Lab leads industry research
09 August 2010
A few years ago I was lucky enough to have a trip to upstate New York to visit the Universal Instruments facility in Binghampton…
It was clear even back then that UIC placed great store in the power of knowledge and while other companies might have had a lab dedicated to developing the best equipment, UIC had a lab dedicated to resolving the technical problems of the electronics manufacturing industry.
Mastering these problems, went the logic, would result in being able to develop the most appropriate equipment for the task in hand.
It was a very impressive set-up and one that was highly valued by some of UIC’s customers at the time. These customers along with other suppliers, under Universal’s guidance, formed the Advanced Research in Electronics Assembly (AREA) Consortium over a decade ago with a view to combining expertise in the laboratory environment and resolving some of the major ongoing technical issues.
I have heard little from AREA in recent years so it came as a pleasant surprise when I was recently alerted to the latest meeting of the consortia last month.
Nearly 80 attendees from the 29 member companies participated in the two-day event and these companies included Plexus, HP, Vicor, Ericsson, Lord Corp., Motorola, IBM, Brocade, Rockwell Automation, DEK, Textron, Northrop Grumman, Indium, Lockheed Martin, Integral Technology, Insulectro, BAE, Dell, OK Int., Multek, Lansmont, Celestica, Curtiss-Wright, Harris, and Creyr. Clearly AREA is not only alive, but also in very good health.
My first thought was to try and wrangle another visit to the lab and find out in more detail about the work they were doing there, but I remembered specific projects were rarely discussed until they came to fruition, so as to give the partners involved time to take commercial advantage of the findings.
Moreover, such is the size eminence of the companies who are involved in AREA that the technology automatically becomes mainstream as soon as they start to use it. And using this argument, AREA really is providing a service for all of the industry.
For the record, on AREA’s roadmap for research this year are the following: PCB Damage; Pad cratering Solder Pad Finish Issues; Thermal Cycling; Data & Assessment of Life Drop, Vibration, and Cyclic Bending; Acceleration of Ageing; Combined Loading; Whiskers & Conformal Coatings; Thermal Interface Assembly & Reliability; Assembly and Rework/Repair; Component Underfilling & Edge/Corner Bonding. Many of these were discussed at the event above and will be presented as webcasts in the future.
Those wishing to find out more about UIC’s Advanced Process Lab or the AREA Consortium can visit: http://www3.uic.com/wcms/WCMS2.nsf/index/Home_Page_0.html.
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