities, in natural language processing (understanding of textual data, not just from a linguistic perspective but also a contextual one), speech recognition (being able to decipher a spoken language and convert it to text in the same language, or convert to another language), recommendation (being able to send personalized adverts/suggestions to consumers based on their interactions with service items), reinforcement learning (being able to make predictions based on observations/exploration, such as is used when training agents to play a game), object detection, and image classification (being able to distinguish objects from an environment, and decide on what that object is), are so significant to the efficacy of certain products (such as autonomous vehicles and industrial robots) and to models of national governance and security, that the development of AI hardware and software should be at the top of the agenda for any government body that wishes to be at the technological forefront.

Report Coverage

IDTechEx forecasts that the global AI chips market will grow to US$257.6 billion by 2033. How this pie is sliced will largely depend on how effective funding initiatives are. IDTechEx’s report breaks down each major national and regional funding initiative related to semiconductor manufacture, giving analysis pertaining to where funding is coming from, how this is to be dispensed, and the relative effectiveness of each governing body’s initiatives. Geopolitical background is given, difficulties and opportunities presented, and each region’s use and expertise with AI clearly detailed. In addition, the major private investments made and announced since 2021 with regard to semiconductor manufacture are surveyed and contextualized within overarching funding initiatives.

More generally, the report covers the global AI Chips market across eight industry verticals, with 10-year granular forecasts in seven different categories (such as by geography, by chip architecture, and by application). In addition to the revenue forecasts for AI chips, costs at each stage of the supply chain (design, manufacture, assembly, test & packaging, and operation) are quantified for a leading-edge AI chip. Rigorous calculations are provided, along with a customizable template for customer use and analyses of comparative costs between leading and trailing edge node chips.

IDTechEx’s latest report, “AI Chips 2023-2033”, answers the major questions, challenges and opportunities faced by the AI chip value chain. For further understanding of the markets, players, technologies, opportunities, and challenges, please refer to this report.

To find out more, including downloadable sample pages, please visit www.IDTechEx.com/AIChips 

CRANSTON, RI – AIM Solder, a leading global manufacturer of solder assembly materials for the electronics industry, is pleased to announce their participation in the upcoming SMTA Juarez Expo taking place on May 19th at the Polanco Complex – Hall A in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico. AIM will highlight their newest halogen-free no clean solder paste, H10.

H10 offers exceptional fine feature printing, improved electrochemical reliability, and powerful wetting in AIM's brand-new halogen-free no clean solder paste. H10 solder paste is capable of transfer efficiency >90% on area ratios of 0.50 and a stencil life >8 hours.

H10’s powerful wetting characteristics eliminate NWO (HiP) defects and improve pad coverage on all surface finishes. H10 reduces voiding on BGA, BTC and LGA and offers enhanced electrochemical reliability on all low stand-off devices. Fit for automotive, LED and aerospace assemblies, H10 no clean solder paste is robust, stable, and easy to implement.

To discover all of AIM’s products and services, visit the company at the SMTA Juarez Expo on May 19th for more information and to speak with one of AIM’s knowledgeable staff members, or visit www.aimsolder.com