SAN FRANCISCO – Tempo Automation on Oct. 14 announced a definitive merger agreement with ACE Convergence Acquisition Corp., a special-purpose acquisition company. Upon closing, expected in the first quarter of 2022, the combined operating entity will be renamed Tempo Automation Holdings and shares of its common stock are expected to trade on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol TMPO.

The merged company will have estimated pro forma full year 2021 revenues of approximately $146 million.

The companies estimate post-transaction equity value of approximately $919 million based on current assumptions, with up to $391 million in gross cash proceeds to the company, consisting of $230 million from cash in trust by ACE and $161 million from financing from other investors. The majority of the cash proceeds will be used to complete acquisitions of Advanced Circuits and Whizz Systems.

Advanced Circuits is a quickturn PCB fabricator with annual revenues of about $90 million. Additionally, Tempo has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire all of the outstanding equity interests of Whizz Systems, a privately held EMS company based in San Jose and with additional manufacturing in Malaysia. The moves are expected to make Tempo more vertically integrated.

Upon closing, the combined company will be led by the Tempo management team, including president and chief executive Joy Weiss and chief financial officer Ryan Benton. (MB)

WASHINGTON – The US Department of Commerce is establishing an early alert system to detect supply chain shortages in the semiconductor industry, according to reports.

The Microelectronics Early Alert System will consolidate information from producers and manufacturers, with the goal of minimizing disruptions without firms disclosing confidential information to competitors.

The new alert system is part of President Biden’s program to strengthen supply chains. The 100-day supply chain review ordered by Biden in February highlighted the delicate global nature of the semiconductor supply chain. (CD)

BANNOCKBURN, IL – Apple is leading a host of companies developing a standard to define criteria for what constitutes a green cleaner for electronics manufacturing. IPC-1402, Standard for Green Cleaners Used in Electronics Manufacturing will specifically apply to cleaners used in the manufacture of electronic assemblies, components and materials, including direct use chemicals to clean components, casings, and materials or to clean manufacturing machines during operation and maintenance.

“The standard will document the rigorous set of criteria for preferred cleaners and incorporates industrial hygiene requirements. The application of IPC-1402 will allow important health and safety requirements to be added to engineering drawings needed for product assembly,” said Matt Kelly, chief technologist, IPC.

The subcommittee is cochaired by Apple and Zestron, and includes representatives from more than 20 international companies and government authorities.

“People come first in everything we do, and we’re proud to lead the industry in the responsible use of cleaners,” said Kathleen Shaver, director of environmental and supply chain innovation, Apple. “We are glad to be working with partners on this new standard, which will help accelerate the adoption of safer materials and improve cleaning practices across industries.”

IPC-1402 is expected to be available in February 2022. (CD)

One of the biggest current concerns for the economy, in virtually every country in the world, is the state of the global supply chain. Whether discussing the shortage of chip’s impact on the auto industry or the shortage of paper goods (think toilet paper), all fingers point to a supply chain that is showing signs of fatigue.

To fully appreciate the situation we face, one needs to first look at how the supply chain got to this point.

Historically companies strived for a fully integrated manufacturing capability, so materials, parts, subassemblies, etc., were designed and controlled by the company that produced the end-product they were to be used in. As an example, an automaker would own the steel mill, glass-making facility, radio manufacturer, paint factory, etc., so virtually all parts that went into their automobiles were manufactured – controlled – by one company. Shortages, if and when they occasionally might occur, could be quickly rectified by moving resources around within the parent company to increase supply of needed items.

It’s commonplace among electronics manufacturing services companies to develop workarounds for problems that crop up quickly, or to think on our feet to find ways to deal with seemingly insurmountable obstacles. Worldwide supply chain disruptions are not unusual to the electronics design and assembly and design industry. The current situation is exceptional, however, and its causes wide-ranging, but of course we still must get the product built and shipped to the customer. That doesn’t change.

The current shortage of parts came as no surprise: We saw the writing on the wall some four or five months ago. Anticipating problems is critical in this business. We secured large quantities of components that, for example, we knew were becoming very hard to find but also required for current and future customer builds. Indeed, some parts now have lead times of up to two years, such as certain types of FPGAs, microcontrollers, and other types of ICs. Unfortunately, this means larger-than-normal inventory on hand and at our partners’ locations, which is contrary to our “just in time” operational model.

