Electronics Manufacturing Technical Articles

The Relationship between Backward Compatible Assembly and Microstructure on the Thermal Fatigue Reliability of an Extremely Large Ball Grid Array

Jun 21, 2012 | Richard Coyle, Richard Popowich, Peter Read, and Debra Fleming - Alcatel-Lucent, Raiyo Aspandiar, Alan Donaldson, Stephen Tisdale, and Vasu Vasudevan - Intel Corporation, Iulia Muntele, Robert Kinyanjui - Sanmina-SCI Corporation

First published in the 2012 IPC APEX EXPO technical conference proceedings. Most high reliability electronic equipment producers continue to manufacture and support tin-lead (SnPb) electronic products despite the increasing trend for design and conversion...

Publisher: Alcatel-Lucent

Novel Probing Concepts for Mass-Production Tests: Design and Challenges

Jun 15, 2012 | Matthias Zapatka, Dipl.-Ing.(FH) ; Otmar Fischer, Dipl.-Ing. (FH) ; Sven Nocher

First published in the 2012 IPC APEX EXPO technical conference proceedings. The world of spring-loaded test probes and special probes for in-circuit and functional tests have grown tremendously over the past few years. Ever increasing demands for electro ...

Publisher: INGUN Pruefmittelbau GmbH

Scaling LCA with IPC-175x

Jun 07, 2012 | Jørgen Vos, Industry Members (volunteers)

First published in the 2012 IPC APEX EXPO technical conference proceedings. IPC-175x Intent: To establish a standard data exchange format that will facilitate, improve, and secure data transfer between all members of a supply chain. ...

Publisher: Association Connecting Electronics Industries (IPC)

Management of your company's PLC automation risk.

Jun 01, 2012 | Don Fitchett

PLCs are the brains of your operation. When the PLC (Programmable Logic Controllers) is not functioning properly, lines shut down, plants shutdown, even city bridges and water stations could cease to operate. Thousands to millions could be lost by one li...

Publisher: Business Industrial Network

Recession survival tips on how and why not to cut training.

Jun 01, 2012 | Don Fitchett

Recession survival tips on how and why not to cut training. ... About the methods for US Manufacturing Industry to adjust for the knowledge vacuum caused by retiring baby boomers with training, while dealing with tight training budgets during a recessio...

Publisher: Business Industrial Network

PLC and SCADA Networking Security Solutions

May 31, 2012 | Don Fitchett

Industrial network security solutions essential to today's PLC - SCADA security. Lack of security on an industrial network could cause a serious threat to the system, to the personnel involved in it, in fact, production machines networks without proper se...

Publisher: Business Industrial Network

Current Strategies for Mitigating Counterfeit Components

May 31, 2012 | Rick Stanton

ProSkill Consulting and Training Group “Current Strategies for Mitigating Counterfeit Components” By: Rick Stanton - PRO-STD-001 Course Director/Corporate VP of Quality It’s well known that counterfeiting has been linked to organized c...

Publisher: ProSkill Consulting and Training Group (ProSkill CTG)

SMT Manufacturability and Reliability in PCB Cavities

May 31, 2012 | Markus Leitgeb, Christopher Michael Ryder

First published in the 2012 IPC APEX EXPO technical conference proceedings. Considering technological advances in multi-depth cavities in the PCB manufacturing industry, various subtopics have materialized regarding the processing and application of such ...

Publisher: AT&S

Application Of Build-in Self Test In Functional Test Of DSL

May 23, 2012 | YaJun Gu, Ye Qin, ZhiJun Wang, David Wei, Andrew Ho, Stephen Chen, Zhen (Jane) Feng Ph. D., Murad Kurwa

first published in the 2012 IPC APEX EXPO technical conference proceedings. BIST (build-in self test ) is the technique of designing additional hardware and software features into integrated circuits to allow them to perform self-testing, i.e., testing of...

Publisher: Flex (Flextronics International)

Environmental Compliance Reporting - Mastering a Moving Target

May 17, 2012 | Cathy Iler, Nikki Johnson, Peter Robinson

First published in the 2012 IPC APEX EXPO technical conference proceedings. Companies that have initiated internal resources to obtain compliance data have realized that collecting, and more importantly, maintaining the currency of that data requires more...

Publisher: Total Parts Plus

The Surface Finish Effect on the Creep Corrosion in PCB

May 10, 2012 | Cherie Chen, Jeffrey ChangBing Lee, Graver Chang, Jandel Lin, Casa Hsieh, Jesse Liao, Jerry Huang

First published in the 2012 IPC APEX EXPO technical conference proceedings. Creep corrosion normally happens in the end system, PCB, connectors and components are widely noted due to the exposure of high sulfur environments under elevated humidity. In thi...

