Conductive inks and polymers based on metals were originally envisaged for quick repairs to Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs)
and semiconductor chips. Increasingly these materials are being used to replace traditional copper circuitry. Modern PCB
production suffers from high capital expenditure in process set-up and ever growing environmental and legislative
constraints,which can be replaced with quick,affordable and environmentally friendly polymer based manufacturing. New
chemistry and imaging techniques have led to the development of an increasing variety of means to deposit and pattern these
materials. Substrates include glass and FR4 as well as flexible materials such as nylon,polyester and Kapton. Conducting
inks and polymers include those based on Carbon,Silver,Copper and Gold. The resulting combination of polymer and
substrate leads to a large number of solutions for interconnects and circuitry on surfaces as diverse as battleship hulls,mobile
phone casings and clothing. In the example of a mobile phone it is possible to connect chips to packages to PCBs to displays
to batteries to antennae on the casing of the object itself using a single polymer material. Many of the subsystems such as the
PCB and the antennae can also be made from a conducting polymer deposited and patterned on the casing. The natural
extension of this is to use flexible substrates and turn the casing into a 2D sheet and thus manufacture a mobile phone that
can be rolled up. By way of example the manufacturing process for a polymer antennae within a mobile phone case is
demonstrated using silver-based ink.

Manufacturers of electronic devices,from home audio equipment to automotive keyless entry systems,are increasingly
seeking a reliable,cost effective method for uniquely identifying and tracking products through the manufacturing cycle,
sales distribution and after-sale warranty verification. An autonomous,automated tracking system requires that a permanent,
machine-readable code be applied to an internal printed circuit board to uniquely identify each product. The code must be
durable enough to survive manufacturing processes including wave solder and board cleaning,must not affect circuit
performance,and must store information in the small space available on real-estate conscious printed circuit boards.
The 2D matrix code provides a means to store alphanumeric character strings in very small areas of the printed circuit board.
Laser marking technology provides a method for permanently applying 2D matrix codes to most commonly used board
substrates and conformal coatings. The high-resolution and high-accuracy of beam-steered laser marking systems provides
the means to create well-defined codes for high-reliability reading regardless of code size. Laser marking also provides a
fully computer-controlled marking process for easy implementation into an automated product tracking system.
The operating principles of beam-steered laser marking systems utilizing both CO2 (carbon-dioxide) and Nd:YAG
(neodymium:yttrium aluminum garnet) lasers will be discussed in terms of compatibility with substrate materials,marking
performance,cost of acquisition and operation,maintenance,and integration with computerized product tracking systems.
Subjects will include the data capacity of 2D matrix codes (Figure 1) and their corresponding sizes with the marking
capability of laser systems. Installation in SMEMA-compliant manufacturing lines while maintaining a laser safe
environment will be discussed. Samples of overall productivity will be presented for several board marking scenarios
including single board and multi-up board configurations.

Microvoids are tiny voids in solder joints and differ from the more well known solder joint voiding in their individual size
and location. The microvoids discussed herein are described as an abundance of small voids at or near the interface of a
PCBA solder joint. In the most severe cases of voiding,a solder joint my fail physically and electrically. Each void reduces
the cross-sectional area of the solder joint; at some point the remaining solder is insufficient to meet functional demands.
While information related to these tiny interfacial voids has existed in industry literature for several years,the use of recently
available X-ray analytical equipment has raised the level of microvoid observation (See Figure 1). It is not known if
microvoiding is responsible for previously failed assemblies to which no root cause failure mode had been assigned. Unlike
“Black Pad” interfacial fractures related to Electroless Nickel Immersion Gold,microvoiding has not been directly related to
a galvanic effect of PCB circuit design. This provides hope that the phenomenon may be more easily prevented,even on the
most difficult designs.

In this study,the DIG process (Direct Immersion Gold),is investigated. DIG is a process in which gold is plated directly on
copper as a surface finish for printed circuit board and package applications. By examining the deposition reaction of the
electroless flash gold plating bath,it was confirmed that,copper does not co-deposit with gold and also that the main driving
force for deposition is an autocatalytic reaction. In addition the effects of the copper surface roughness and deposition time
on the deposit and solderability characteristics were examined. It was determined that copper surface roughness affects solder
spread-ability,and that solder joint characteristics were excellent when the film thickness is within the range of 30 to 80 nm.
Furthermore,good wire bonding characteristics were confirmed from deposits plated by a neutral pH,autocatalytic type
heavy electroless gold plating bath,atop the flash gold.

In order to get excellent signal Integrity,half PTH holes will be a new trend in high frequency backpanel designing.
Backdrilling is necessary for this application. This paper explores the application range,technology tickler,technology
method and reliability testing of backdrilling for backpanels.

PTFE-FR4 hybrid laminated multi-layer PCB technology is being applied more and more widely. This technology requires blind via fabrication in a PTFE core. This paper gives a picture of the manufacturing process for multi-layer PCBs with PTFE
focusing on material specifications of anti-overflow and surface treatment techniques,thereby addresses the feasibility of this
technology.

