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Facility Tour: NBS Design
December 31, 1969 |Estimated reading time: 3 minutes
SMT visited NBS Design’s new Santa Clara, Calif., facility, touring the EMS provider’s assembly lines and inspection systems, soon to include the first Agilent ×6000 on the West Coast. NBS operates the 40,000-sq.ft. facility along with others in southern Calif., Texas, and New Hampshire. They serve 140 customers ranging from several million dollars to below $20, and expect to reach 300 customers by year’s end. The company’s services include rapid response, PCB layout, and turnkey manufacturing including NPI to pilot production, manufacturing test, and rework. They X-ray inspect every assembly to come off the lines.
NBS Design in Santa Clara, Calif., hosted an open house recently to showcase their expanded facility space, equipment partners, and educated workforce.
During the open house, NBS CEO Craig Arcuri stressed the importance of diversity and quality in domestic electronics manufacturing. The company serves many medical and high-cost-assembly clients, but also has roughly 50% lead-free production, with some client sectors at 90% lead-free assemblies.
The EMS provider recruits demanding projects, including those with fine pitches, via-in-pad designs, 01005s, intrusive reflow processing, mixed leaded and lead-free solder, microBGAs and flip chips, and other challenges. All design, pilot production, and manufacturing services are kept in-house to manage quality and maintain high speed and close collaboration with customers.
The company points to skilled technicians as another strong suit of manufacturing in the U.S. We cater to the customer with smaller volumes, stringent defect rules, and flexibility needs in the design and prototyping phases, Arcuri asserts. Transitions to higher-volume assemblers also are facilitated when conditions dictate moving offshore.
Having moved from PCB design layout to contract manufacturing as well in 2004, NBS now is looking to expand its reach within this NPI niche, where service and skill are measured with high importance alongside production.
The electronics design and manufacturing house can be reached at www.nbscorp.com.
Standard Released for Worse Case Thermal Limits
BANNOCKBURN, Ill. ? IPC J-STD-075, “Classification of Non-IC Electronic Components for Assembly Processes,” classifies worst case thermal process limitations for electronic components, and was developed jointly by IPC, JEDEC, and the ECA. It expands on existing standards to provide test methods and classification levels to identify the thermal process limitations for all passives, connectors, switches, and other devices that may be processed as part of a circuit card assembly. Increased preheat, reflow, or wave soldering temperatures can cause components to melt, warp, crack, delaminate, or even explode.
Another potential source of damage involves cleaning processes. J-STD-075 includes classification categories to identify cleaning process sensitivity. There is also a wild-card option that component manufacturers can use to identify process issues not covered by this standard.
Refurbished SMT Equipment Distributor AlternativeSMT Joins AdoptSMT
GRÖDIG BEI SALZBURG, Austria ?AlternativeSMT joined the AdoptSMT group of companies and will operate under the same structure, retaining independent status. Further details of the transaction were not disclosed. Joining the AdoptSMT network provides joint representation across Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa with sales and local support staff providing service, training, and installation. The global inventory of the joint operation will reach about 10 million euros, including a large stock of Siemens Siplace machines and complete production lines. AdoptSMT group founder and managing director Erhard Hofmann cited prior collaborations between their teams, complementary business models, and a cultural match, adding that AlternativeSMT’s decision to join AdoptSMT will add capacity to meet increasing demands and bring additional guidance to the company group.
See more information at www.adoptsmt.com and www.alternativesmt.com.
July Book-to-Bill
The combined rigid and flex PCB industry book-to-bill for North America slipped 0.01 down to 0.94 in July, according to IPC. This is the fourth consecutive month in which shipment growth has outpaced orders, noted Denny McGuirk, IPC president.
- Shipments for rigid PCBs are up 5.3% and bookings tumbled 8.0% from July 2007. Year to date, rigid PCB shipments are up 5.7%; bookings rose by 4.4%. The rigid circuits book-to-bill held at 0.94.
- Flexible circuits shipments rocketed up 31.8%, and bookings climbed 9.9% compared to July 2007. Year to date, flexible circuit shipments are up 7.7%; bookings are down 6.5%. The flexible circuits book-to-bill tipped positive at 1.01.
- Combined, the flex and rigid PCB market shipments increased 6.9% from the same month last year, and orders booked decreased equally, 6.9%, over the same period. Year to date, combined industry shipments are up 5.8% and bookings improved by 3.6%. The combined book-to-bill ratio hovered at 0.94. SMT