Electronics Manufacturing Technical Articles

Mar 22, 2012

Raymond G. Clark, Joseph D. Poole, TT Electronics - IMS

Miniaturization continues to be a driving force in both integrated circuit packaging and printed circuit board laminate technology. In addition to decreasing component pitch (lead to lead spacing), utilization of the vertical space by stacking packages ha...

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...

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 ...

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 Depa...

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...

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...

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...

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....

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...

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...