Send News Releases for
Assembly and Packaging
Send News Releases for
APEX and ATX West
Product Preview VOLUME 29 - NUMBER 12
New Products Fuel Cell Infrastructure Improving This Month's By Walter Salm
Sacramento, CA — Fuel cell powered automobiles are very hungry for hy- drogen and a badly needed infrastruc- ture is being put in place in fits and starts. With nine operational hydro-
gen filling stations, California has more such installations than any oth- er state in the U.S. And it is home to more hydrogen powered fuel cell auto- mobiles than any other state. A drop in the bucket? Sure, but many more
are on the way, and the state man- dates that all of them must be sourc- ing at least 33 percent of their hydro- gen from renewable energy sources. Hydrogen is the most plentiful
Color-coded safety switch cov- ers from APEM appear in this month's New Products Sec- tion, starting on . . .
Page 66
Customized EMS at Reliable
Electronics
Just north of New York City, Reliable Electronics provides highly customized electronic manufacturing services, in- cluding building elec tromech - anical assemblies; mixed- technology PCB assemblies, SMT, cable, wire harness, and box build assemblies.
Page 18
This Month's Focus: Test and
Measurement
Testing MIL systems calls for measurement instruments that can reconstruct the sig- nal and operating conditions faced in the field; how indus- trial connectors outperform direct hard wir ing; combin- ing 2D and 3D AOI inspec- tion; AOI inspection of fabri- cated LED assemblies.
Page 54
Driver fuels a Mercedes-Benz F-Cell, a hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicle, at a public hydrogen pumping station in California.
Streamlining Solar Thin-Film CIGS Plant
By Jim McMahon
decline of price levels in the world- wide solar module market has forced manufacturers to re-engineer pro- duction processes and streamline their operations to stay competitive. The most promising of the thin-
D
film PV materials in the industry is CIGS (Copper Indium Gallium Se- lenide), which has demonstrated lab efficiencies on par with traditional crystalline silicon technologies while having the potential to substantially
espite photovoltaics (PV) be- ing one the fastest-growing energy technologies, the sharp
reduce costs. CIGS has also shown potential for higher energy yield re- sponse to cloudy and diffuse light cir- cumstances. In the lab, CIGS has achieved performance levels of 20.1 percent efficiency, as reported by ZSW of Stuttgart and verified by Fraunhofer ISE.
Highly Automated Thin-film PV manufacturers to-
day require highly-automated sys- tems to arrive at the cost efficiencies needed to compete on the world mar- ket. Thin-film PV manufacturing processes must provide continuous high-speed throughput while main- taining zero defect rates, and be ca- pable of shifting production volumes quickly with minimal set-up times. One manufacturer of CIGS
modules that has streamlined its manufacturing process and success- fully weathered the market shift is HelioVolt Corporation, based in Austin, Texas. HelioVolt has devel- oped a proprietary advanced manu-
Continued on page 6
element on Planet Earth, but it usual- ly exists in compounds and must be extracted to be used. While some fuel cells are designed to run on hydrocar- bons such as methane gas, such fuel cells result in “dirty” exhaust, consist- ing of carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide, thereby producing a notice- ble carbon footprint. Pure hydrogen- powered fuel cells on the other hand, combine hydrogen with oxygen to cre- ate free electrons, as well as a very be- nign byproduct called water vapor. Getting that hydrogen using Lavoisi- er’s classic electrolysis process, re- quires electricity, which in most cases, means a carbon footprint at the elec- tric power plant. But a fully self-con- tained hydrogen filling station will in- stead have a roof covered with solar cells to provide the needed electricity, pumping the separated hydrogen into a pressurized storage tank. The raw material: ordinary tap water. If all of a filling station’s hydro-
gen comes from solar and/or wind power, it is deemed 100 percent re- newable sourcing, and two California
Continued on page 8
IPC Study Forecasts Moderate PCB Growth Through 2017
Bannockburn, IL — The North Amer- ican printed circuit board (PCB) mar- ket saw a moderate decline in 2013, but moderate growth is forecast through 2017, according to IPC’s 2013-2014 Analysis and Forecast for the PCB Industry in North America. Other key findings include data
showing that on-shore PCB produc- tion increased slightly in 2013, de- spite the slight decline in the market. Among PCB product types, HDI/mi- crovia boards experienced the high- est growth rate in 2013. Data on ver- tical markets for PCBs show that communications and military/aero- space are the two largest PCB mar- kets in North America, and taken to- gether accounted for approximately 57 percent of the North American
Continued on page 8 THE GLOBAL HI-TECH ELECTRONICS PUBLICATION December, 2014
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