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Tuesday, April 24, 2018

VOLUME - NUMBER

Plasma Treatment: Dropping the Failure Rate

By Peter Langhof, Plasmatreat GmbH, Steinhagen, Germany
Whether in daily manufacturing or the development of new processes and products: surfaces and their properties play an increasingly important role in nearly all industrial areas. The surface of materials often have to be pretreated to prepare them for processes that will follow.

Selective Soldering: Pushing the Envelope

By Adrian De'Ath, Vice President, Pillarhouse USA Inc., Elk Grove Village, IL
The entire concept of selective soldering is being squeezed as the demands for high quality soldering increase while board space continues to shrink. Today's challenge is to reduce the nozzle sizes available.

Why IPA-Water Extraction Fails!

By Harald Wack, Ph.D., Syed Ahmad, Ms.Chem., and Joachim Becht, Ph.D., Zestron, Manassas, VA
The performance requirements for mission critical electronic assemblies are constantly increasing as component failures, particularly in the aerospace, automotive, medical and military industries, are simply not an option. Since failures are often due to insufficient cleanliness, cleaning ...

Advances in Fluid Dispensing Save Time, Production Costs

By Vicki Worth, Nordson ASYMTEK, Product Marketing Specialist
Automated fluid dispensing has been an integral part of the electronics assembly line for high-volume manufacturing for many years. Even jetting, which was introduced by Nordson ASYMTEK in 1994, is now an established technology. As electronic components become smaller and more complex, ...

Vapor Phase Making Strong Comeback

By Reyna Mora, IBL Technologies, LLC, El Paso, TX
Vapor phase, also known as condensation soldering achieves a very gentle, reliable, and repeatable process. Vapor phase reflow was used back in the 80s — during the early days of surface mount technology — due to its excellent heat transfer capability. Heat transfer in vapor phase ...

Inline Wire & Cable ID

By Pete Doyon, VP Product Management, Schleuniger, Inc., Manchester, NH
Many OEMs require that individual wires and cables used in their products be clearly identified with a mark or label. For some, such as in the military and aerospace markets, wire and cable identification (or "wire ID") is mandatory and the process is governed by stringent specifications ...

X-Ray Imaging: Some need-to-Know Basics

By Glen Thomas, X-Ray Product Manager, Scienscope International, Chino, CA
Electronic technology has given a great boost to real-time x-ray imaging. A tube was developed that could intensify the light from the intensifying screen. Called an "image intensifier," it is a vacuum tube with an input phosphor. Photons are converted to light and the light is converted ...

Thick Film Heaters Go Anywhere

By B.K. Sharma, Res-Net Microwave, Inc., Clearwater, FL
It's a well known fact that passing current through a thick film resistor can transform it into a heating element. Such a phenomenon is a nuisance in thick film hybrid circuits where resistors need to operate at low temperature without long-term degradation to their electrical properties ...

Detecting & Avoiding Counterfeits

By Rob Surber, President, Concord Components, Inc., Wayne, NE
While the majority of counterfeit cases reported are associated with independent distributors, it's important to not label them as the cause, but rather to look to them for solutions. Understanding their processes and the measures...

A Universal Vision Solution for Robotics

By Gray & Rice Public Relations
A major Italian integrator of vision guided robotic solutions, Evolut, has already asserted itself as the specialist company in its field. The company has installed over 1100 robotic systems, including 850 with Cognex vision systems, which enable the robots to automatically recognize and ...

Ultra-Flat Membrane Potentiometers Enable Smart Engineering

By Guido Woska, President/CEO, Hoffmann + Krippner, Inc., Peachtree City, GA
Membrane potentiometers have changed the way engineers think about sensing. With some only 0.5mm thick, ultra-flat membrane potentiometers have product characteristics...

	Sunstone and National Instrument Collaborate; Simplify PCB Prototyping


	Mulino, OR — Sunstone Circuits^® has joined forces with National Instruments (NI) to offer an integrated PC board prototype and quick-turn design environment, enabling NI Multisim and NI Ultiboard customers to easily order prototype PC boards via the Sunstone ECOsystem^sm Design Environment. ...

Justifying AOI and Automated X-Ray

By Don Miller, YESTech, Carlsbad, CA
Two of the guiding philosophies for the implementation of test and inspection technologies are prevention and detection. Prevention places the priority on process control and elimination of defects by implementing corrective action. Detection focuses inspection efforts on ensuring that ...

Combining Board Cleaning and Testing

By Steve Stach, President, Austin American Technology Corp., Burnet, TX
The U.S. space agency NASA has some of the most stringent electronics requirements in existence, and for good reason. NASA people still shudder over the most tragic example ever of a suspected circuit board cleanliness failure — January 27, 1967, when a circuit assembly in an Apollo ...

Automating Telecom Connector Assembly

By William Bodine, Director of Sales & Marketing, ATW, Assembly & Test Worldwide, Inc., Dayton, OH
Manufacturers of high-density telecommunication connectors have, for the last several years, been constantly redesigning their products in a race to satisfy ever higher demand for increased data transmission capabilities (baud rates). When one major manufacturer was ready to design ...

A New Approach to Using Boundary Scan

By Heiko Ehrenberg, Goepel Electronics LLC, Austin, TX
Board-level production test equipment, such as in-circuit testers, using third-party boundary scan tools, have gained in popularity. Such integration often provides little benefit over standalone boundary scan systems. While some of those solutions provide improved test coverage by ...

Improving Inspection of Lead-Free Solder

By Christian Munoz, Hirox USA
Lead-free solders are said to cause various problems, such as: lack of self-alignment, bridges, solder balls, insufficient wetting, dendrites, pits, voids and peeling of soldering land. Also, on miniaturized lands, there may occur insufficient melting of solder paste. Even though these ...

Shrinking Components, Highly Complex PCBs Drive AOI Design

By Brian D'Amico, President, Mirtec Corp., Oxford, CT
The continuing trend toward the miniaturization of electronic packaging technologies is perhaps the most prolific driving force behind new AOI product development. The advent of 0201 and 01005 packages and the industry-wide acceptance of BGA, CSP and a host of small outline ultra fine pitch ...

Lead-free Selective Soldering Equipment

By Alan Cable, President, ACE Production Technologies Inc., Spokane Valley, WA
Selective soldering is a flexible, adaptable process that is increasingly applied to an ever-widening range of soldering tasks. Indeed, selective soldering has moved beyond the role of being a problem application solution and into the soldering production mainstream. Flexible innovations ...

Lead free Solder, Tips and Nitrogen

By Patrick McCall, Director of Engineering & Product Services, PACE Incorporated, Annapolis Junction, MD
The RoHS deadline has come and gone but many manufacturing and service companies that aren't servicing international markets are still using leaded solders. With the future political outlook it is well within the possibilities (even likely) that a U.S. version of RoHS could be legislated ...