Contract Manufacturing
Aiding advanced engineering techniques
While advanced engineering continues to push the boundaries of technical innovation, some tried and tested techniques are having a renaissance. John Boston looks at the role specialist firms are playing in the UK’s advanced engineering activities
A
dvanced engineering is playing an increasingly important role in the UK’s return to economic growth. The specialist skill, together with technological advancements, is helping the UK to maintain its focus upon high value manufacturing, rather than high volume production. The UK’s electronics manufacturers are part of this process and are providing the necessary support and innovation to bring design ideas to life.
While many would expect to only find significantly advanced materials and approaches in today’s components, we are finding that our skills both in technical advancement and tried and tested techniques are being called upon. As an EMS firm, we provide the
electronic components and assembly for existing, modern day technologies such as FR4 and Polyimide PCBs that require state of the art processing. Components as small as 0201 and now 01005 and ICs in BGA, LGA, POP, QFN and so on, are now designed into the latest generation of products being manufactured at Custom Interconnect and this is set to increase in complexity.
As components become even smaller or higher density this also results in the processing becoming even more critical. Solder pastes have had to be developed with much finer print definition and the
24 October 2013
equipment such as automatic solder printers and SMT placement machines constantly have to be updated to be able to process the latest components available. With the UK’s ability to produce low volume, complex technologies, the engineering problems are becoming increasingly complex. However, not all problems are requiring advancements in technology. Indeed, quite the opposite. In solving many of the unique problems either presented by design requirements or the conditions in which these components are being placed in, we are finding an increasing call on older, well-established techniques.
Demand for techniques such as ceramic- based solutions and chip and wire are on the increase as advancements in innovations call for greater stability and reliability.
“While new techniques such as BGAs, LGAs and Package on Package continue to play an important role, the demands from sectors such as mobile communications, oil & gas and custom LED assemblies which by their nature require circuits to operate at high frequency, high temperature or in the case of LEDs stable temperature, mean ceramic-based solutions still offer the best option. As a result, well established techniques are providing modern day solutions.
For example, advancements made in the Components in Electronics
LED market, whereby emerging designs are increasingly more efficient and far brighter than conventional light bulbs, generate heat which must be controlled. With heat being detrimental to the LED structure, the heat sinking properties of ceramic are being utilised both by major LED manufacturers and electronics manufacturers to enable good thermally managed LED solutions. With a wide array of application for ceramic based solutions and chip and wire capabilities, demand is increasing but with many companies having decreased their operations in this area within the UK, only a small base of suppliers remain. To put this into perspective, around seven years ago Custom Interconnect scaled back its ceramic and chip and wire design capability, but driven by the demand seen over the past few years, we have increased this operation and now have three design seats producing a design every two weeks. Traditional techniques are also being used to find cutting edge solutions to problems too. As well as designs for thermally managing LEDs we are seeing significant activity in the oil & gas and military market, where certain circuits have to operate at temperatures greater than 200C and in these temperature ranges all commercially available ICs fail. Therefore, in each instance, a custom solution has to be found for each unique application and as high temperature die are available, it is the packaging that becomes critical to a technical solution.
What has become very apparent is even though the technology for the solution is relatively dated, the actual technical problem and its solution is very much cutting edge. Multi wavelength LED assemblies, Microprocessors and other ICs that operate at 220 degC and higher, as well as specialist detector chips with wire
bond counts of 1000+ wire bonds on a single device are now becoming increasingly popular. With many businesses having disposed of their design department, the issue of supply for this increasingly important area will be of concern to customers. As well as the design and manufacture it is also the knowledge of the supply chain for good specialist substrates and consumables such as bonding wire and die attach materials that are equally important. Businesses such as Custom Interconnect Limited that have retained the skill and capability to deliver both traditional manufacturing techniques and modern advanced manufacturing techniques, will be in a good position to benefit from this increased demand. As innovations develop, EMS firms will increasingly be expected to deliver electronic solutions that are equally as innovative. In some cases this will mean new advancements, while for others, some of the tried and tested solutions will always remain the best choice. The old rule "if it isn't broke don't fix it" will always apply and it is important that we steer customers down a technology route that will have the highest chance of success first time. Materials such as graphene are set to be at the forefront of component innovation. But for the time being, we are a little way off truly understanding its capabilities. As engineers, these technical advancements are a critical part of our role, but knowing where the traditional application, versus the new developments are appropriate is where our skill brings the greatest value.”
Custom Interconnect Limited |
www.cil-uk.co.uk
John Boston is managing director of electronics manufacturer, Custom Interconnect Limited
www.cieonline.co.uk
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