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Saturday, September 23, 2017

VOLUME - NUMBER

Accuracy in 3D AOI Enables M2M Communications

By Yasuo Watabe, Sales Promotion Group Leader, Saki Corporation
There have been many obstacles to overcome in the process of developing machine-to-machine (M2M) communications. But, with more diversity in electronics, increased global competition, and demand for shorter lead times, M2M communications are becoming a necessity.

Electrically Testing Long Cables

By Christopher E. Strangio, Founder and President, CAMI Research, Inc.
Despite a growing number of applications for fiber optics in communications, we continue to employ copper conductors to deliver power, effect electrical control and inexpensively carry signal data. And as long as the industry demands copper cables, they will require testing to ensure ...

From Selective to Fully-Intelligent Fluxing

By Will Hunter, Area Director — North America, mta automation
Citing issues with quality and the messiness of the process, many companies are moving away from wave soldering. Ironically, these problems are not caused by the wave soldering itself. In all likelihood, the inconspicuous fluxer is the source of most of the problems. Most issues arise ...

Industry Voices: Perspectives on the Internet of Manufacturing

By Philip Stoten (@philipstoten)
We've been hearing about Industry 4.0, the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), and the Internet of Manufacturing (IoM) for some time, but the concept is finally being realized. The smart factory movement is poised to completely overhaul conventional manufacturing. We asked a number ...

JTAG Integrated with PCB Design Tools Broadens Capabilities

By Philip Ling
Many engineers think that JTAG is simply an interface for inserting breakpoints to debug the software running on a CPU. It may surprise them to learn that JTAG is included in many integrated devices that do not have a debug interface. While this includes FPGAs and CPUs, it also extends ...

Probing the Future of Battery Array Testing

By Jasmin Bauer, Marketing, Acculogic, Inc.
Acculogic has developed a novel way to test battery arrays, using its automated flying probe system, the Flying Scorpion. With a marked increase in demand for batteries on the horizon, such as for electric vehicles (EVs), mobile energy storage, solar power, and energy-efficient homes ...

The Benefits and Risks of Copper Pillar Bumped Flip Chips

By Craig Hillman Ph.D., CEO, DfR Solutions
Traditional solder bumps are being bumped aside by copper pillar technology. Used as a first-level interconnect, copper pillar technology is increasing in popularity as a way to deal with decreasing feature sizes on silicon, mobile device form factors, and other technical challenges ...

Are All Cleaning Wipes Created Equal?

By Mike Jones, MicroCare Corp.
Wipes are used across almost every type of industry for a huge variety of cleaning tasks. In fact, wipes are so widely available that it is all too easy to take them for granted and to treat them as little more than a throwaway commodity. Like Rodney Dangerfield might have put it, wipes ...

ASM Presents World-Class Placement for Mid-Speed Applications

By Nick Crocker, E by SIPLACE Business Development Manager, ASM
Mid-speed, high-mix manufacturers have often found themselves between a rock and a hard place when deciding on the best placement technology for a dynamic assembly environment. While many features of higher-speed systems, such as vision inspection, placement head flexibility and easy ...

Direct Manufacturing and Support Integral to Scienscope Success

By Todd O'Neil, Global Business Development and National Sales Manager, Scienscope International
Starting out by manufacturing basic stereo zoom microscopes used for SMT inspection and rework, Scienscope was founded in 1995 to meet the growing need for reliable, general-purpose optical and video inspection solutions for the electronics and PCB industries. Since then, through painstaking ...

Good Chemistry: Studying PCB Cleaning Processes

By Patrick Duchi, Inventec Performance Chemicals
The ability to effectively clean a PCB has been complicated by the ban of CFCs and HCFCs, which offer outstanding solvency power and low surface tension to dissolve and remove contaminants within minutes, leaving electronics clean and dry. Meanwhile, the exponential growth of miniaturized ...

How to Properly Calculate Reflow Temperature Gradients

By Vitor Barros, General Manager, KIC Europe
The theory is simple: Process electronic assemblies in spec every time and the result is a quality product. In practice, however, this is much more difficult for numerous reasons, including normal and abnormal process variations, human error, and many other factors.

In and Out of Flux: Choosing the Right Flux for Selective Soldering

By Eddie Groves, Selective Soldering Academy, and Jonathan Wol, Pillarhouse USA
The flux chosen for the selective soldering process has a direct and significant impact on solder joint quality, long-term reliability and overall soldering performance. Fluxes essentially fall into three basic categories: low-solids/no-clean fluxes, rosin fluxes (full/high-solids rosins ...

INGUN and Goepel Partner for High-Speed Digital Testing

By the Staff of Ingun USA
Thorough signal integrity tests are required for high data rates and high-frequency applications. In today's world of complex electronic designs, it is becoming critically important to fully characterize electrical connections and transmission lines, going far beyond simple "go-no-go ...

	Innovation Takes More Than Good Tools


	By Angela Greenidge, EDSYN, Inc. Using the right tool is essential to getting a job done right. But, what determines the "right tool" for the job? When asked, one individual replied with the question, "The right tool for what?" Another stated, "The wrong tool will get the job done wrong!" These pragmatic responses ring true. Essentially ...

JTAG Pushes Boundary Scan Envelope

Eindhoven, the Netherlands — JTAG Technologies is premiering several new hardware products for PCB testing and in-system device programming, and is also introducing its collaborative product with Altium — JTAG Maps.

Making a Splash with Water-Resistant Digital Devices

By Doug Clark
The trend in consumer electronics has always been to make devices faster, smarter, and with ever-expanding capabilities. But, waterproofing has become a new focus of global electronics manufacturers and many brands are rushing to include this benefit to ensure they are not left behind ...

Optimizing Multi-Board System Design

By Craig Armenti, PCB Marketing Engineer, Mentor Graphics
Designing electronic systems has become measurably more complex during the past decade. Many of the products that we use today are, in fact, complex interconnected systems. Simply put, a "system" is a hierarchical integration of sub-components that are combined to create a product. ...

Precision Vibration Isolation in the Cleanroom

By Jim McMahon
For decades, pneumatic air tables have been the workhorse for reducing vibrations in cleanrooms for manufacturing and research, where critical micro-engineering instrumentation is employed. But just as technology has steadily pushed the boundaries into nano-applications in microelectronics ...

	The Impact of LV 214-4: German Automotive OEM Connector Test Spec


	By Rob Boyd, Senior Production Manager, Schleuniger A primary goal of every manufacturer is ensuring that they create quality products. Standards and specifications from various organizations provide guidelines by which manufacturers can measure different areas of quality, while also providing the end user with the assurance that they are purchasing ...