NextFlex Launches $5.3M Funding Opportunity for Hybrid Electronics

WASHINGTON – NextFlex, the Department of Defense-sponsored Manufacturing Innovation Institute focused on maturing hybrid electronics, released Project Call 9.0 (PC 9.0) in June, its latest call for proposals that seek to fund more than $5 million in projects that further the development and adoption of hybrid electronics while addressing key challenges in advanced manufacturing.

The total PC 9.0 project value is expected to exceed $11 million (including NextFlex investment and performer cost-share), bringing the total anticipated investment in advancing hybrid electronics since NextFlex’s formation to $143 million.

Building from the success of past Project Calls, PC 9.0 uses broadly defined topics to enable a diverse proposer base, with special emphasis on areas in which hybrid electronics can impact high priority U.S. manufacturing opportunities and areas of emerging importance within the electronics manufacturing community. PC 9.0 emphasizes projects that address critical hybrid electronics manufacturing challenges, enabling the transition of hybrid electronics devices into applications that require superior performance, assured reliability, and improved environmental sustainability.

Report: EU Electronics Manufacturing to Continue Decline

BRUSSELS – Despite the adoption of the European Chips Act, the EU’s market share in critical electronics components beyond chips, including PCBs, EMS and advanced packaging, will decline to 15% by 2035, according to a new report.

The Securing EU’s Electronics Ecosystem report finds that the continent’s PCB industry segment has faced significant erosion over the last two decades, and revitalizing and growing electronics manufacturing – beyond chips – is essential to building a secure and robust European electronics ecosystem. A “silicon to systems” approach is necessary to support ongoing EU technological leadership and meet strategic goals.

“An innovative and resilient European electronics manufacturing industry is vital to ensuring the region’s access to defence and aerospace systems, medical technologies, and communications infrastructure. The growing strategic dependencies highlighted in the report are alarming as they undermine Europe’s ability to achieve key strategic priorities from a strengthening of the defense industrial base to the green and digital transitions,” said Sanjay Huprikar, president of Europe and South Asia operations, IPC, which released the report.

Seacomp Opens Assembly Plant in Tijuana

CARLSBAD, CA – Seacomp in May opened a new 60,000 sq. ft. assembly facility in Tijuana, Mexico.

The new plant features 5,000 sq. ft. of space dedicated to PCB assembly, featuring solder paste printing and inspection, automated SMT placement, and reflow soldering.

“Manufacturing is a global industry, but it’s also a hands-on business,” said CEO Michael Szymanski. “That’s why we’ve made the decision to bring most of our leadership team back together under one roof and introduce a new Seacomp facility just an hour away from our command center in Southern California.”

Tyri Begins In-House Circuit Board Production in Sweden

KUNGSBACKA, SWEDEN – Tyri, a manufacturer of lighting equipment for work machines, is starting in-house production of circuit boards in Sweden.

The company’s 1,800 sq. m. facility will make Tyri self-sufficient in this area, giving it increased control, higher quality, and more reliable deliveries, the company said.

“We see many advantages in producing the circuit boards we need ourselves. Increased quality and delivery reliability are two of the most important reasons. We will produce for our production facility in Gothenburg and also for our production units in the UK and the USA,” said Jimmy Nordén, factory manager at Tyri Sweden.

Apple Among New Members of IPC-2581 Consortium

WESTBOROUGH, MA – Apple, Beta CAE and Panasonic Connect were welcomed as the newest members of the IPC-2581 Consortium during the group’s May meeting.

“We would like to support IPC-2581 as a standardized format to enable better communication between, for example, fab and assembly vendors,” Apple said in a statement.

During the meeting, members also discussed the use of a coin shape as an interesting application in a CAD system for PCB design, as well as a new via type to handle the application and how it would be defined in the CAD system. Other topics of discussion included the need for improved communication of materials and stack-up definitions to manufacturers – including composite and roll-up materials, the need to define and name dielectric layers in the stack up, particularly for trench vias, and the inclusion of span information for these layers.

