Printed Circuit Design & Fab Online Magazine - Fab News

Fab News

Details: Written by Staff; Category: Fab News; Published: 20 February 2008

WEST HAVEN, CT - Enthone Inc. celebrated the opening of its advanced plating applications laboratory located at the company’s West Haven facility. Guests included customers, state and local government officials, media and company employees. A ribbon-cutting ceremony was followed by tours of the new facility.

Congratulatory remarks were provided by Congresswoman Rosa L. DeLauro, and West Haven Mayor John M. Picard. Cookson CEO Steven Corbett, Enthone President Huub van Dun, and Enthone Americas VP Terrence Copeland presided over the ceremony, acknowledging and thanking company employees and customers for their efforts and patronage.

The company said that the West Haven Applications Laboratory will be "a major resource that will drive technical innovation, best practices, and learning for many years to come."

Mr. Copeland said, "As tangibly demonstrated by the opening of the advanced applications laboratory, Enthone remains strongly committed to the Americas market by substantially enhancing our ability to provide process solutions that meet our customers' current and future manufacturing challenges."

Details: Written by Staff; Category: Fab News; Published: 15 February 2008

SANTA CLARA, CA and NAGANO, JAPAN - HDI Solutions, Inc. and Hioki E.E. Corporation announce the installation of flying probe testers at Endicott Interconnect Technologies (EI), Endicott, NY. EI is a fabricator and assembler of complex printed circuit boards, advanced flip chip and wire bonded semiconductor packaging products.

Details: Written by Staff; Category: Fab News; Published: 14 February 2008

ANAHEIM, CA – DDi Corporation, PCB engineering and manufacturing services provider, reported fourth quarter sales of $45.2 million, up 4% from $43.3 million from the previous year.

Net sales for the company were also up 11.7% in Q3.

For the full fiscal year ending December 31, the company reported $181 million in sales, down from $198.1 million in the previous year.

Details: Written by Staff; Category: Fab News; Published: 14 February 2008

PORTLAND, OR - Soldering chips to PCBs may become a thing of the past due to research on copper materials sponsored by Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) at the Georgia Institute of Technology, according to industry reports.

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MERIDIAN, ID - Western Electronics has announced that it has introduced a conformal coating for PCBs. The company will offer conformal coating services out of its Westminster, Colorado operation.

The company reports that the conformal coat equipment and process completed customer qualification completed in February, and is now being introduced on a general availability basis to the market. Western Electronics will use acrylic resin materials for current customer requirements, and has the additional capability to apply urethane and silicone resins.

"We believe this additional service will complement our existing value-added service offering, and broadens our capability to support existing and new customers," said Rob Subia, President and CEO.

TAIWAN - PCB manufacturers have reported that sales to Motorola will remain unaffected in the short term, despite the US company's recent announcement of the possible sale of its cellphone division, according to industry sources.

In January and February, industry sources report that they actually received orders from Motorola for trial production of several new applications.

PCB maker Compeq Manufacturing, who sees about 40% of its revenues come from Motorola, suggested that should a sale occur, that it would not take place until later in the year, and that any orders placed with Taiwan's PCB makers in 2008 would likely be unaffected.

Compeq also stated that if a buyer was an existing client of a Taiwan's PCB manufacturer, then production orders would likely not be affected, since Taiwan leads worldwide in the PCB handset manufacturing segment.

Uncertainties remain for the long run. Sources note that if a Korean or Chinese company bought the handset division, Taiwan's PCB makers could lose business because of the tendency of Asian companies to source within their own countries, the observers noted.