Publisher: Integrated Service Technology (IST)

Virtual Access Technique Augments Test Coverage on Limited Access PCB Assemblies

May 03, 2012 | Anthony J. Suto

First published in the 2012 IPC APEX EXPO technical conference proceedings. Increased pressures to reduce time to market and time to volume have forced many manufacturers of populated printed circuit boards to rely on capacitively coupled, un-powered, vec...

Publisher: Teradyne

Design and Construction Affects on PWB Reliability

Apr 26, 2012 | Paul Reid

First presented at IPC Apex Expo 2012. The reliability, as tested by thermal cycling, of printed wire boards (PWB) are established by three variables; copper quality, material robustness and design. The copper quality was most influential and could be eva...

Publisher: PWB Interconnect Solutions Inc.

A New Paradigm For Design Through Manufacture

Apr 19, 2012 | Michael Ford, Valor Division of Mentor Graphics Corp.

Presented at IPC Apex 2012. Working through the New Product Introduction (NPI) flow between product design and manufacturing is usually a challenging process, with both parties being experts in their own fields and inextricably linked in the flow of g...

Publisher: Mentor Graphics

Bridging at Reflow, What is the Cause and Can it be Eliminated?

Apr 12, 2012 | Robert Dervaes, V.P. Technology

Surface mount technology (SMT) started in the 1960s and became more common in the 1980s. It is the dominant technology in use today. Through-hole technology is still in use, and will be for the foreseeable future, but the drive towards miniaturization of ...

Publisher: FCT ASSEMBLY, INC.

FCT Assembly Solves Bridging Issues at Reflow

Apr 09, 2012 | FCT Assembly

As the electronics assembly industry evolves, printed circuit board (PCB) features and surface mount technology (SMT) components continue to get smaller and smaller. This miniaturization shrinks the process window at print, placement, and reflow, increasi...

Publisher: FCT ASSEMBLY, INC.

Modeling and Control of SMT Manufacturing Lines Using Hybrid Dynamic Systems

Apr 05, 2012 | L.G. Barajas, A. Kansal, A. Saxena, M. Egerstedt, A. Goldstein, E.W. Kamen

In this paper we show how hybrid control and modeling tech-niques can be put to work for solving a problem of industrial relevance in Surface Mount Technology (SMT) manufacturing. In particular, by closing the loop over the stencil printing process, we ob...

Publisher: Georgia Institute of Technology

Successfully Designing FPGA-Based Systems

Mar 15, 2012 | Nagesh Gupta

Increases in field-programmable gate array (FPGA) capabilities, combined with growing system complexity, have created many FPGA-based system design challenges. One key challenge is choosing the right FPGA for the design needs, and maximizing the use of FP...

Publisher: Cadence Design Systems, Inc.

Quality Improvement and Enhanced Flexibility in Electronic Manufacturing through the Deployment of a modern Selective Soldering Process Technology

Mar 15, 2012 | Bernd Krauss, Turck-Duotec, Grünhain-Beierfeld, Jürgen Friedrich

The competition in the EMS sector has considerably intensified over the last few years,. The enormous pressure to reduce production costs, which every service provider today has to face, frequently forces the organization to have a critical look at their ...

Publisher: ASYS Group

Counterfeit Electronic Components: Understanding the Risk

Mar 08, 2012 | John M. Radman, Renee J. Michalkiewicz and Daniel D. Phillips

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"....

Publisher: Trace Laboratories

Why Sacrifice Throughput For Change-Over Time?

Mar 01, 2012 | Eric Klaver, Senior Product Manager

The struggle to survive in the world of manufacturing is prompting many volume-driven manufacturing sites in the west to specialize in small batch manufacturing. The aim is to bring value to their customers with fast-turnaround prototyping and reduced int...

Publisher: Assembléon

What is really inside your AOI?

Feb 23, 2012 | Jean-Marc Peallat, Russ Warncke, Russell Claybrook, Marc Brun

Installed for the first time 20 years ago, Automated Optical Inspection (AOI) more recently has become an essential part of our SMT environment. Today, most process engineers are turning to machines as an inspection strategy for addressing quality and pro...

Publisher: Vi TECHNOLOGY

Connector Models - Are They Any Good?

Feb 16, 2012 | Jim Nadolny, Leon Wu

Channel simulations are only as accurate as the models used to develop them. While we have seen much effort placed on printed circuit board (PCB) materials (copper finish, dielectric moisture absorption), other elements within the channel have been largel...

Publisher: Samtec, Inc.