Doosan Named CCL Supplier for Nvidia AI Chips

SEOUL – Doosan Electro-Materials is anticipating a boost in copper-clad laminate sales after being selected as CCL supplier for Nvidia’s AI chip substrates, according to reports.

Doosan, the world’s largest CCL manufacturer, recently began mass production for Nvidia’s next-generation GPU B100, which is scheduled to be released in the fourth quarter.

Doosan’s first-quarter sales were 186.5 billion won ($135 million), and are projected to reach 900 billion won this year.

Flex Acquires FreeFlow B2B Platform

AUSTIN, TX – Flex has acquired FreeFlow, a company that specializes in global secondary markets and circular economy tracking and reporting.

FreeFlow’s B2B digital marketplace platform enables customers to sell surplus and returned inventory while protecting primary sales channels. Flex said the addition adds services for customers across multiple markets, including data center, enterprise, and lifestyle, to create additional revenue streams and accelerate sustainability through second life products.

“The acquisition of FreeFlow reaffirms Flex’s commitment to deliver the highest value to our customers, addressing their evolving business and sustainability needs across the product lifecycle while increasing our addressable market,” said Michael Hartung, president of Agility Solutions at Flex. “This addition further differentiates our end-to-end services and will enable a wide range of customers, from cloud to lifestyle, to realize the benefits of second life products, and ultimately deliver on their environmental commitments.”

ASMPT Reorganizes American SMT Business

MUNICH – ASMPT has reorganized its SMT Solutions segment in the Americas (USA, Canada, Mexico and Brazil), adding a new division between the North and South America regions.

The division of the business, which was previously managed centrally from Suwanee, GA, will allow the company to adjust its market focus to better meet the specific needs and requirements of the different markets, ASMPT said in a release.

The company said the markets in Mexico and Brazil differ from those in the US and Canada, with mainstream solutions for the high-volume production of consumer goods, computers and automotive electronics being the main drivers in Mexico and Brazil, while the Canadian and US markets focus on innovative and customer-specific advanced packaging solutions for high-mix production and on the development of special products for medical technology, the aerospace and defense industries, as well as industrial electronics.

Keytronic Confirms Data Breach After Ransomware Attack

SPOKANE VALLEY, WA – Keytronic in June began notifying potentially affected parties and regulatory agencies of a breach that saw more than 500GB of personal data stolen.

The EMS company reported the cyberattack in an SEC filing in May, saying that the attack disrupted its operations by limiting access to business applications essential for corporate activities, and its domestic and Mexico operations were shut down for two weeks to address the incident.

Keytronic has resumed normal operations, but an investigation found that personal information had been stolen during the attack, the company said.

India EMS Market Set to Soar

PARIS – India’s domestic electronics manufacturing services revenues are on track to more than double over the next three years, reaching $55 billion by 2027. 

That’s according to a report by BNP Paribas, which forecasts investments led by companies such as Apple and Samsung will add significant heft to the nation’s EMS industry.

Apple, the bank’s report says, will increase investment to $40 billion over the next four to five years to boost domestic production capacity of laptops as well as smartphones. Lenovo intends to build servers in support of its growing data center business, while Acer, HP and Nokia are also expected to expand domestic operations. (more)

Sunny Times at Sunstone Circuits

One year out from its merger with American Standard Circuits, the West Coast fabricator is evolving to meet a changing customer base.
by Tyler Hanes

From its inception as part of Electronic Controls Design in 1972, to its joining with American Standard Circuits last July, Sunstone Circuits has been committed to innovating in the industry – for instance, it is said to be the first to offer online quoting and ordering in the 1990s – as well as providing exceptional customer service.

To better understand what makes Sunstone go, PCD&F visited the company’s 32,000 sq. ft. facility in Mulino, OR, in late April, and took an inside look at its operations.

The company has historically been focused on high-mix, low-volume offerings with an emphasis on quickturns – having around 99% on-time delivery – and quality – with less than a 1% return rate, said vice president and general manager Matt Stevenson.

‘Everybody is Growing’

The East Coast trade show brings news of a steady industry, while puncturing myths about AI.
by Tyler Hanes

Members of the electronics community gathered in the Boston suburb of Boxborough in early June for the return of PCB East, PCEA’s annual event featuring four days of technical sessions and a one-day exhibition.

