Technical Library | 2013-02-22 19:55:36.0
Productivity. Innovation. Time to market. Day to day, year over year, businesses are forced to make critical R.O.I.—related decisions that impact the future and the bottom line—some of them reactionary, some forecasted. For a growing number of electronics manufacturers, many of those decisions revolve around whether a function should be performed by an outside contractor or kept in-house. But for many companies in the RF/microwave industry, this decision is often concerned with continuing to employ an outside PCB fabricator for prototype PCBs, or to make a $10,000 to $100,000 investment in an inhouse, rapid PCB prototyping machine that may represent a key competitive advantage.
Technical Library | 2013-04-12 08:20:15.0
There is much to read about the shifting sands of electronics manufacturing, including current moves by OEMs to alter their EMS relationships to better mitigate risk and cost, while EMS companies look for additional ways in which to adjust their business models in an attempt to improve their profitability. Electronics outsourcing over time evolved from a means to buffer manufacturing demand fluctuations into a wide scale shift in capabilities, in part in order to deal with vastly shorter product life cycles. Following the global economic crash of 2000, aka “the internet bubble,” more and more EMS providers responded by transferring their manufacturing to low cost labour regions, and in particular China.
Technical Library | 2014-01-23 16:49:55.0
As reliability requirements increase, especially for defense and aerospace applications, the need to characterize components used in electronic assembly also increases. OEM and EMS companies look to perform characterizations as early as possible in the process to be able to limit quality related issues and improve both assembly yields and ultimate device reliability. In terms of BGA devices, higher stress conditions, RoHS compatible materials and increased package densities tend to cause premature failures in intermetallic layers. Therefore it is necessary to have a quantitative and qualitative test methodology to address these interfaces.
Technical Library | 2014-08-19 16:07:15.0
Warpage management consists of planning, measuring, analyzing, sharing, and reacting to data related to the surface shapes of electronics components as they change throughout the reflow assembly process. Leading semiconductor manufacturers have had warpage management systems in place for ten years or more, mainly because microchip package warpage must be understood and compensated for in order to attain high assembly yields. Similarly, newer device architectures such as package-on-package and system-on-a-chip are sensitive to warpage-related assembly issues, and companies involved in the manufacture and assembly of these devices tend to have the most advanced warpage management programs.
Technical Library | 2015-12-14 13:40:04.0
A Manufacturing Execution System (MES) is a software program that manages and monitors production work in a factory. The MES controls and monitors all manufacturing data in real time, so there is no guesswork as to the status of any given job, machine, operator, etc. The focus is on short-interval scheduling (shift or day) with an emphasis on optimizing the distribution of work orders. Larger manufacturers have employed MES’s for years but many small to medium sized enterprises (SME’s) have yet to adopt such systems. The benefits of using an MES are many. Looking forward, I predict that even the smallest manufacturing companies will employ MES systems in the future.
Technical Library | 2021-10-12 18:05:09.0
The remarkable increase in counterfeit parts (a factor of 4 since 2009) [1] is a huge reliability and security concern in various industries ranging from automotive electronics to sensitive military applications increasing the possibility of premature failure in critical systems [2-5]. Counterfeit parts can also incur a great financial loss to legitimate electronics companies [6]. The issue is even more alarming as the counterfeiters use more sophisticated methods making counterfeit detection a much harder task [7-8]. Therefore, it is reasonable to develop more advanced counterfeit detection methods targeting a more efficient detection of sophisticated counterfeited parts.
Technical Library | 2012-03-08 20:08:57.0
You may have heard talk in the news lately regarding counterfeit electronic components making it into the US military supply chain. The U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) recently reported in the Counterfeit Electronic Parts in the Defense Department Supply Chain hearing held on November 17, 2011, 1,800 cases of suspected counterfeit components that went into more than 1 million individual products. If you consider this number for the military, we can only imagine the number of counterfeits in our commercial yet high reliability products, such as life support or other critical systems. If you are the person within your electronics-based company who must perform risk analyses, counterfeiting is not a new concern, yet many do not realize just how good counterfeiters have become at their "trade".
Technical Library | 2015-01-26 15:30:00.0
In 2005 Raytheon Technical Services Company, now Raytheon Information, Intelligence and Services (Raytheon IIS), approached Ensil regarding the repair of their manufactured Radar Control Terminal (RCT) units. The RCT TRS P/N 13563090-2, a key component in the AN/MPQ-64 Sentinel System, consisted of outdated parts which caused minor to major unit failures. Ensil repaired the RCT's at every turn, correcting any component with the parts still in circulation (mother boards, displays, power supplies) to provide the client with the best available technology. These repairs were completed to military standards and kept the RCT effective, allowing for the Sentinel radar to remain operational. However, the supply of outdated parts was eventually no longer available. Ensil offered the best possible solution, utilizing the skills of their knowledgeable engineering staff, they would reverse engineer a new computer to replace the obsolete RCT while maintaining the same form, fit and function.
Technical Library | 2016-09-12 10:16:04.0
It is hard to open an Industry newsletter or visit an equipment manufacturer’s website without coming across a mention of the Internet of Things (IoT), Industry 4.0, SMART Manufacturing or ‘big data’. The accessibility to obtain data will only increase and this information and its real-time processing will become one of the most important resources for companies in the future. Production machinery will no longer simply processes the product, but the product will communicate with the machinery to tell it exactly what to do. Industry 4.0 has the vision to connects embedded system technologies and SMART production processes to drastically transform industry and production giving way to the SMART factory development. Future development in oven technology will allow machines to be controlled more intelligently and remotely resulting in the lowest cost model for manufacturing flow.
Technical Library | 2016-09-15 17:10:40.0
This paper describes the purpose, methodology, and results to date of thermal endurance testing performed at the company. The intent of this thermal aging testing is to establish long term reliability data for printed wiring board (PWB) materials for use in applications that require 20+ years (100,000+ hours) of operational life under different thermal conditions. Underwriters Laboratory (UL) testing only addresses unclad laminate (resin and glass) and not a fabricated PWB that undergoes many processing steps, includes copper and plated through holes, and has a complex mechanical structure. UL testing is based on a 5000 hour expected operation life of the electronic product. Therefore, there is a need to determine the dielectric breakdown / degradation of the composite printed circuit board material and mechanical structure over time and temperature for mission critical applications.
