Tag Archives: electronics design

Major Major and Standard Standard

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We ask for your bill of materials, Gerber and centroid files to assemble your PCBs. All those pieces of information are necessary to properly program our machines to place your parts. That’s pretty standard stuff, but did you know that when the Gerber format reference book was first published, Jimmy Carter was President of the United States, Russia was the “Soviet Union” and Voyager 1 was well inside the Solar System?

Use of the format has been going on even longer. Yeah. It’s been around a while. For some reason, it has been very difficult to get everyone to agree to and use a standard file format. Gerbers really don’t have enough information in them to do the job properly, but it is the standard. Hopefully not for too much longer. How many of you reading this were even born when Gerber was new?

There are a number of formats around that are better than gerber and Screaming Circuits will accept many of them. First, your CAD software probably will export an “ASCII CAD file”. This is a good format. Some export ODB++, which is one of the newer formats, again a good choice. One of the newest standards is the IPC-2581. It’s been around a few years and is now getting a lot of attention. If you happen to use Eagle CAD, you can also send us the Eagle “.brd” file.

IPC-2581 includes the best of ODB++ and GenCAM. It has all of the fab data, assembly data, netlist and BOM. Everything needed in one convenient file. My understanding of the format is that you can exclude portions of the data set that you consider proprietary. You can learn more about the format here. There’s more background information on the subject at PCD&F magazine.

Duane Benson
Where’s Henry?
I need an inductor.

http://blog.screamingcircuits.com/

A New Trend in Assembly Shows?

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Years ago, three major events dotted the US electronics assembly trade show landscape. They included Nepcon East, Surface Mount International, and the mother of them all, Nepcon West.

While Nepcon West was the undisputed champ, all three shows were worth attending, and exhibitors often made new product announcements at each one.

Interestingly, and for reasons too detailed to get into here, none of those shows exist today. And for much of the 2000s, the place to roll out new products became IPC’s Apex. Other events were relegated to regional status, and traditionally were staffed as much by distributors as by OEMs.

There’s a few small signs that trend may be shifting again. While IPC Midwest, taking place this week in the Chicago suburbs remains a local show (and honestly, could they make seeing the exhibitor list any more user-unfriendly?), SMTAI is at long-last beginning to fill the niche for a seasonal alternative to Apex. To wit, we’ve received numerous press releases of late reporting new products to be introduced at SMTAI. That’s evidence suppliers see the venue as a viable place to make product launches.

Also at SMTAI, on Oct. 18, I am cochairing (with CIRCUITS ASSEMBLY columnist Sue Mucha) a panel titled “Global Strategies for Lowering EMS Costs” at SMTAI in Ft. Worth, TX. Topics include EMS in Eastern Europe; networking technical trends; improving quality, delivery and cost in high mix manufacturing; and vapor phase technology, and feature speakers from Kimball, Tailyn, Fabrinet and IBL Technologies. We conclude with a panel on building an EMS cost model.

I can’t mention these events without touting our own. Next week marks the 20th annual PCB West conference and exhibition at the Santa Clara (CA) Convention Center. Traditionally the industry’s leading conference for printed circuit board design and fabrication, we have beefed up the electronics assembly side (with a big assist from the Silicon Valley SMTA Chapter). Highlights include papers on low silver solder alloys, advanced packaging, new plasma-based PCB surface finishes, and lead-free electronics risk reduction, presented by such leading companies as Hewlett-Packard and Amkor. Check out the program at pcbwest.com.  We really hope to see you there.

Served Up

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The trend toward “do it yourself” servers among the major Internet and social media companies reinforces the end-customer’s position at the top of the electronics supply chain.

Google, Facebook and other major dot.com companies are migrating away from off-the-shelf equipment in favor of custom-designed and built machines that better meet their specific needs. While the trend — custom-built servers now make up 20% of the US server market, according to a recent report by research firm Gartner — isn’t completely new, it is now affecting the bottom lines of H-P, Dell and other OEMs that live in that space.

Moreover, Google and Facebook are employing large numbers of hardware designers, once again taking the top talent away from the manufacturing floor (the companies then outsource the actual product build). It could also change the services model: Will repair be performed by the major EMS companies, or by local or even internal specialists?

I suspect the major server makers will try to adapt their product lines, but the question remains whether the Googles of the world will let them far enough through the door to get a good feel for the technology needs, or whether the major dot.coms become mini-Apples in which paranoia trumps partnering.

Served Up

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The trend toward “do it yourself” servers among the major Internet and social media companies reinforces the end-customer’s position at the top of the electronics supply chain.

Google, Facebook and other major dot.com companies are migrating away from off-the-shelf equipment in favor of custom-designed and built machines that better meet their specific needs. While the trend — custom-built servers now make up 20% of the US server market, according to a recent report by research firm Gartner — isn’t completely new, it is now affecting the bottom lines of H-P, Dell and other OEMs that live in that space.

Moreover, Google and Facebook are employing large numbers of hardware designers, once again taking the top talent away from the manufacturing floor (the companies then outsource the actual product build). It could also change the services model: Will repair be performed by the major EMS companies, or by local or even internal specialists?

I suspect the major server makers will try to adapt their product lines, but the question remains whether the Googles of the world will let them far enough through the door to get a good feel for the technology needs, or whether the major dot.coms become mini-Apples in which paranoia trumps partnering.

Patently Slow

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Further delays by the International Trade Commission panel tasked with resolving a two-year patent battle between Rambus and Nvidia underscore how difficult it is to determine cases involving highly technical IP – and also why the rules need changing.

The stakes are so high, when Samsung settled with Rambus in January, it agreed to pay $700 million in cash over five years – and buy a big stake in Rambus.  Now the ITC wants to know how that deal might affect the rest of the case.

That’s reasonable, I suppose, but in the meantime, electronics designers face the no-win choice of either designing in chips known to be part of a patent dispute, or finding something (probably) less desirable as replacement.

And who do you think pays in the end?