Next Issue Focus: SMT and Production Send News Releases for
NEPCON China, SMT/Hybrid and EDS
VOLUME 29 - NUMBER 3 IPC/APEX Product Preview THE GLOBAL HI-TECH ELECTRONICS PUBLICATION March, 2014 By Walter Salm
End-of-Life Doesn’t Have to Kill Mother Earth
Denver, CO — End-of-life manage- ment of electronics, or lack thereof, has become a serious part of our over- all ecological contamination. It’s no longer enough to simply consign
At APEX, SIPLACE is pre- senting its hardware, software and service solutions, plus its integrated solutions for work- flows, in this month’s Show Preview starting on. . .
Page 72
Onshoring and Reshoring
Stealing the EMS News
Finding the right EMS provi - der in this day of onshoring and reshoring; some new rea- sons for reshoring; the case for black chrome solder tips.
Page 18 This Month's Focus:
Production and Packaging
How clean can you get a PCB? A simple tool cuts failure rates; boundary scan and fly- ing probers; mining bone piles for dollars; non-destructive testing; two kinds of micro- scopes — scanning electron mi- croscopes and ultrasonic mi- croscopes.
Page 58
Reverse logistics in play as workers disassemble computer monitors to salvage reusable parts. Photo: IT Asset Partners.
Semicon Growth Faces Serious Cost Challenges
New York, NY — Even though many analysts are projecting growth for the global semiconductor industry in 2014, structural challenges in the in- dustry could threaten many compa- nies, as more than half of 191 of the industry’s publicly-listed companies face the risk of possible financial dis- tress. As a result, the industry could see more consolidation, including mergers and acquisitions this year, coming on the heels of recently-an- nounced deals such as those involv-
ing Avago Technologies and LSI, Mi- cron and Elpida Memory, and Ap- plied Materials and Tokyo Electron. That’s according to a new study from AlixPartners, a global business advi- sory firm.
Underscoring what is also a bi-
furcated trajectory in the industry as it enters 2014, the AlixPartners study finds that in the 12-month pe- riod ending with the third quarter of 2013 the five largest companies in the industry — Intel, Qualcomm, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufactur- ing Co. (TSMC), Texas Instruments and Hynix —produced almost a third (30 percent) of industry revenues but over half (52 percent, or $50 billion) of industry EBITDA (Earnings Be- fore Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization). The study also finds for that
same period that average EBITDA margins for the top five companies,
Continued on page 8
junked electronics to landfills — even after shredding. The landfills after all can accommodate only so much, and shredding and dumping is costly and counterproductive. Add to this the on- going problem of those mountains of
old CRTs in warehouses and other storage facilities, and Planet Earth is facing a huge garbage problem. There is an economically feasible
way to handle a great deal of electron- ic waste products, rescuing perfectly good LCD screens from discarded cell phones, for example, as well as sal- vaging costly ICs from their mother- boards. Computers contain numerous salvageable components, HDDs can be shredded and then “cooked” down to reclaim raw materials. According to R2 (Responsible™
Recycling), a certifying trade associa- tion for electronics recyclers, 80 to 85 percent of unwanted electronics are going to landfills and incinerators. This figure is obviously very destruc- tive of the environment, and very costly in terms of wasted resources.
Continued on page 6
A First Look at Black Chrome Solder Tips
By Gary Goldberg, President and CEO, PROMATION, Inc. Kenosha, WI
T
his study hopes to provide in- sight and our observations on Black Chrome Tips when using
them with table top soldering robots. Black chrome (chromium) plat-
ing consists of chrome that turns black after the addition of a contami- nant, according to National Metal Finishing. Back in 1953 a hard, bright chromium-base electrodeposit was de- veloped that can be applied at a high rate of deposition. The electrolyte contains chromic
acid and nickel chloride plus a car- boxylic acid. When this bright deposit is treated with hydrochloric acid (for a few seconds) a black finish results. This finish is non-smudging, very ad- herent and uniform. These deposits will withstand
heating in high vacuum to tempera- tures of more than 930°F (500°C) and can be applied to most metals without the use of special equipment.
Plated Solder Tips A typical soldering tip consists
of a solid copper core, a plated layer Continued on page 22
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116