JPCA 2005

Citation

Ling, J. (2006), "JPCA 2005", Circuit World, Vol. 32 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/cw.2006.21732aac.001

JPCA 2005

JPCA 2005

Keywords: Electronics industry, Japan, Conferences

Some years back one had seen a sign in a restaurant window – “There are no strangers in here, only friends you haven't met” and the 2005 JPCA Show this brought the memory back. The usual friends were present, and that in itself was a comfort in an age when some of them have fallen off the end of the pier rather dramatically. There were a few strangers, but they might not remain as such for long. Symptomatic of the scale of the downturn in the industry was the relatively uncrowded lobby, normally full of heaving lines awaiting registration. Getting your pass this year was an exercise to be measured in brief minutes only (Plates 1 and 2).

Plate 1 The opening ceremony

Plate 2 The first of thousands register

JPCA, recognising that we live in changing times, if not in interesting ones, have diversified, and wisely so. In addition to the usual PCB sector, there have now have been added microelectronics, flexible packaging and circuitry (FPC), design engineering and standards (DES), and microtest and in such manner were six halls filled. The word focused has come into fashionable use, overly so, but suffice it to say that the JPCA Show was a bit blurred around the edges, and the focal length was a touch short.

So, if you wanted holes drilled, grids arrayed, edges trimmed, boards inspected, work flow improved, artwork plotted, resist sprayed, film stripped, vias buried, images magnified or waste reduced then all was here. Richard Meredith the diminutive dynamo of Teknek beamed a welcome from a busy stand. He had been here but one month before for a Flat Panel display show and had been overwhelmed by the enthusiasm and the potential, his company thrives on dirt, and when people need to clean, then they call on Teknek. Flat screen panels are no exception. Now he is concentrating on the FPC sector and happily so.

Plate 3 RoHS and WEEE legislation

Rose Ito runs Chemitox (Plate 3), a problem solving company, and runs it with great skill; a UL certified agency, they can run all manner of UL testing, and are now consulting with manufacturers on the impact of the RoHS and WEEE legislation being effected worldwide; they also provide environmental testing services also based on RoHS.

No exhibition would be complete without a sighting of that irrepressible Iranian Mr Aflatoonian, whose Jahan Electronics in Yazd is now expanding to include assembly, and he leaves Tokyo for Singapore to talk to Siemens and Assembleon about contracts for equipment. JEC is now exporting rigid circuit boards to many European countries, and his expansion is part of the plan to move from PCB to EMS. Many a shrewd European company has eschewed the Far East for the Middle East. It is nearer, it is good, and it is cheap.

Plate 4 Orbotech displayed their new Discoverye 8 HR AOI system

Orbotech (Plate 4) had a velvety drape hiding their new Discoverye 8 HR AOI system, which boasts higher resolution for high volume HDI and BGA. Thirty-five micrometer line and space design on an 18 × 24 inch panel will be dealt with at a rate of over one per minute.

If you have a thing about linear activators, and many people do as scarcely a circuit board would be produced without them, then a visit to the Hiwin stand would have been worthwhile, as a key mechanism to a demandingly technical industry they have no equal, as Daniel Sun explained. All clever stuff.

Your writer is not the only one to have been to both Brighton for Nepcon and Tokyo for the JPCA Show in the same month. Francis Tsoi is the CEO of World Mastery Technology Ltd, based in Hong Kong, who is a truly global circuit board producer, and traveller as well, it seems. He was illuminating about the differences in dealing with European countries – and Japan. The Japanese are sticklers for quality and delivery, and will send over inspectors to your plant to help you get the quality right. Now that is partnership. He does well wherever he goes, and is about to double production capacity to 550,000 sq. ft per month of circuitry, of all types. He was just one of many PCB manufacturers who were there in some force, including Techwise from China, Ruwel from Germany, and Asperation Oy from Finland. Mr Terho Kutilainen V.P. R&D showed how they are working with Murabeni in partnership to produce moulded three-dimensional circuitry, which have huge benefits for the future. The marriage of Aspocomp and Perlos some three years has proved a doughty one, and the significance of their developments were on view for all to see, and ponder upon. The design implications are huge.

Plate 5 Furnace had their electrostatic spray equipment on display

Furnace (Plate 5) had their electrostatic spray equipment on display, which for those of us unfamiliar with it proved an interesting opportunity to see what thought has gone into the control of wet film application in the vertical plane. Mr H. Fujii is their MD and explained how the system had received acceptance in the market, and how limitations of any process can be judged. With a three-head system they can lay-up wet film to encapsulate tracks up to 36 μm, regardless of plating uniformity across the panel, giving 18-19 μm on track shoulders.

Plate 6 Union Tool now have a 20mm diameter drill bit

Koji Hiroshima of Union Tool was happy to show off some jaw-dropping advance in drill bit technology. They now have a 20 μm diameter drill bit, and it works. Two thousand hits plus! To emphasise the point they had a microscope set up so that you could actually see it with the naked eye, but the 50 μm drills that they mass produce were on display, and all but invisible anyway (Plate 6). Given that 20 μm is about one-fifth the diameter of the human hair, one is in awe of the ability to create such finesse. People who use drills tend to have drilling machines, so that is why a call onto the Hitachi stand was so worthwhile. Kea-Hwan Lee is from their international sales department and in response to a question about “What is new?” replied, with an expansive wave of an elegant hand “Everything!” And so it was, with a positive plethora of products, mechanical drilling now running at 300,000 rpm spindle speeds with a floating spindle head that no longer drags across entry material; 200,000 rpm drilling as a standard, the first ever machine for automatic pinning of multi-layer panels; the world's first high-speed four-beam UV laser drilling machine running at 2,000 holes per second via a new optical system. The list goes on, as does Hitachi in this field. Unstoppable. Like a battalion of Grenadier Guardsmen, they have drilling down to a fine art.