In the past the use of filling pastes in PCB production was largely limited to via hole fillers. These materials with a solids
content of 100% are still successfully employed today to close via holes and thus ensure their proper sealing for vacuum
adaptation during incircuit testing. Furthermore,they are used to avoid the deposition of flux residues that may create critical
microclimates in the holes and/or under components. However,there is only limited use for these products in newer fields of
pcb manufacturing.
The latest filling materials (also referred to as plugging pastes) are largely used in Sequential Build-Up technology. Due to
their specific properties,these materials enable the manufacturing of buried and blind via holes.
Thick film fillers are of growing importance in case of extremely high copper build-up (also termed 400 µm technology) in
order to allow a leveling of the traces before a solder mask can be applied.
All of the discussed materials belong to the electrically non-conductive type.

Factory simulation has been used extensively to optimize and reduce costs across many manufacturing disciplines.
Unfortunately,general purpose factory simulators do not effectively model the special needs of electronic assembly. For
example,the wide variations in rework time on different boards can create a significant bottleneck for the boards with low
first pass yield. This bottleneck delays product shipment,and results in higher costs and lower customer satisfaction. Since
time differences due to variations in first pass yield are not effectively modeled by general discrete event based
manufacturing simulators,this problem will not be caught if that is the only simulator used.
This paper presents a comprehensive approach to manufacturing simulation that includes detailed analysis of the boards to be
built coupled with a general manufacturing simulator to accurately predict the time,cost,and throughput for board assembly.

A tier one supplier to the automotive industry has determined that a key to staying competitive in the electronics
manufacturing industry is to adopt open standards for the exchange of data. Specifically,adopting the Computer Aided
Manufacturing using eXtensionable markup language data exchange standards,which are being developed and maintained by
the IPC as an open based standard. By making use of open standards,the cost and complexity of exchanging data on the
factory floor between various machines can be significantly reduced. In addition,it prevents competitive lockout,enables
portable processes,and facilitates reuse and redeployment.
Through open standards,this manufacturer of automotive components feels it can more closely monitor and correct out-ofcontrol
conditions and respond more quickly to part outages and other various negative variables that effect manufacturing.
To reduce the cost of implementing CAMX,a project has been started among 9 companies to produce an application program
interface (API),which can be embedded into various equipment manufacturer’s software programs or equipment control
programs. This will allow remote machine process interaction to reduce downtime,improve efficiency,and help eliminate
manual data collection and data crunching.
Since all the assembly equipment will now be sending out the same data format,they will collect this data in a Message
Broker. The message broker acts like a mailbox,collecting information from various machines that publish their run time
data. Sending out information like alarms,process parametric data,cycle time and other production and process information
depending on the application. The message broker has built in redundancy encase the network goes down. It will continue
collecting and storing this critical manufacturing data. Now other applications will subscribe to this information residing in
the message broker for real-time data analysis,trend analysis,and bottleneck analysis. We also store the historical data into a
database for further analysis such as root cause analysis or comparing efficiencies across different shifts and even facilities.

OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness) is commonly used in a wide range of businesses when it comes to measuring and
monitoring manufacturing performance. Even though OEE has been applied in various areas of businesses for a while,it has
gained less traction in the electronics-manufacturing arena,despite the fact that it is an excellent tool to compare overall
performance between production lines and manufacturing sites.
OEE is defined as Availability x Performance x Quality,which means that it is the first tool that provides a true picture of the
total performance ratio taking also the quality aspect into full consideration. The overall objective of implementing OEE is to
obtain a reliable measurement of the production performance across factories,production lines,work groups,etc.,while still
being able to compare performance ratios across different products as well as across different equipment types from various
machine vendors.
The goal is of course to use OEE as a tool to continuously improve the throughput and quality of production cycles. In this
respect,it is essential to have exact and reliable background data,and a good tool-set to drilldown on the actual causes of
performance loss or deterioration.
It is basically quite easy to calculate OEE by simply counting the number of produced boards and the accumulated number of
defects. However,without detailed drilldown capabilities to capture relevant production data OEE lacks the information
depth to provide an accurate reflection of the current production process to suggest measures leading to improvements in
performance and end product quality.
The best way to assure that detailed and accurate data is available is by automatically capturing it from the production
equipment and embedded systems. Operator involvement in the data collection process is not only time consuming,but
always leads to impaired data accuracy and timing deviations.
This article will elaborate on best practices how to obtain the necessary production data,extract the relevant information and
properly evaluate it before implementing into the OEE model for results generation.
Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) is a new tool for measuring and improving overall production performance,and
makes it possible to compare performance across factories,production lines and even production teams. OEE is widely used
across different industries,and is now also introduced into electronic production. This article specifically deals with OEE in
the PCB assembly industry.