ICT Evening Seminar
Tuesday, 8th February 2008
The White Swan Hotel, Arundel
The ICT’s First Evening Seminar of
2008 took place on Tuesday, 8th February, at the White Swan Hotel in
Arundel following the Annual General Meeting. The event was chaired by the ICT’s Technical Director, Bill Wilkie, and
before the seminar’s first speaker was introduced, he broke the sad news of the
death of David Kingsley to the attendees. David had spent many years in the PCB industry and had made a
significant contribution to the ICT until his retirement.
Unlike some recent ICT seminars,
this one did not have a specific theme and the programme was therefore able to
cover three wide ranging subject areas that were of specific interest to
members. These were legislation, new
technology and forecasting the future of the industry. The first presentation of the evening was
given by Mike Inman of BSI and this covered the recently introduced REACH
regulations. He began by giving an
overview of the various related pieces of producer responsibility legislation
that were already impacting much of the electronics industry supply chain from
design to end of life. These included
the RoHS and WEEE Directives, as well as the
Battery
and Accumulators Directive and the Energy Using Products Directive. REACH was another piece of similar legislation
and this would impact all users of chemical substances. It was estimated that around 100,000
substances would be implicated in REACH and Mike emphasised that REACH would
have an impact on virtually all industrial sectors, including the downstream
users. The REACH regulations would
replace 42 existing pieces of legislation and, instead, would give one unified
European system. REACH would also
address World Trade Organisation obligations and reduce animal testing, as well
as supporting Duty of Care. Mike stated
that if there was no data on a substance there would be no market for it! He then outlined the REACH timetable and,
although the regulations came into force in June 2007, the next key date was
June 2008, when the six month pre-registration period for ‘phase in’ substances
began. Other registration deadlines,
which depended on tonnages, were in 2010, 2013 and 2018. There were a number of exemptions in REACH
and examples included substances in transit, radioactive substances and waste,
which was covered by other directives. Also,
food and pharmaceuticals were exempt. There was now a single central agency based in
Helsinki
, known as the European Chemicals Agency
(ECHA), which was tasked with supporting REACH implementation across
Europe
and with providing the requisite guidance and
software tools. Pre-registration would
be paperless and could be achieved using one of the database systems such as
REACH-IT or IUCLID 5 and this process would close on 1st December
2008. Mike then went on to give a
description of just what constituted a so-called ‘phase-in’ substance. For substance quantities above 100 tonnes per
annum Evaluation was required and a test programme would be agreed by the ECHA. The ECHA was also responsible for
coordinating the testing and any substances of high concern would require
Authorisation. Examples of such materials included carcinogens, POPs, and
mutagens. There would be a central data
repository and Substance Information Exchange Forums (SEIFs) that would be used
to facilitate data exchange. Safety data
sheets would be used to communicate information down supply chains and some
examples were shown. Within REACH there
were also REACH Implementation projects (RIPs). Mike then went on to outline what substance users must do to comply with
REACH and this included letting manufacturers know of the proposed uses of
their substances and participating in a two-way communication process. BSI was offering training services and help
with GAP analysis, file preparation and the pre-registration process.
The second presentation of the
evening was given by Darren Southee from
Brunel
University
,
who gave a talk on the work of the Cleaner Electronics Research Group. His
presentation was entitled ‘Printed Interconnects, Components and Batteries
using Offset Lithography’. The aim of
the Cleaner Electronics Group was to work towards the reduction of environmental
impacts from electronics products and it had over eleven years of experience in
this area. Darren gave a brief review of
the history of the group and said that much of the work had been centred on use
of the offset lithographic printing process, which is more traditionally used
for printing books and magazines. Early
work had focussed on the printing of silver-based conductive inks to form
conductive tracks and the technique was capable of both high resolution and
high printing speeds, whilst also being low cost. A key initial challenge had been to achieve
low enough sheet resistances to make the inks of practical use in interconnect
applications. Later work had then been focussed
on increasing the conductivity of the silver inks and subsequently on replacing
the silver with copper oxide. Examples
of the circuits produced were shown and these included a working telephone, a
strain gauge and a digital thermometer. More recently, Darren had been investigating the fabrication of voltaic
cells using the conductive lithographic film route. An initial feasibility study funded by the
Innovative Electronics Manufacturing Research Centre (IeMRC) had shown that this
route was indeed possible and zinc-carbon-manganese dioxide type cells had been
successfully demonstrated. Two substrate
materials had been used, namely PolyArt and Melinex and different paste
thicknesses were also evaluated. Peak
currents of 18 mA had been achieved.
