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Next Month’s Focus SMT and Production Send News Releases For APEX Product Preview VOLUME 31 - NUMBER 1


How NCA Zeros in on BGA Problems with X-Ray


THE GLOBAL HI-TECH ELECTRONICS PUBLICATION February, 2016 Here Comes Fusion Again By Walter Salm E


NCA operator Hoa Dao in- spects a memory card with 20 BGAs. EMS pro vider NCA uses X-ray inspection on all assemblies containing BGAs, with Glenbrook Technolo- gies' Jewel Box 70T real-time X-ray system.


Page 20


New Products at ATX/MDM West


Roundup of some of the latest product offerings in Ana- heim's Convention Center that include HD video inspec- tion system, flexible power cables for aerospace, and new vision sensors.


Page 64


This Month's Focus: Test and


Measurement


This month's feature section includes meeting product needs with conformal coat- ings, how a Southern Califor- nia rental company meets test equipment needs quickly and economically, and au- tomation integrators actively look for new solutions and provide service tasks more cost-effectively than ever.


Page 52


General Fusion’s CEO Nathan Gilliland with the company’s experimental fusion reactor.


Hydrogen Infrastructure to Get a Boost


Livermore, CA — Drivers are seeing more hydrogen fuel cell electric vehi- cles (FCEVs) on the road, but refuel- ing stations for those vehicles are still few and far between. This is about to change, and one reason is a new testing device being validated at California refueling stations that will greatly accelerate station com- missioning. Developed by U.S. Department


of Energy’s (DOE) Sandia National Laboratories and the National Re-


newable Energy Laboratory (NREL), the Hydrogen Station Equipment Performance device, or HyStEP, could reduce the time to commission new stations from months to just one week. HyStEP is funded by DOE’s Of- fice of Energy Efficiency and Renew- able Energy’s Fuel Cell Technologies Office as part of the Hydrogen Fuel- ing Infrastructure Research and Sta- tion Technology (H2FIRST) project. “Industry stakeholders identi-


fied station commissioning as a chal- lenge that the national laboratories have the resources to address,” said Joe Pratt, the Sandia H2FIRST proj- ect lead. Sandia and NREL contract- ed with Powertech Labs to build the HyStEP device. As zero-emission vehicles,


FCEVs are leading the revolution in clean energy personal transporta- tion. And California is leading the


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ver since the first thermonu- clear (“hydrogen”) bombs were tested, there has been a deter-


mined effort to find a way to harness this form of energy to displace fossil fuels, creating nuclear fusion reac- tors as an energy source. The scram- ble is still on, but today’s scientists devoted to Hydrogen fusion are be- ginning to see positive results. Why the rush, and why now? Our insa-


tiable need for energy has been grow- ing exponentially, while coal-fired power plants still poison our atmos- phere. At some point, our planet’s cache of fossil fuel will run out, but breathable air may disappear long before that happens. Air pollution has gotten so bad in


some parts of the world — notably China and India —that entire cities in China have shut down manufacturing operations for days at a time to give


the air a chance to clear up. In major cities, people simply do not venture out of doors without some kind of breathing filter and/or respirator. The manufacturing shutdown strategy hasn’t worked out all that well, al- though the Chinese government has finally admitted that there is a drastic problem that will require drastic solu- tions. China has plenty of coal, a re- source that continues to be burned in huge quantities, contributing mighti- ly to the air pollution and global warming. China needs to have plenty of cheap energy if that country is to continue its economic boom. Thus hy- drogen fusion is being worked on all over the world.


Unlimited Power Fusion holds the promise of un-


limited clean, cheap, and environ- mentally friendly power, but getting there is still loaded with major obsta- cles. In 1989, the world was treated to the advent of “cold fusion,” hailed as a wonderful new source of “free” or at least “very inexpensive” energy. We had some red faces when we dis-


Continued on page 8


PCB Sales Growth Up But Slow


Bannockburn, IL —IPC —Association Connecting Electronics Industries® has released the November findings from its monthly North American Printed Circuit Board (PCB) Statisti- cal Program. Slow sales growth con- tinued in November and bookings bounced back, but the book-to-bill ra- tio slipped below parity to 0.98. Total North American PCB ship-


ments increased 0.4 percent in No- vember 2015 compared to November 2014. Year-to-date shipment growth remained at 0.4 percent. Compared to the previous month, PCB shipments were down 5.8 percent. PCB bookings rose 7.9 percent


compared to November 2014, which strength ened the year-to-date order growth to 2.6 percent. Orders were up 1.0 percent in November compared to the previous month. “Order growth recovered in No-


vember for the North American PCB industry, but negative order growth in the preceding two months pulled the book-to-bill ratio below parity for the first time in 14 months,” said Sharon Starr, IPC’s director of market re-


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