Here is another lesson I learned the hard way: taping out an FPC (flex printed circuit) using the usual components and finding it doesn’t really work that way. Several things separate a rigid board from a flex. One of the main tenets behind the different design rules is reducing the risk of the circuit peeling up when it gets flexed. Even without continuous flexing, a flex circuit can be under tension where it is folded, twisted, spindled or mutilated.

Ah, but the flexible section is generally not where we install components. Normally, a stiffener covers part of the flex, and components are on the other side. Therefore, it is rigid, right? Not really. Most stiffeners used on flex circuits have a degree of flex to them. Flex stack-ups are intended to be as thin as possible; it’s one of their advantages. Even stainless-steel versions have some give. Many are made of FR-4 or another layer of polyimide, not all that stout.

“One day there will be a telephone in every major city in the USA.” This outrageous assertion, attributed to Alexander Graham Bell, illustrates the difficulty we face in trying to grasp the full potential of great opportunities. He also suggested – presumably later – that “the day is coming when telegraph wires will be laid onto houses just like water or gas – and friends converse with each other without leaving home.”

And so it is, I’m sure, with the Internet of Things (IoT). It’s just getting started. Of course, great claims have been made, particularly on the number of devices that will become connected. The IPv6 address space permits more connections than we can practically contemplate. But it’s the types of applications and services, the capabilities we will gain by leveraging data from IoT devices, that will change the way we live and work in ways we cannot conceive right now.

What other than a dynamic organization like the PCEA could decide it wants to establish a trade show footprint one month and then muster the creative talents of its executive staff to design a trade show booth to exhibit at DesignCon the next? Oh, and then exhibit at another major trade show like PCB West only a short time after? I’ll tell you, the PCEA has a momentum the likes of which I and many others have not seen in this industry.

I do not use “momentum” lightly. Because like the shiny, spherical bob of a pendulum in a Newtonian mechanics experiment, the leadership of this organization seems to be able to swoop down from their rightward (positive) displacement, pass their zero position goal of achieved success and still have enough momentum to reach their leftward displacement, where they tend to set yet another, even loftier goal. The harmonic motion repeats but, unlike a pendulum, appears to gain energy rather than lose it to physical pseudoforces.

Few engineers working in electronics manufacturing today predate the first efforts to develop and implement an industry-wide standard for intelligent electronics data transfer.

As early CAD tools were introduced in the late 1960s and early 1970s, IPC launched a vendor-neutral effort to describe electronics design data from schematic through test.

Meanwhile, Gerber Scientific had developed in the 1960s the common generic (read: unintelligent) format, colloquially known as Gerber, to describe information sent to its photoplotters. In the early 1980s, Gerber adopted and adapted the format for broader printed circuit board manufacturing.

Understencil wiping has gained increased interest over the past several years. Changes in circuit design due to miniaturized components and highly dense interconnects have increased the importance of stencil cleanliness, both inside the aperture wall and on the seating surface of the stencil. A technology that wets the understencil wipe with a solvent-based cleaning agent is being studied to improve print performance and better understand the behavior of flux-stencil interactions. The cleaning agent dissolves the flux component of the solder paste to improve solder ball release from the stencil’s bottom side and aperture walls.

Kyzen and Indium performed a study to characterize the relationship between wipe processes and bottom-side stencil flux/paste flow. A highly dense circuit board and a stencil with nanocoating was used to study the effects of the understencil wiping process. After each print, the stencil was removed from the stencil printer. The apertures were examined to inspect buildup in both the apertures and bottom side of the stencil. FIGURE 1 shows the flux vehicle and some trace solder balls following the first print.

Recently, a customer asked if we could remove a valuable BGA from an existing circuit card assembly. About 1,000 of these BGAs could be removed. Our customer is a reclamation company, and they planned to resell the BGAs, which could fetch upwards of $400 each because of the current chip shortage.

The BGA itself is an older version of the Intel Altera family of products (FIGURE 1). While deemed obsolete by the manufacturer, the part is certainly usable, and due to the chip shortage, our customer might understandably obtain a good price for these older parts, which can be used as replacements for newer models.

