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NEMI Plans Tin Whisker Meetings at ECTC
April 29, 2004 |Estimated reading time: 3 minutes
Herndon, Va. — The National Electronics Manufacturing Initiative (NEMI) will sponsor a tin whisker workshop and a component supplier/large user meeting at the upcoming IEEE Electronic Components and Technology Conference (ECTC) in Las Vegas, taking place June 1 through 4.
An all-day session on June 1 will review all of the NEMI tin whisker project activities to date. Two half-day sessions are scheduled for June 2. Users and suppliers will discuss mitigation strategies and acceptance test plans for high-reliability critical systems applications in the morning session, followed by an open meeting of the Tin Whisker Accelerated Test Project in the afternoon.
With the move toward lead-free electronics, tin is considered a drop-in replacement for the tin-lead finish currently used for component terminations. However, pure tin coatings may have a tendency to grow small filaments known as "whiskers" that could bridge adjacent terminals, causing system failure. NEMI is working on three projects dealing with various aspects of this phenomenon: accelerated test (attempting to develop tests to predict tin whiskers), modeling (attempting to understand basic cause of whiskers), and a user group (addressing how high-reliability, long-life systems or critical applications can be protected).
The Tuesday workshop (June 1) will provide an overview of more than three years' work by the three projects, including discussion of an annotated bibliography (provided as a handout), a set of tests recommended to JEDEC, basic theories behind whisker formation, and how to protect critical applications and systems, given what is known today.
On Wednesday (June 2), the NEMI Tin Whisker User Group will focus on the need for mitigation practices when pure tin is used as a component terminal coating. The concern with tin whiskers in high-reliability, critical systems applications will be discussed, potential solutions outlined (given today's knowledge), and tests to demonstrate compliance will be proposed.
NEMI's Tin Whisker User Group was organized to define methods and tests that would minimize the probability of tin whiskers creating functional or reliability problems in their products. The group is comprised of 10 large manufacturers of high-reliability electronic assemblies: Alcatel, Celestica, Cisco Systems, Delphi Electronics & Safety, HP, IBM, Lucent Technologies, StorageTek, Sun Microsystems, and Tyco Electronics. They agree that pure tin electroplating presents a risk in high-reliability applications, and have outlined mitigation techniques to minimize this risk. However, there are a number of options that can be utilized to reduce the tin whisker problem, and the User Group is sponsoring this session to solicit supplier feedback on the practicality of implementing the various approaches, with a goal of reducing the number of mitigation options to be implemented.
In addition to the two workshops, NEMI's Tin Whisker Accelerated Test Project will hold an open meeting on the afternoon of June 2. Carol Handwerker, chief of the Metallurgy Division of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), will moderate the Tuesday workshop and Wednesday user/supplier discussions on whisker mitigation and test acceptance. Nick Vo, Motorola, will chair the Wednesday test method standardization evaluation and discussions.
Meeting Highlights:
- Tuesday, June 1 Tin Whisker Workshop (for a detailed agenda, visit the NEMI Web site at www.nemi.org/calendar/tinwhisker_june.html.
- Wednesday, June 2 (morning) User/Supplier Workshop Discussion of mitigation strategy and acceptance test plan, Papers by Nick Vo, Marc Dittes
- Wednesday, June 2 (afternoon) Tin Whisker Accelerated Test Project open meeting, Review test results on DOE 3 and revise test method proposal to JEDEC; general discussion and registration
All meetings will be held in the same venue as the IEEE Electronic Components and Technology Conference (ECTC). Anyone registered for ECTC can attend the NEMI tin whisker meetings. Individuals wishing to attend only the NEMI meetings should contact the NEMI secretariat for information (703-834-0330). Additional information about the conference is available on the ECTC Web site at www.ectc.net.
The National Electronics Manufacturing Initiative's mission is to assure leadership of the global electronics manufacturing supply chain. For more information, visit www.nemi.org.