Fundamentals of Analog Signature Analysis

Feb 09, 2012 | Curtis Smith, Huntron Technical Support

The Fundamentals of Signature Analysis Technical document discusses the basics of power-off analog signature analysis, how it relates to basic electronic devices and how it is used for circuit board troubleshooting....

Publisher: Huntron, Inc.

Wafer-Level Packaged MEMS Switch With TSV

Feb 02, 2012 | Nicolas Lietaer, Thor Bakke, Anand Summanwar (SINTEF), Per Dalsjø, Jakob Gakkestad (Norwegian Defence Research Establishment), Frank Niklaus (KTH – Royal Institute of Technology)

A miniaturized wafer-level packaged MEMS acceleration switch with through silicon vias (TSVs) was fabricated, based on technologies suitable for harsh environment applications. The high aspect ratio TSVs were fabricated through the silicon-on-insulator (S...

Publisher: The Foundation for Scientific and Industrial Research - SINTEF

A Unified CAD-PLM Architecture for Improving Electronics Design Productivity through Automation, Collaboration, and Cloud Computing

Jan 26, 2012 | Jonathan Friedman, Newton Truong, Mani B. Srivastava

In electronics design, Computer Aided Design (CAD) tools manage part data in a logical schematic view (a part symbol) and a physical PCB view (a part footprint). Yet, a part has a third view, which CAD tools ignore – its supply data (Manufacturer part num...

Publisher: UCLA - Networked & Embedded Systems Laboratory

Three-Dimensional MMIC and Its Evolution to WLCSP Technology

Jan 19, 2012 | Tsuneo TOKUMITSU

The history of multilayered, three-dimensional monolithic microwave integrated circuit (3-D MMIC) technology is described here. Although significant researches were carried out in the second half of 1990’s, still there were many twists and turns before an...

Publisher: Sumitomo Electric Industries, Ltd.

Reliability Enhancement of Wafer Level Packages with Nano-Column-Like Hollow Solder Ball Structures

Jan 12, 2012 | Ronak Varia, Xuejun Fan

In this paper, hollowed solder ball structures in wafer level packages are investigated. Detailed 3-D finite element modelling is conducted for stress and accumulated inelastic strain energy density or creep strain analysis. Three cases are studied in thi...

Publisher: Lamar University - Department of Mechanical Engineering

Conformal Coating Why, What, When, and How

Jan 05, 2012 | Greg Caswell

Conformal coating is applied to circuit cards to provide a dielectric layer on an electronic board. This layer functions as a membrane between the board and the environment. With this coating in place, the circuit card can withstand more moisture by incre...

Publisher: DfR Solutions (acquired by ANSYS Inc)

Solder Charge Grid Array: Advancements In The Technology Of Surface Mount Area Array Solder Joint Attachment

Dec 29, 2011 | Jim Hines, Adam Stanczak, David Decker, Theeraphong Kanjanupathum

2011 IPC APEX EXPO Conference Article: Surface mount area arrays (SMAA) have been in existence for decades and are increasingly becoming more important as printed circuit board (PCB) assemblies become further complex with package miniaturization and densi...

Publisher: Molex

Metal Microchannel Lamination Using Surface Mount Adhesives for Low-Temperature Heat Exchangers

Dec 22, 2011 | Prawin, Paulraj , Paul, Brian K.

This paper reports the feasibility of using surface mount adhesives to produce low temperature microchannel arrays in a wide variety of metals. Sheet metal embossing and chemical etching processes have been used to produce sealing bosses that eliminate ch...

Publisher: OSU School of Mechanical, Industrial, and Manufacturing Engineering (MIME)

Hermetically Sealed SMD Tantalum Capacitors

Dec 15, 2011 | I.Zednickova, M.Biler, J.Petrzilek, T.Zednicek

manganese dioxide or conductive polymer cathode. Higher stability is achieved by placement of the capacitor into an SMD case filled by an inert atmosphere and hermetically sealed. The long term stability testing performed on such hermetically sealed capac...

Publisher: AVX Corporation

Evaluation of Stencil Foil Materials, Suppliers and Coatings

Dec 08, 2011 | Chrys Shea - Shea Engineering Services, Ray Whittier - Vicor Corporation

The past few years have brought PCB assemblers a multitude of choices for SMT stencil materials and coatings. In addition to the traditional laser-cut stainless steel (SS) or electroformed nickel, choices now include SS that has been optimized for laser c...

Publisher: Shea Engineering Services

RoHS: Five Years Later

Dec 01, 2011 | Dr Ronald C. Lasky

Are electronics any “greener” than before RoHS? It is a fair question to ask. With the advent of RoHS on July 1, 2006, and more recently REACH, one might be inclined to answer that it is greener than it was. We will take a look at this question in several...

