News Industry Spotlight


Profiled LED backlingting


Conflict Minerals mandate set to cause concern for distributors


To support the demand for profiled LED backlighting technology OMC has invested in new equipment at its Cornwall manufacturing centre. Profiled backlights make it financially viable for designers requiring displays for mid and low volume applications to be able to specify a full-custom display – both in colour and shape – as set up charges are minimal and MOQs are very low. William Heath OMC’s Commercial


Director said: “We have seen an upturn in demand for our backlights from sectors including handheld instrumentation, POS and general industrial applications where the customer has seen the benefit of having a unique brand identity which is only achievable using a custom display. There- fore we have invested in new, bespoke plant and machinery.” Profiled backlight technology is often the only economic option for production volumes under 10,000 pieces. The tech- nology ensures that very consistent illu- mination is provided across the entire display. Uniquely, they can feature single or dual chip LEDs depending on power output availability and requirements, OMC www.omc-uk.com


New legislation from the USA has been released that is set to have a major impact on the world electronics industry with distributors of electronic com- ponents particularly hard hit. The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) recently adopted a rule man- dated by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act that requires com- panies to publicly disclose their use of ‘conflict minerals’ that originated in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) or an adjoining country.


'Conflict minerals' are minerals mined in conditions of armed conflict and human rights abuses – most notably in the eastern D.R. Congo. With its abundance of mineral resources, the Democratic Republic of Congo could be one of the most prosperous countries in Africa. But as is often the case on this continent, valuable natural resources are more of a curse than a blessing.


Whilst much has been done to raise awareness of so-called 'blood diamonds' or 'conflict diamonds' from Sierra Leone, little light is shone on the back- ground of other minerals which are much more fundamental to most of our lives.


New Configurable ARM board


Direct Insight has devel- oped a flexible, produc- tion-quality ARM board, which is configurable by changing a tiny (68mm by 26mm) processor module - from ARM9 to quad core ARM Cortex-A9.


This offers a production solution for Linux, Windows CE and Android- based products.


The company advises that, while system-on-modules (SOMs) are growing dramatically in uptake, as a route to manufacture with high-end ARM-based proces- sors, they suffer from the require- ment for a custom baseboard to break out the required interfaces. Since introducing the first such module in 2000, the com- pany has an accumulated experi-


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ence of over 300 SOM based projects, which has been used to develop a standard baseboard to address the connectivity requirements of the majority of embedded end-products: while offering upgradeability by integrating a broad family of ARM-based processor modules.


The Triton-TXFB board is claimed as fully production- ready, with industrial tempera- ture range support and protected I/O. It is intended for low and medium volume use in end-user products. This board can be used with any of the current genera- tion of modules in the range. Direct Insight ww.directinsight.co.uk


This new legislation requires that any company that reports its results to the SEC, must file a “Conflict Minerals disclo- sure”. In doing so the organisa- tion in question must research the supply chain asking all those parties the following simple questions: “Do any of the products supplied contain any ‘conflict minerals’” and if so “can you guarantee they have not come from the DRC or adjoining country?”


Whilst this is a reasonable enough request the work required in order to submit a fully researched and therefore accurate answer is far reaching and time consuming. It could mean going through layers upon layers of suppliers, some of whom may be private compa- nies located in third-world countries, and if the metal has been recycled, as gold often is, it could get even trickier to track. The legislation goes on to confirm that if a mineral is “necessary to the functionality” and “necessary to the produc- tion” of the product then it must be included.


In short it would seem that the legislation has been written to ensure literally everyone in the supply chain must comply. So, if you are a distributor,


representative, CEM or anyone else in the supply chain that works with an international prime, be prepared for some serious compliance work. It’s no coincidence that the mineral mines are situated in the areas home to the bloodiest violence and conflict. Few, if any, of the mines are large-scale industrial ones owned by inter- national companies. They are hand-built artisan mines, with the only tools available being shovels and a lot of hard labour. Thousands of tonnes of the raw minerals are smuggled across the border into Uganda and Rwanda where they are exported and smelted with minerals from all over the world - making it very hard to trace the origin of the metals and alloys produced.


Hopefully this will be a short term problem as all the major suppliers of, for example tin based solder or gold for plating, recognise this situation and publish a conformance state- ment that all those in the supply chain can refer to. Even so, everyone in the supply chain will have to pro- duce a formal statement that will satisfy those that request it. Aspen Electronics www,aspen.com


Semiconductor detectors get revamp


Hamamatsu Photonics have expanded and improved on their range of semi-conductor detectors, featuring photon counting capability, with the introduction of its new S12572 series of multi-pixel photon counter devices (MPPC).


This new series of general purpose MPPC offers considerably reduced after- pulsing compared to the previous genera- tion of MPPC detectors from the company. This series are 3 by 3mm devices sup- plied in compact surface mount plastic packages, or through-hole ceramic pack- ages. Various pixel configurations are available, with pitches of 25um, 50um and


100um and pixel numbers of 14,400, 3,600 and 900 respectively. Each pixel contains a quenching resistor so that simultaneous photon events can be counted separately and with a high degree of accuracy. The devices feature typical high gain values of 5.15E5 to 2.8E6, comparable to that achievable from a conventional photomultiplier tube. Some other key areas of improvement include: greatly reduced dark count, reduced afterpulsing, increased photon detection efficiency, improvements in timing resolution and linearity as well as reduced crosstalk. The result of these and other improve- ments means that the range now has a much improved signal-to-noise ratio, wider operating voltage range, improved time resolution and also a wider dynamic range. Hamamatsu Photonics www.hamamatsu.com


OCTOBER 2013 Electronics


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