productronica rocks in 2011!
See photos, page 48.
Ho! Ho! Ho!
Santa’s coming -- and so is a GREAT 2012!
VOLUME 26 - NUMBER 12 Almost Autopilot. THE NATION’S LEADING HI-TECH ELECTRONICS PUBLICATION December, 2011 Antimatter Mysteries
Gaithersburg, MD — While they’re not quite ready to build a Warp Drive for interstellar space travel, a team of researchers working at the Nation- al Institute of Standards and Tech-
Heidenhain's Acu-Rite touch screen CNC control system is one of many outstanding new products that appear in this month's issue.
Page 47 Offshore EMS
ACD's International Production Manager takes us through the 7 steps needed to select an EMS provider. Then Count On Tools tells how that company keeps EMS providers up and running with custom made parts for pick-and-place.
Page 18
This Month’s Focus: Test and
Measurement
Using specialized test sockets, customizing COTS test systems, using newest optical metrology in production, new rules and technology for effective solder paste printing, and keeping a good bottom line on production equipment costs are all part of this month's Special Focus sec- tion.
Page 60
Physicists including Pieter Mumm (in photo) used the emiT detector they built at NIST to investigate any potential statistical imbalance between the two natural types of neutron decay. Photo credit: emiT team.
Thailand Floods Mean HDD Shortages
By Thomas Coughlin, Coughlin Associates
tom@tomcoughlin.com
nology industries has been consider- able. Perhaps none have been as hard hit as the HDD industry where
T
he impact of the October/No- vember monsoon floods in Thailand on many high tech-
major plants for Western Digital and Toshiba were flooded and many ma- jor HDD component suppliers were flooded as well. Even non-flooded production facilities such as those of Seagate and Hitachi GST have been impacted by parts shortages from flooded suppliers. Overall about 50 percent of to-
tal hard disk drive assembly capaci- ty is in Thailand with WD’s Thai- land production representing about 60 percent of that company’s total HDD output. As a result of this flooding and the long-term damage to equipment and facilities, there will be a shortage of HDDs in De-
Continued on page 6 7 Steps to
nology (NIST) has just concluded a 10-year-long study of the fate of neu- trons. They’re still trying to discover why there is “stuff” in the universe — more properly, why there is an im-
balance between matter and anti- matter — one of the long-standing mysteries of cosmology. In an attempt to resolve the
question, NIST physicists are mak- ing the most sensitive such measure- ments ever made. The universe, they concede, has managed to keep its se- cret for the time being, but they have succeeded in significantly narrowing the number of possible answers. Though the word itself evokes
science fiction, antimatter is an ordi- nary — if highly uncommon —materi- al that cosmologists believe once made up almost exactly half of the substance of the universe. When par- ticles and their antiparticles come in- to contact, they instantly annihilate one another in a flash of light. Billions
Continued on page 8
Juice & TE Team Up to Deliver Smart Charging for Electric Cars
Troy, MI — TE Connectivity (TE) and Juice Technologies, doing busi- ness as “Plug Smart”, have teamed up to provide smart Electric Vehicle (EV) charging solutions enabling customers to meter their EV’s elec- tricity consumption and to communi- cate data via an innovative smart charging cord and socket. TE and Juice have a license agreement to bring this 120V (Level 1) charging solution to market. “TE Connectivity is excited to
add the Plug Smart Level 1 electric vehicle smart charging technology to TE’s portfolio of innovative grid to vehicle solutions,” said John Hewitt, TE Vice President and General Man ager, Electric Vehicle and Infra- structure. “Ubiquitous, cost-effec- tive connectivity is essential in this market.” The smart cord incorporates an SAE J1772 connector and works
Continued on page 8 Chipping Away at
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