Publisher: Indium Corporation

New Methods of Testing PCB Traces Capacity and Fusing

Nov 25, 2011 | Norocel Codreanu, Radu Bunea, Paul Svasta

The article presents virtual and real investigations related to current capacity and fusing of PCB traces in high power applications and is based on a scientific paper delivered by authors at SIITME 2010 in Romania. The reason of performing the research a...

Publisher: UPB-CETTI University of Bucharest, Center for Technological Electronics and Interconnection Techniques

Using Flexible Circuits as an Electronic Interconnection... Do's and Don'ts

Nov 16, 2011 | Dave Becker

Flexible Circuits are proven, reliable interconnect solutions for many of today's electronic packages. This article gives some general guidelines in terms of "dos" and "don'ts" that will help the engineer or designer make better decisions when using flex...

Publisher: All Flex Flexible Circuits, LLC

PCB Dynamic Coplanarity At Elevated Temperatures

Nov 10, 2011 | John Davignon, Ken Chiavone, Jiahui Pan, James Henzi, David Mendez, Ron Kulterman

With the advent of larger packages and higher densities/pitch the Industry has been concerned with the coplanarity of both the substrate package and the PCB motherboard. The iNEMI PCB Coplanarity WG generated a snapshot in time of the dynamic coplanarity ...

Publisher: iNEMI (International Electronics Manufacturing Initiative)

A Novel Local Search Integer-Programming-Based Heuristic for PCB Assembly on Collect-and-Place Machines

Nov 03, 2011 | Anupam Seth, Diego Klabjan, Placid M. Ferreira

This paper presents the development of a novel vehicle-routing-based algorithm for optimizing component pick-up and placement on a collect-and-place type machine in printed circuit board manufacturing. We present a two-phase heuristic that produces soluti...

Publisher: Mechanical Science and Engineering at UIUC

Manufacturability & Reliability Challenges with Leadless Near Chip Scale (LNCSP) Packages in Pb-Free Processes

Oct 27, 2011 | Cheryl Tulkoff, Greg Caswell

Leadless, near chip scale packages (LNCSP) like the quad flat pack no lead (QFN) are the fastest growing package types in the electronics industry today. Early LNCSPs were fairly straightforward components with small overall dimensions, a single outer row...

Publisher: DfR Solutions (acquired by ANSYS Inc)

Modelling of Thermal Stresses in Printed Circuit Boards

Oct 20, 2011 | Oldŕich Šuba, Libuše Sýkorová, Štépán Šanda, Michal Stanék

Results of FEM modelling of thermal stress analysis in printed circuit boards are given in the article. It is shown that thermal stress alone is not solely caused by differences in coefficients of thermal expansion of individual layers. The emergence of thermal stress is subject to both the layered structure of the wall and given boundary conditions, as well as the existence of a temperature gradient in the direction normal to the surface of the wall. A practical application focuses on the issue of recycling of PCB with the effort to achieve separation of layers due to thermal stress. Role modelling of thermal stress in this area lies in predicting the possibility of separation, depending on the type of thermal stress and material parameters....

Publisher: Tomas Bata University

Are Separate Solder Flip-Chip Bonders Still Required?

Oct 13, 2011 | Eric Klaver, Senior Product Manager, Assembléon. Patrick Huberts, Product Manager Semicon Market.

Increasing miniaturization is now encouraging manufacturers of handheld devices to stack bare dies or packages. As the process of manufacturing modules requires placing both passives and (stacked) bare dies, these two types of placement are merging very quickly into a single platform. That raises the question of whether SMT equipment will take over from traditional die bonders....

Publisher: Assembléon

Development of a Design & Manufacturing Environment for Reliable and Cost- Effective PCB Embedding Technology

Oct 06, 2011 | M. Brizoux, A. Grivon, W. C. Maia Filho; Thales Corporate Services. J. Stahr, M. Morianz; AT&S. Hemant Shah, Ed Hickey; Cadence Design Systems Inc.

The desire to have more functionality into increasingly smaller size end products has been pushing the PCB and IC Packaging industry towards High Density Interconnect (HDI) and 3D Packaging (stacked dies, embedded packaged components). Many companies in the high-end consumer electronics market place have been embedding passive chip components on inner PCB and IC Packages for a few years now. However, embedding packaged components on inner layers has remained elusive for the broader market due to lack of proper design tools and high cost of embedding components on inner layers (...)