Areas for further work were also
identified and these included improving to cell shelf life and peak current
capability. Data was shown illustrating
the wet shelf life improvement that had already been achieved and cells with a
stability of several weeks could now be fabricated. Cell capacities of 10 mA hours had also been
attained. A technique known as
Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy had been used to characterise the cells. This gave an indication of what was
happening inside the cells and example spectra were shown for cells produced at
Brunel and they were compared to spectra from conventional cells. There were
several industrial partners supporting this work including Hallmark, Gwent
Electronic Materials and DuPont. Work
had also been carried out on the manufacture of electroluminescent displays
that could be printed using offset lithography and data was given showing how
the luminance varied with applied voltage. Low power thermochromic displays had also been fabricated. A key part of the presentation was when the
lights were dimmed in the room for the demonstration of a printed
electroluminescent device that was powered by a printed battery!
The final presentation of the
seminar was given by Francesca Stern of BPA Consulting Ltd and was entitled ‘Forecasting
for the PCB Industry’. She began by
outlining why forecasting was needed; essentially, good forecasting enabled
senior company managers to take their businesses in the appropriate
direction. When forecasting for the PCB
industry, it was important to monitor a number of other economic sector growth
factors e.g. the semiconductor industry. Most economic factors tended to show positive growth curves, but quite
often these could also be quite erratic when data was reported on a month by
month basis. Smoothing over a suitable
period such as three, six or twelve months could thus be useful in ironing out
these erratic swings for forecasting. Leading indicators were also useful for analysing the general economic
state of the economy, e.g. house build starts and this type of information was
just one of the many sources that were used to help produce an accurate
industry forecast. BPA had also developed
a methodology for longer-term forecasting which enabled them to produce accurate
sectoral forecasts e.g. for PCBs and computers etc. BPA also had over thirty years of cumulative
data which it could draw on to help produce future forecasts. Some examples of historic forecasting were
given and compared to what happened in reality; the results had generally
turned out to be remarkably accurate. Some of the factors that could upset a forecast were also discussed.
Information such as PCB lead times
was also able to help give a good indication of what was actually happening in
the industry. European PCB price trends
were shown and it was stated that European PCB prices were currently showing a
slight increase, despite the pressure on prices from
China
. European electronic equipment production was
predicted to be flat during 2008 with some resumption of growth occurring in
2009. Towards the end of the
presentation, example road mapping information was also presented including the
‘Flipchip BGA Substrate Technology’ roadmap and this included information on
the likely trends in materials and pitches as well as who was typically using
this technology. Kyocera’s CPCore,
Ibiden’s Filled Via Stacked-up Structure (FVSS) and Endicott Interconnect’s
interconnection technologies were also introduced.
Overall, this seminar provided
the attendees with information on three disparate but important and interesting
subjects that should be of key interest to all those involved in the PCB
industry. The ICT programme of evening
seminars continues throughout the year and more details can be found at the ICT
website. The ICT Annual Symposium will
be held at The Tweed Horizon Centre in Newtown St Boswells,
Melrose
on 3rd June. See http://www.instct.org/events.asp for more details.
Martin Goosey
12th February 2008
L to R Bill Wilkie, Darren Southee, Mike Inman and Francesca Stern
