Circuits Assembly Online Magazine - News

News

Taunton, MA – Following its acquisition last year by HumiSeal’s parent company Chase Corp., Concoat Ltd. has changed its name to HumiSeal Europe Ltd.

The UK conformal coatings supplier has been manufacturing HumiSeal products for the European marketplace for over 25 years.

David Greenman, managing director, noted in a press release: “By operating in the USA and Europe under the same name, we make it crystal clear that we can offer a seamless transition between our manufacturing, sales and technical support services, with products that are tested and certified independently to military and automotive standards throughout the world.”

Greenman is enthusiastic about the company’s prospects, and about its new identity: “We expect to grow between 5 and 10% this year. We are winning new projects all the time, in a broad range of industries. With our new identity, we can build on our excellent market position and good name, and grow our global business still further. Our new name truly makes us part of the HumiSeal family and opens the door completely for real, in-depth co-operation."

GUADALAJARA -- Sanmina-SCI today announced the opening of a 347,000 sq. ft. foot enclosures facility here. The new factory brings the EMS company's enclosure manufacturing capacity to more than 500,000 sq. ft., the largest in North America.

ST. LOUIS -- LaBarge Inc. has received an initial $1.7 million contract to build assemblies for Northrop Grumman's Defensive Systems Division.

The assemblies will be used in Northrop's internally mounted radar countermeasures system, the AN/ALQ-135, for the F-15K fighter.

Production is expected to begin early this summer at LaBarge's Tulsa, OK, facility and is expected to continue through fall 2006. Additional orders are expected, LaBarge said in a statement.

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. and European Union today announced they are ready to endorse a joint "action strategy" for the enforcement of intellectual property rights in Third World countries.

Representatives of the two regions are meeting this week in Vienna to nail down a variety of issues with implications to both sides of the Atlantic. The value of counterfeit goods seized at EU borders has grown more than 1000% since 1998, according to one published report.

St. Charles, IL – Electra Polymers Ltd. has bought Rohm and Haas Electronic Materials’ inks business. The company will gain the Ronascreen inks and soldermask lines, as well as Durashield V42 thick copper technology filler products.

The acquisition, to be completed by the end of July, expands Electra’s portfolio of high-reliability coatings and gives it access to the heavy copper filler business.

Electra’s sales and marketing director, Shaun Tibbals, said in a release, “To remain competitive you have to put R&D effort behind your products. The Ronascreen product line has been developed over the years by leading, innovative companies such as Rohm and Haas Electronic Materials, LeaRonal, Morton, Shipley, Hoechst and now, through this acquisition, we are acquiring extensive levels of technological know-how.”

The acquisition involves the transfer to Electra of IP, product formulations and the existing global customer base.
Tibbals added, “While this does not give us new geographical markets, and although we already have a range of world-class soldermasks and inks for the PCB industry, it does give us access into new sectors."

Thief River Falls, MN – Components distributor Digi-Key Corp. has added a series of 10 Product Training Modules (PTM) to its Website (digikey.com). The modules offer design engineers 24/7 access to product seminars that vary in length from 15 to 30 minutes.

Audio and non-audio versions of the modules require Macromedia Flash 6. They are also available as MP3 downloads.

The Web-based learning tools were developed and produced with the cooperation of several of Digi-Key’s supplier partners, including Altera Corp., Analog Devices, Fairchild Semiconductor, Freescale Semiconductor, Micrel Inc., Philips, Silicon Laboratories and STMicroelectronics.

Clinton, NY – Two Indium Corp. engineers have received the Surface Mount Technology Association’s designation as Certified Process Engineers. Mario Scalzo and Chris Anglin join nine other SMTA-certified engineers at the company.

Scalzo has been with Indium for six years and is a technical support engineer for the Southwest and Rocky Mountain regions. Anglin joined the company in 2004 and serves the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions.

The other certified employees include: Ronald C. Lasky, PhD, PE, Tim Jensen, Dave Sbiroli, Karl Pfluke, Karthik Vijayamadhavan and Eric Bastow in the U.S.; Ivan Castellanos in Mexico; Adrian Low in Singapore; and Sehar Samiappan in Malaysia.

SMTA certification recognizes and certifies the entire SMT assembly process at an engineering level. Participants must have several years of SMT experience in addition to completing educational requirements in a technical discipline. The course includes a series of workshops and concludes with two days of competitive testing.

SAN JOSE – North American-based manufacturers of semiconductor equipment posted $1.65 billion in orders in May on a three-month average basis and a book-to-bill ratio of 1.12 according to the latest data from SEMI.

A book-to-bill of 1.12 means that $112 worth of orders were received for every $100 of product billed for the month.

CUPERTINO, CA -- Apple Computer has launched an audit of the plant that builds its iPods in response to published reports of the factory's poor working conditions.

The plant is located in Longhua, China and is owned by Foxconn, the world's largest EMS company.

Circuits Assembly reported on the problems last week.

Carpinteria, CA - NuSil Technology, a manufacturer of silicone-based materials, has opened its first technical support office in Asia.

The office, located in Penang, Malaysia, will specialize in optoelectronics and electronic packaging, served by the company’ s Lightspan products and its low-outgassing electronic packaging materials respectively.

T.Y. Lim is the application engineer heading the office.

According to a press release, the company has noticed recent growth in the Asian optoelectronics industry.

COPENHAGEN -- Lego, the maker of the ubiquitous building blocks and other toys, will outsource most of its production to Flextronics over the next three years, with the EMS provider taking over some Lego plants. Other production will be moved to Flextronics’ plants in Eastern Europe and Mexico. No financial terms were immediately disclosed.

The move breaks new ground for Flextronics. "It's not electronics, it's plastic molding," said Alexander Blanton, an analyst at Ingalls & Synder told TheStreet.com. "This is the first major piece of business that I have seen of that nature."

FRANKFURT -- Consolidation continued in the telecom space as Nokia and Siemens announced the combining of heir mobile-network operations to create a 50:50 joint venture with annual revenue of about $20 billion.

The new entity will be called Nokia Siemens Networks and is expected to be finalized by year-end, pending regulatory approval.