Thame, Oxfordshire, UK.
22nd October 2009.

The advent of surface-mount component packaging in the early 1980s precipitated a step change in printed circuit assembly procedure and presented a new generation of engineering challenges. There was puzzlement and mystification as the electronics industry endeavoured to come to terms with surface mount technology. In the summer of 1984, a bright young manufacturing engineer named John Burke took the initiative to organise a meeting of like-minded technical people to address these challenges by sharing their problems and experiences, out of which evolved SMART Group, with the stated aim of promoting the advancement of the electronics manufacturing industry through the education, training and notification of its members in Surface Mount and Related Technologies and by the promotion of a community of electronics manufacturing professionals. A unique trade association, by engineers for engineers, SMART Group now has over 250 corporate and individual members and addresses new technology developments in design, printed circuit manufacture, components, assembly, test and reliability, rework and repair, as well as legislative and environmental concerns.



A quarter of a century on, the original ethos of bringing together a group of people with a common interest to share knowledge by meeting and talking was re-affirmed as Chairman Keith Bryant welcomed over 80 delegates to SMART Group’s 25th Anniversary Seminar in Thame, near Oxford UK, on 22nd October 2009. The seminar offered up-to-the-minute information on process technology, reliability, environmental and business advances, on the theme Reduce Waste – Improve Reliability – Increase Profit. Founder member and soldering guru Mike Fenner was one of the presenters, and even John Burke, who has been working in the USA for many years, made a surprise appearance.

The history of SMART Group events and activities were covered with a slide presentation and is available to watch on-line
 



Vice-Chairman Graham Naisbitt introduced keynote presenters Doug Pauls and Dave Hillman, Principal Materials and Process Engineers with Rockwell Collins in Iowa USA, who engaged, educated and entertained the audience for three hours with lessons learned from a series of eight case studies illustrating the consequences and costs of non-conformance – not doing the job right-first-time through ignorance or shortcuts. Rockwell Collins operate in the high-reliability environment of life-critical and flight-critical equipment, and the costs of non-conformance – lost productivity, engineer time and additional labour to investigate, identify and rectify a problem – can easily run to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

We learned to be wary of allowing Lean Manufacturing principles to demand the operation of processes at a minimum condition in order to maximise throughput, at the expense of introducing subtle variations in the complex interaction between materials resulting in downstream defects that require months of detective work to trace the root cause. And also the value of proper evaluation and characterisation of materials, individually and in combination, before specifying them for a particular application for which they might not have been recommended in the first place. We learned to select metal finishes for their functionality and reliability rather than their cosmetics. We learned that when a test coupon fails, it might be due to a variation in the nature of the coupon itself, rather than the production it is intended to represent. We learned that the protective qualities of Silver-Saver paper are negated by the well-intentioned but ill-informed use of rubber bands or sticky tape to secure the package. We learned that cored solder wire with a nominal shelf life of two years, because “infinite” doesn’t satisfy the check-list of the auditor, is still fully functional after thirty years. We learned about the effects of hand sanitisers and lotions on product reliability, and the effects of pink pencil erasers on solderability. We learned that the customer is never wrong, except when the “white residues” he finds at x200 magnification, presumes to be the cause of an isolated failure because he can’t find a better scapegoat, and blames “contamination due to the supplier’s inadequate cleaning process”, are actually witness to the fact that his own test chamber was defective due to no maintenance and that the failure was of his own making. Each individual case study prompted its own question and answer session, and audience participation was eager and enthusiastic.



Concluding the morning session, Honorary Life Vice President Peter Swanson announced SMART Fellow awards for Peter Allgood, Iain Braddock, Steve Eglinton, Ingmar Grewar, Chris Hunt, Naim Kapadia, David Llewellyn, Martin Tarr and Rex Waygood plus, with tongue in cheek, a special SMART Bellow award for Keith Bryant.

In the afternoon, the audience chose between three separate sessions focusing on business, reliability and environmental issues, and it was interesting to note that, given a free choice, the delegates divided themselves fairly evenly between each of the three rooms.

The reliability session, chaired by Dr Chris Hunt, had presentations by Davide de Maio, from the National Physical Laboratory, discussing low-cycle fatigue in lead-free solder alloys, Russell Shipton of ERA Technology, on the practical realities of failure analysis of electronic components, and Nathan Barry of Aero Engine Controls on vibration testing of lead-free and tin-lead solder joints.



Davide de Maio explained how thermal fatigue had been studied using a specially designed Interconnect Properties Testing Machine, which enabled controlled tests to be carried out on single solder joints at different temperatures. Information derived by statistical analysis of isothermal fatigue data could be used for empirical prediction models and constitutive models, and time-lapse photography and digital image correlation helped predict where cracking was likely to occur. Fatigue testing on single solder joints subjected to thermal cycling between –20 and +80degC had shown SAC305 lead-free alloy to perform better than tin-lead, and this observation prompted some lively interactive discussion.

With the aid of an abundance of superb photographs and photomicrographs, Russell Shipton referred to a series of case studies in his discussion of failure analysis. He advocated using a structured, multidisciplinary approach, with careful observation and questioning, to determine the exact location of the original fault and the stage in production or use at which it occurred and therefore who was responsible, identify what could be done to solve the immediate problem, find out whether the problem might be due to a batch or a change in a material or process, and recommend actions to prevent a recurrence

Electronics in aerospace encounter vibration levels not seen in consumer applications. Nathan Barry reviewed the results of new test methods which had demonstrated significant differences in performance between tin-lead and lead-free solder alloys under high-cycle fatigue conditions. In most cases, tin-lead significantly out-performed lead-free, although at higher temperatures or on nickel substrates the materials performed more similarly. Comprehensive metallurgical study of fatigue and fracture behaviour had not yet fully explained the performance difference, and further work was needed to understand these effects before lead-free alloys could be considered for high-vibration aerospace environments.



