SMT Express, Volume 2, Issue No. 6 - from SMTnet.com
Volume 2, Issue No. 6
Wednesday, June 14, 2000
Special Announcements
SMTnet's OnBoard Forum to Feature Lee H. Goldberg
June 22, 2000 12:00 to 5:00PM Eastern Time
So just what is the OnBoard Forum? Each month we will bring prominent professionals in the electronics manufacturing industry to SMTnet to discuss timely issues affecting the industry. We anticipate thought-provoking discussions, and expect issues raised during OnBoard Forums to reverberate in the Electronics Forums once the interview session has concluded (just the type of food-for-thought exchanges SMTneter's have been looking for!).
Our next OnBoard Forum will feature Lee H. Goldberg who, after leaving a career in engineering in 1994, spent five years as the communication technology editor for Electronic Design magazine. He left Electronic Design in 1999, to become a senior technology editor at ChipCenter where his primary beat is communications technology. His territory encompasses technologies, products, and design issues for local and wide-area technologies including cellular/PCS, pagers, wired and wireless LANs, satellite systems, analog, digital, and broadband telephony, cable communications, DSL, LMDS, and other Internet access schemes.
Goldberg's latest book, Green Electronics/Green Bottom Line - A Commonsense Guide To Environmentally Responsible Engineering and Management, was recently published by Newnes Press. Topics open for our OnBoard discussion include international policy issues such as achieving ISO 14000 compliance, material selection (e.g., for recyclability), and manufacturing concerns like no-flux, no-lead processes. He will also be prepared to address design issues such as reducing power consumption and designing for recyclability.
Lead-Free assembly and soldering is covered in one chapter and also featured in the appendix section. As one of the most well known Green issues in our industry the subject of lead-free is reasonably well detailed in the space available. It provides a practical examination of the subject from one of the major players, Nortel. This alone should guarantee good sales of the paperback. The Nortel conclusion is that the lead-free process is viable with existing equipment and that the tin/copper alloy provides a reliable alternative to tin/lead. The Nortel USA program complements what has been said from the IDEALS project in Europe, in which Nortel was a major contributor.
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Process Control for Solder Flux byStacy Kalisz and Mark Owen, MVTechnology Ltd. Flux used in ball grid array (BGA) and chip scale package (CSP) manufacturing has been increasing in importance with requirements to hold smaller solder balls in place, adequately clean solder surfaces, and leave no residues. It is known in the packaging industry that insufficient or excess flux can cause a variety of defects however, a non-destructive process control tool capable of properly setting up and monitoring production parameters for flux dispense has not been available. It is difficult to measure a non-Newtonian, temperature sensitive, transparent, viscous fluid in-situ. Crude sampling measurements based on microscopes or weighing scales are in use on the manufacturing floor. This paper reviews a new technique called "fluorescence intensity mapping" which accurately measures flux location, height and volume of flux deposits...
Bob Willis currently operates Electronic Presentation Services, a training and consultancy business based in England and operating world wide. EPS produces and sells one of the widest selections of training videos and CD-ROMs for electronics manufacturing. He has worked with the GEC Technical Directorate as Surface Mount Co-Ordinator for both the Marconi and GEC group of companies and prior to that he was Senior Process Control Engineer with Marconi Communication Systems. Following his time with GEC he became Technical Director of an electronics contract manufacturing company where he formed a successful training and consultancy division.
New Talkback Feature Added to Newsletter Articles A new feature, called Talkback, has been added to the articles in the SMT Express newsletter. Talkback will make the newsletter more interactive by allowing readers to comment on the articles. Reader comments are immediatley appended to the article itself. At the end of each article, you will see a link inviting you to post a Talkback. By clicking on it, you can post your comments directly to the page. Other readers' comments will appear there as well. This new feature will help improve the quality of the the newsletter, and insure that readers are being provided with the information they need.
Publish Your Papers and Promote Your Company As SMTnet prepares for the next issue of the SMT Express, we are looking to our readers for articles and papers to feature. Submissions will be accepted any time for future issues. If you have anything you wish to offer, such as papers you have written, book reviews, anecdotes, commentaries, or anything we haven't thought of, please send it to SMTnet. Also, please read the submission guidelines.
The SMT Express is sent to thousands of electronics manufacturing professionals worldwide each month. This is a great opportunity to promote yourself and/or your company for free. In addition, a complete archive of past issues is avaiable at SMTnet.com, so your work will continue to be read long after the newsletter is released.
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