This paper will highlight several key industrialization aspects addressed in the frame of the European funded FP7 HERMES* project to build a manufacturing environment for products with embedded components. The program entered its third year and is now dealing with the manufacturing of functional demonstrators as an introduction to industrialization....

Publisher: Cadence Design Systems, Inc.

Criminal Prosecution - Who can be held liable for the sale of counterfeit parts?

Sep 26, 2011 | Kristal Snider, Vice President; ERAI Inc.

On September 14, 2010, the late Shannon Wren, owner of VisionTech Components ("VisionTech"), and Stephanie McCloskey, VisionTech's Administrative Manager, were arrested during the execution of search and seizure warrants issued against the pair by the United States government after evidence connected them to the sale of counterfeit parts to the U.S. Navy, defense contractors and others. A ten-count indictment charged McCloskey with conspiracy, aiding and abetting in violation of Title 18 United States Code, Sections 371 and 2; trafficking in counterfeit goods, in violation of Title 18 United States Code, Section 2320; and mail fraud, in violation of Title 18 United States Code, Section 1341. McCloskey pled guilty to conspiracy and aiding and abetting for her role in the scheme....

Publisher: ERAI Inc.

Best and Simplest Recovery Solution for Missing Data

Sep 26, 2011 | USB Recovery

How to repair flash drive documents when missing due to malicious software installations? Company presents drive recovery software to restore digital files and compressed folders from accidently formatted usb removable media drives....

Publisher: USB Drive Recovery

Thermal Spot Curing of Adhesives with Photonic Energy; a novel fiber delivery method of radiant heating to accelerate the polymerization of thermally active adhesives

Sep 22, 2011 | Ruben Burga, Dr. Mohammed Saad

The remainder of this paper will deal with the adhesive cure mechanism most often found in the microelectronics industry; the thermal activation and cure of adhesives that are most commonly based on epoxy backbones. The use of heat is already prevalent in the microelectronics industry as most printed circuit board assemblies use some element of this thermal energy (reflow ovens for example) during the component soldering and assembly stage or during their burn-in stage (convection ovens)....

Publisher: IRphotonics

Near Term Solutions For 3D Packaging Of High Performance DRAM

Sep 15, 2011 | Vern Solberg, Wael Zohni

The revolution in performance driven electronic systems continues to challenge the IC packaging industry. To enable the new generations of processors to reach their performance potential many manufacturers have developed interface formats to enable greater memory bandwidth. To ensure that the memory functions are able to support the increased signal speed, package developers are relying more and more on innovative 3D package assembly techniques and process refinement....

Publisher: Invensas Corporation

Anisotropic Conductive Adhesive Bonding - A High Quality Interconnection Technique

Sep 08, 2011 | Miyachi Europe GmbH

Anisotropic Conductive Adhesive Bonding is an interconnection technique mostly used for connecting displays to pcb’s using anisotropic conductive adhesive and flex foils. For successful implementation there are a few basic constraints. If these are followed, display connection is a simple and reliable process, giving top quality connections. Heat-Sealing can be done in any factory and can be introduced in a few months, from start of design to mass productions...

Publisher: MIYACHI EUROPE GmbH

Manufacturers Use Technology to Help Weather the Economic Downturn.

Sep 02, 2011 | Alison Falco, president; Dynamic Systems Inc.

Too often the manufacturers will implement technology for financial reporting purposes but overlook efficiencies that can generate cash flow and reduce costs on the manufacturing floor. Accurate information that provides a business owner or manager the ability to make immediate decisions about his/her operation resulting in a boost to profitability is crucial during an economic downturn. If revenue is down and the market mood does not permit price increases, then profitability can only be realized by reducing costs. So you must ask yourself "What prevents me from 100% efficiency?"...

Publisher: Dynamic Systems, Inc.

Scavenging

Sep 01, 2011 | Harold Hyman

Scavenging, Site Dressing, Residual Solder Removal. What's in a name? "That which we call an onion, by any other name would smell as strong" (apologies to the immortal bard). And, regardless of the name you give it, the objective is the same, namely the clean up of remaining solder after a component (particularly a BGA) or R.F. Shield has been removed from a PCB. This paper will describe the various methods that are available and discuss their pros and cons....

Publisher: VJ Electronix

Alternative Pb-Free Alloys

Aug 25, 2011 | Dr. Randy Schueller

While SnAgCu (SAC) alloys still dominate Pb-free selection in North America, especially Sn3.0Ag0.5Cu (SAC305), there are alternative material systems available. Any OEM that is concerned about the high reflow temperatures of SAC or relies on ODM, it is im...

Publisher: DfR Solutions (acquired by ANSYS Inc)