This year’s exhibition featured more than 65 companies running the gamut of the PCB industry, from fabrication, design, and assembly to test and inspection, and most of those companies reported steady growth thus far, with small gains over 2023.

For Cadence Design Systems, revenue has continued to grow over the past few years and is up around 15% so far in 2024, said product management director Patrick Davis.

AI: The Shiny New Tool in the Engineer’s Toolbox

Searching for components and automating schematic capture are just two of the ways AI will be implemented in PCB design.
by David Wiens

During the past 10 years, artificial intelligence (AI) has progressed from a visionary concept to a mainstream reality in many large companies. AI is becoming a crucial lever for improving operational productivity and user expertise.

AI is a set of computational technologies that enable a machine to reason and infer without any human intervention. These technologies are developed using cross-disciplinary approaches based on mathematics, computer science, statistics, and psychology. AI based solutions can analyze high volumes of data to identify trends and patterns which can then be used to improve existing processes and make recommendations to assist users in making better decisions.

System-in-Package and Multichip Module Technology

Moving forward on the ‘More than Moore’ roadmap.
by Yaniv Maydar

We’re witnessing a rapid evolution in advanced semiconductor nodes and market growth due to the meteoric rise of AI, mobile, autonomous automotive, IoT, communications and cloud, health tech, and wearables. The various technologies driving the overall functionality of systems and devices associated with these applications have increased exponentially, impacting factors such as device performance, energy consumption, power dissipation, and space (miniaturization). 

Development of the system-on-chip (SoC), combining digital and analog, MEMS and photonic sensors, has led to the small form factors used in smartphones, health monitors, smart homes, and more. Advancements in smaller feature sizes and the resulting billions of transistors per chip translate into increased functionality, enhanced performance, and greater power – but these benefits come at a price. SoCs are hugely complex systems that generate very high NRE costs and involve other budgetary, time, and market constraints. For this reason, it has become clear that alternative technologies are now urgently needed.

The heterogeneous integration of separately manufactured components into a higher-level assembly – system-in-package (SiP) – is able to leverage the advanced capabilities of packaging technology by creating a system close to the SoC form factor but with better yield, lower overall cost, higher flexibility, and faster time to market. A recent paradigm shift from SoC-centric solutions to SiP-centric solutions has occurred, even for high-volume products.

How to Stay Within the SMT Assembly Process Window

Navigating the balancing act with the application constraints.
by Kevin Pigeon

Understanding and controlling the assembly process window is not just about managing the solder paste. It’s about mastering all process variables across the entire SMT assembly process for optimal outcomes.

The assembly process window defines the range of parameters within which solder paste will meet optimal performance standards. Straying outside this window can lead to defects, rework and inconsistencies, affecting the efficiency and output of the electronics manufacturing process.

These parameters may include acceptable ranges for a number of areas, including but not limited to:

• Total reflow profile time from ambient to peak
• Peak reflow oven temperature
• Time above liquidus

In Case You Missed It

Components

“How a Simple Circuit Could Offer an Alternative to Energy-Intensive GPUs”

Author: Sophia Chen

Abstract: On a table in his lab at the University of Pennsylvania, physicist Sam Dillavou has connected an array of breadboards via a web of brightly colored wires. The setup looks like a DIY home electronics project – and not a particularly elegant one. But this unassuming assembly, which contains 32 variable resistors, can learn to sort data like a machine-learning model. The potential energy savings works this way: Digital chips like GPUs expend energy per operation, so making a chip that can perform more operations per second just means a chip that uses more energy per second. In contrast, the energy usage of his analog computer is based on how long it is on. Should they make their computer twice as fast, it would also become twice as energy efficient. While its current capability is rudimentary, the hope is that the prototype will offer a low-power alternative to the energy-guzzling graphical processing unit (GPU) chips widely used in machine learning. (MIT Technology Review, Jun. 5, 2024, https://technologyreview.ae/source/how-a-simple-circuit-could-offer-an-alternative-to-energy-intensive-gpus/)