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News

IRVINE, CA – Henkel will expand its existing plant in Pune, India, adding a solder paste blending facility for its Multicore line of solder pastes.

PLANO, TX -- Rapid Tooling has received ISO 9001:2000 certification, the company announced today.

The certification recognizes the company's quality management system conforms to ISO standard requirements.
The certificate was issued by Quality Management Systems.

Rapid Tooling provides engineering services and hard tooling for electronics assembly and semiconductor packaging.

LOS ANGELES – Cimnet Systems Inc. and Direct Logix are now offering a bundled version of the companies’ respective engineering planning and management software.

The companies announced the move at a press conference during the IPC Apex show this week.

The combined solution is said to completely automate front-end operations, from quoting to pre-production engineering and design.

The bundled front-end automation tool includes Cimnet’s i-Quote Web-enabled PCB quotation system, and Direct Logix’s CAM Automation, Design Rule Check Analysis and Engineering Flow Control tools.

“This is a very powerful solution backed by two vendors that are directly focused on the unique needs and business requirements of leading PCB manufacturers around the world,” said Cimnet general manager Mehul Davé.

Cimnet is supplier of ERP software and services for the PCB industry. Direct Logix provides engineering procedure management software.

MINNEAPOLIS -- Dr. Denis Barbini took home top honors at the SMTA Pan Pacific Microelectronics Symposium last month. The paper, "Lead Free Wave Soldering: Process Optimization for Simple to Highly Complex Boards," won Best of Conference, as rated by attendees. The paper covers how critical wave soldering parameters correlate and provide information necessary to make educated decisions in selecting materials.

Barbini is advanced technology manager at Vitronics-Soltec, and a member of the SMTA board.

LOS ANGELES – Valor Computerized Systems announced the implementation of vPlan, its new process engineering software, at EMS provider Mack Technologies.

Mack beta’d vPlan, and the results led to a corporate-wide order once the product was released, Valor said.

In a press release, Steve Barbera, VP of technical operations at Mack, said, “vPlan’s ability to autogenerate machine data on the fly for multiple machine types saves us a significant amount of debug time on the production floor, improves our SMT line efficiency, and makes it extremely easy to adopt new SMT machines and transfer jobs between lines and even sites. It allows us to focus on our business-critical functional workflow rather than deal with low-level scripting at the CAM level.”

LOS ANGELES -- Texmac Inc. today announced complete testing and programming services using Takaya APT-series flying-probe systems.

The new services are available to users of Takaya systems and to any electronics manufacturer that needs fixtureless test.

Services offered include simple program preparation and CAD conversion, full program development and debug, and complete board testing.

Texmac is the exclusive authorized distributor of Takaya flying probers in North America.

LOS ANGELES – iNEMI today announced its 2007 iNEMI Roadmap will be available to industry next month. The latest edition of the biennial document charts electronics manufacturing’s technology and infrastructure needs through 2017. It also discusses market convergence, miniaturization, harmonization of environmental requirements, migration of manufacturing and R&D, reliability, printed electronics and more.

LOS ANGELES -- Traffic was up somewhat on the second day of the IPC Apex show, to the relief of exhibitors who were beginning to show some frustration with the downtown Los Angeles site.

Purchasers take note: Cookson’s Steve Corbett and Henkel’s Pat Trippel separately stressed that the precious metals markets are running wild. “The tin market situation is scary,” noted Corbett, noting the shutdowns in Indonesia and market uncertainty in Bolivia – two primary suppliers.

LOS ANGELES -- Placement, placement, placement. It’s the most expensive machine on the line, and at Apex the OEMs showed once again why that’s the case.

vPlan is an enterprise-level, electronics assembly process engineering software tool. The new tool synchronizes process engineering in an easy-to-use package, from CAD to the machine level (SMT, PTH, and manual assembly) in three steps.

The tool defines the product, creating a normalized and validated virtual PCA using a lean data model that enables quick-change management, DFx analysis, and an optimized assembly processes. Next, it defines production resources. Virtual machine lines can be easily defined and machine library data can be auto-generated for all machine configurations with the help of Valor’s VPL service. This step is said to practically eliminates machine library management. Finally, vPlan generates manufacturing process definitions, which contain optimized output and documentation for assembly machines and manual work cells, matched to available resources and the product model.

Valor Computerized Systems, www.valor.com

BROMONT, CANADA – Panasonic Factory Solutions Co. of America and Cogiscan have collaborated on an RFID smart feeder kit for Panasonic's IPAC machine.

In a statement, Panasonic engineering manager Gene Dunn said that customers have sought to include automatic feeder tracking and closed loop slot verification. He said the integration of Cogiscan's RFID smart feeder system with Panasonic's verification and traceability software is a first major step in that direction.

The kit is offered on new machines and can be retrofitted on existing machines.

Cogiscan's RFID smart feeder reportedly tracks, traces and controls feeders on and off the assembly line, without human intervention. The companies said tape feeders of any model and year can be upgraded into intelligent feeders by attaching a low cost RFID tag.

LOS ANGELES – UP Media Group Inc. on Monday announced the winners of its 2007 Service Excellence Awards for EMS providers and electronics assembly equipment, materials and software suppliers. Circuits Assembly magazine recognized the companies that received the highest customer service ratings, as judged by their own customers, during a ceremony at the Apex trade show in Los Angeles.

In the EMS category, the overall winners were Integrated Microelectronics Inc. (revenues greater than $100 million) and Key Electronics (revenues less than $100 million).