Technical Committee Vice-Chairman Nigel Burtt made a thought-provoking introduction to the environmental session, which left the audience in no doubt that the environment, sustainable development and green concerns in general had become more than matters of minority interest. Indeed, green issues had entered global mainstream media, including Hollywood movies. Governments all over the world were looking to change the mindset and behaviour of businesses and individuals. His message was that, whether we choose to accept all the arguments or not, we have to begin thinking not just about electronic waste and energy usage related to the products we manufacture, but overall corporate responsibility in general, including sustainability and environmental impact assessment for the whole of our business operations. Environmental regulations were no longer just a moral or ethical issue, but simply another cost of doing business, and more regulation would happen unless initial voluntary steps were taken.

Mike Fenner, Technical Manager Europe for Indium Corporation, talked about soldering challenges in a halogen-free PCB assembly process. Defining the meaning of “halogen-free” was a challenge in itself, although IPC J-STD-709 would ultimately give authoritative guidance. Availability and cost of halogen-free printed circuits was another area of concern, but the most serious issue was the consequence upon the assembly process of removing halogens from soldering fluxes and the increased risk of defects related to incomplete wetting or coalescence. And these problems could be compounded if halogen-free and lead-free systems were specified in combination.

Marion Quarrington from Measurement Technlogy Ltd gave a detailed and informative OEM perspective on the EU REACH regulation, its impact on an electronics manufacturing business, and how its requirements could be managed with a rational and logical approach. REACH was clearly an area of great concern for delegates, as it generated many questions from the audience. Continuing the theme of environmental legislation, Nigel Burtt returned to give an update on proposed amendments to the RoHS, WEEE and ELV Directives, which was followed by another presentation by Marion Quarrington on the spread of environmental legislation throughout the world.

The session concluded with an interactive discussion and delegates gained an understanding of some practical steps businesses could take to gather the information they needed on global environmental regulation compliance, and the implementation of the appropriate strategies.

The business session demonstrated that SMART is not just about “techie” subjects, and there was keen interest in the presentations from Peter Barnwell of Custom Interconnect Ltd, Mark Hutton of BPA, and Dave Hillman on behalf of IPC.



Peter Barnwell described the role of the independent EMS company in the UK, beginning with a review of how the EMS industry evolved through the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s. By the time the telecoms boom collapsed in 2000-2001, the industry had become dominated by small number of big players who lacked flexibility, whereas many smaller companies lacked production sophistication and technical expertise. Of recent years there had been a rationalization and transition from contract electronics manufacture to electronics manufacturing service and, lately, the concept of original design manufacture had become more significant. Statistics indicated that the UK had fared worst in the 2009 downturn of the European EMS industry. So what was the future for the small-to-medium EMS company in the UK? Barnwell believed in being both technology and customer orientated, with emphasis on customer-supplier partnerships. With modern equipment, up-to-date methodologies and a highly skilled and motivated workforce, an EMS business could continue to be successful. Price would always be an issue, quality was a given, but delivery speed, flexibility in supply and the technical resources to solve customer problems were definite selling points. Adding IP and diversification into specialist areas were further means of securing a positive future.

Mark Hutton’s presentation was entitled Key Interconnection and Packaging Trends of High-End Fixed And Wireless Electronic Systems, and looked at some of the technologies that had been analysed by BPA over the past year. He reviewed flex and flex-rigid printed circuits, high speed electronics, wireless modules, mobile phones, automotive, ultrathin copper and HDI trends in the context of the current world electronics market. Of particular interest were his views on the justification for optical interconnect in low-cost high-volume applications such as smartphones, with examples of solutions offered by Motorola and Matsushita. He ended the presentation with a glimpse of BPA’s forecasts for sector-by-sector demand for flex and flex-rigid circuits, expected to reach $450M in Europe by 2013.

Finally, Dave Hillman reviewed IPC’s 2008-2009 International Technology Roadmap for Electronic Interconnections, describing technology roadmapping as a needs-driven planning process to help identify, select, and develop technology alternatives to satisfy a set of product needs. The IPC roadmap included input from China, Japan and Europe, and described incremental operational-level information in detail for each step of the PCB manufacturing and assembly process. The 2009 roadmap incorporated many new features, including a keyword-searchable database. It was important for any company in the electronics supply chain to have an understanding of trends and technology changes and Hillman believed that three-year roadmaps could give meaningful, information, but considered ten-year forecasts to have limited value. He advocated that companies take a balanced view between global industry roadmaps and forecasts from the specialist market analysts.

Outside of the seminar sessions there was plenty of interest and activity around the table-top exhibition area; people made the most of the networking opportunities; old acquaintanceships were renewed and plenty of new ones established.















SMART Group marked their 25th anniversary with a stylish event, seamlessly organised and professionally delivered, which succeeded once again in bringing together a group of people with a common interest in electronics manufacturing to share their knowledge and experience in a relaxed and informal atmosphere.

Pete Starkey Report Photos Mike Judd
SMART Group Technical Committee
October 2009