Supply chain has been the story of the past year, and a new face to the industry proposes to help resolve that by connecting electronics engineers with printed circuit board assemblers.

Vincent Bedát is a mechanical engineer and recent MBA graduate of the MIT Sloan School of Management. He is also founder of a San Francisco-based startup called Volthub. I came across Volthub as part of an announcement of the finalists for the MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition. That program has various aspects to it, but in short it’s a way to match early-stage teams with industry experts and entrepreneurs, and perhaps gain some seed money along the way. Some of the companies that have been part of the competition over the years include HubSpot and Akamai Technologies.

Bedát hails from Zurich, Switzerland, where he also studied, graduating with a master’s in mechanical engineering from ETH Zurich. He then went on to work at the robotics startup Synapticon in Stuttgart, Germany, as a mechanical engineer and eventually project manager.

Electrically conductive adhesives (ECAs) have been touted for decades as a potential replacement for solder. Technology roadmaps by organizations ranging from IPC to the Surface Mount Council often listed ECAs as a “coming” technology, and scores of papers have been presented highlighting possible uses and likely end-products.

In early October, the international research firm IDTechEx released a new study called “Electrically Conductive Adhesives 2022-2032: Technologies, Markets, and Forecasts.” Matthew Dyson, Ph.D., a senior technology analyst at IDTechEx specializing in printed, organic and flexible electronics, spoke with Mike Buetow about the study’s findings.

Some industries have specialized end-market requirements. For example, corporate headquarters in fast food and fast casual restaurants dictate menu items and the equipment needed to support those items by region. Franchisees have choices in equipment configuration and a timeframe in which they need to buy it from a designated food processing original equipment manufacturer (OEM). They typically order very small quantities, however, making it challenging for a food-processing OEM to fulfill orders utilizing a single manufacturing location and centralized stocking model. There are also regional differences in input power voltages, cycles and plug styles. Preferred language for control overlays also varies. This creates a configure-to-order (CTO) dynamic that adds complexity to the variable demand model. Outsourcing adds flexibility to this equation because it gives food-processing OEMs access to shared production resources which help mitigate the production resource utilization inefficiencies that this type of high-mix, variable-demand production can create. It also helps OEMs more easily support a global customer base with minimal investment in production resources.

Regardless of whether the project is outsourced, when these units are manufactured in a single location, the wastes of overproduction, waiting, transportation and inventory are likely to be significant. At the same time, dividing variable-demand, small-lot production among multiple facilities has the potential to create inventory imbalances and production inefficiencies, particularly if the work is divided among contract manufacturers and managed separately by region. Lean manufacturing philosophy provides guidance on finding a balance that supports customer requirements while still leveraging some economies-of-scale.

Running a business is hard. There are many moving parts to contend with, both from the customer’s side and that of the enterprise itself. A knife’s edge of difference enables those parts to work symphonically rather than as a cacophony. The cacophony often prevails. Not for nothing is the practice of good management often characterized as more art than science, especially when “good” is a matter of perspective and bias.

We’re dealing with humans. Most simply want to make a living and provide for those closest to them. For that reason, when studying economics in college long ago, I always found incongruous the assertions of those theorists who tried to reduce human behavior and all its attendant unorthodoxies and irrationality to a series of simultaneous equations. Despite the mathematical elegance, something didn’t fit into such a neat solution. People aren’t abstractions, but I was too young and inexperienced to adequately express my misgivings about the incongruity. Plus, I wanted an A.

This month we look at etching defects and their removal – or presence, as in the case of FIGURE 1. A customer was surprised to find a batch of bare boards with this level of rework.

IBM announces 2nm GAA-FET technology. IBM announced its 2-nanometer CMOS technology, developed at its Albany research center. The development has technical firsts: the use of bulk Si wafers with bottom dielectric isolation under the nanosheet stack; reducing leakage and enabling 12-nnm gate lengths; a second-generation inner spacer dry process for precise gate control; FEOL EUV patterning to allow nanosheet widths from 15 to 70nm; and a novel multi-Vt scheme. This technology is expected to give a 45% performance boost or 75% power reduction, compared with the 7nm. (IEEC file #12324, Semiconductor Digest, 6/11/21)