Making things possible in this field is of course Westwind, who were launching their new D1787 Storm 200 Krpm spindles alongside the D1733 250,000 rpm dedicated small hole drilling spindle designed for IC substrate and mechanical microvia drilling. Rohm and Haas were there, of course, with their growing and sophisticated range of chemistry for the PCB and packaging and finishing technologies. When it comes to plating chemistry Nissin-Kasei is also a force to reckon with, although neither company had anything new to offer, whereas Uyemura have a new ENIG process especially designed for lead-free solder application, with excellent solder ball pull strength, comprising four different chemistries. Smart move.

Pentax have a new direct imaging system for design data, available “on-demand” as they call it, though their new CAMStationFX data editing system, which offers visual image transfer without loss of resolution, positioning error, and limitation on line width definition. It is all to do with optics, which Pentax do rather well. CKD Corporation had a new and rather ingenious solder printing inspection machine on show that uses red green and blue patterned light to illuminate a soldered panel. This in turn is read by a CCD camera, which produces raw data from which any defects can be determined, and subsequently reworked, defects which would otherwise be impossible to detect.

A company called SCREEN was on view, which turned out to be a re-branded Dainippon screen manufacturing company with limited liability, and one was grateful for the abbreviation. One awaits Pirelli re-branding themselves as Tyres. Anyway, they had a new AOI system on view entitled PI-8200, which is faster in inspection, in set-up, and has higher sensitivity so that even protrusions are detected, as well as dishdowns and microshorts. It replaces their PI-8000 which was state-of-the-art only a year ago. Such is progress.

Hakuto had, as usual, a fully furnished stand, fronting which was their (relatively) new HAP 5020 series sophisticated and fully automatic exposure system for medium to small volume production panels, handling panels to a vertical double-sided exposure position from horizontal presentation and despatch. Committed to film to panel accuracy as well were Adtec, who also offered somewhat bulky machinery of the 5tonne pedigree, ACP-630, which could operate with excellent alignment accuracy with boards from standard thickness down to 0.06 mm. Panasonic had joined battle with Hitachi in the hybrid CO2/UV laser drilling field, with both companies offering an abundance of choice when it comes to head count in production.

The boys from the green stuff were well in evidence, with Nippon Polytech Corp. sitting close to Tamura, and Taiyo. Nippon were talking about their new NPR-3300 halogen-free solder mask for flexibles, which has a lower curing temperature and good plating resistance. Taiyo were emphasising their claimed position as No. 1 supplier, and given the range of products available and their geographical coverage one would be loath to doubt it.

If the world of screen printing is a familiar one, then so too perhaps is the name of Mino, who have the Svecia range under their control in Japan. They have added to it a list of printers and dryers that meets all the demands of this sector, including roll-to-roll for flexibles PCBs as well as film. It is in the realms of flexibles that Hymmen are in Japan, they have recently installed a new IsoPress^™ PCB double-belt press for continuous production at a customer's premises in Tokyo and this is being commissioned to meet the rising demand for flexible copper-clad substrate for the domestic market. Andreas Tereiden is the project manager. Also from Germany was Harald Knechtel of LPKF Laser and Electronics, who was having a good show, he explained that they are doing rather well with their 350LU/V Laser machine which is being used for coverlay routing, microvias, and rework. It is also being used with good effect on RF circuits, using PTFE, such as Rogers 3003. No dust, you see and no competition for such a machine, either, which is enjoyable whilst it lasts.

In the verdant pastures of laser drilling, it was notable that Takeuchi were putting on a strong show, they had double-headed U/V and CO2 machines, as well as 250,000 rpm six-spindle mechanical drilling beast on show on a large stand. We did in fact see our first inflatable stand, and eye-catching it was too, belonged to Camellia Co. (Plate 7), who make wet processing equipment. The walls, and the main stand are all inflatable, are free-standing and internally lit, A feeling of deflation at the end of a busy show will be positively welcome on Stand 5K-03!

Plate 7 The inflatable stand

We did look quite hard to find the microelectronics section, but failed. Somehow pick and place had intruded in a half-hearted manner, and there were lots of linear motors on display, with interesting gadgets made to demonstrate the versatility of such equipment. CAD and CAE were strongly to the fore, as were displays showing the increasing application of flexible circuitry in both domestic and leisure equipment. The child within us all was fascinated by the 000-gauge model railway showing a system for controlling the application of illumination and surveillance on a moving object. Static objects in a glass case do not excite quite as much as operating objects in a glass case.

Painfully slim and slender young ladies in mini skirts still sashay into the aisles to promote something unknown, but the decibel level of the presentations vying to be heard was thankfully much diminished this year. Only the manic laughter of the co-presenters on the Mentor Graphics stand reminded one of what had gone before. They seemed to be running something between the Lottery Draw and Celebrity Countdown, but without the sophistication. One guestimates attendance over the three days at some 27,000, much down from the 50,000 or so some time back. Numbers mean nothing at all, for this year the visitors were more specific, often coming for one sole purpose alone, rather than a general look. Peak day of course was the middle day – is not it always? – but the JPCA have done their usual excellent job in organising their annual show. Next year it runs from 31 May-2 June, same place, and, by and large, same format.

Like a birthday, it will come around all too soon.

John LingAssociate Editor, Circuit World