Two more book reviews which may be of interest to the Industry people

Modern Soldering Technology for Competitive Electronics Manufacturing
By Jennie Hwang
McGraw Hill

I was not totally happy with Jennie Hwang's last book on BGA and Fine Pitch but
the competition and the comparison with John Lau's BGA book was inevitable. This
text book provided some very useful information and is well worth the investment
as it covers a wide range of manufacturing issues. Areas covered include Surface
mount and direct dia attachment, soldering materials, soldering chemistry, BGA
and others. I found the section on solders, their properties and microstructure
very useful and revealing as an animator metallurgist. The many microsection
examples are a superb reference source for today and future reference. A further
useful section is the complete list of figures and tables which makes it easy to
scan through for a specific reference or example.

To date I have not used any IR temperature scanning techniques for examining
board temperature on reflow soldering. After reading a small section on the
technique I look forward to using this method to look at cooling rates on
surface mount assemblies. The temperature images produced can be revealing and
have some advantages over profiling. Unfortunately the equipment for this method
of measurement is not cheap. 

This new text book will probably be used in her workshop and PAC sessions at
Nepcon in future years and will be a great course manual. I don't see Jennie
being able to cover the whole content of the book in a week let a lone a day
session.

Rigid PCB Industry - Purchasing Intelligence Report
The ASM Group

This is the first time I have been sent this report for review. ASM reports
cover PCB supplier and market sector information, two additional reports cover
the Capacitor and Crystal Oscillator markets in the Far East. Having recently
started writing a manufacturing column in Asia Electronics Manufacture the
material has now become available and make interesting reading. The printed
board report is the first which would be of most value to engineering,
purchasing, design departments and competing PCB suppliers.

Each of the reports provides an industry overview, Industry analysis and then
company profile of each of the Asian country. The industry analysis is broken
down by county. For example Taiwan has over 200 printed board manufactures. One
of the main suppliers Compeg is increasing its capacity from 42,000 sqm to
60,000 by the year end (1995). On comparison the Taiwan price is shown to be 15%
below prices for comparable product in Korea, Japan and The USA. Similar
information is provide on each country.

Finally, contained in the back of the report is a company profile listing  77
companies their annual revenue, contacts and details for each of the companies.
Information is also given on output and product specifications and capability.  

An interesting report which was produced during mid 1995 and will be of value to
many engineers.



Bob Willis
Electronic Presentation Services
2 Fourth Avenue, Chelmsford, Essex CM1 4HA. England.
Tel: (44) 01245 351502
Fax: (44) 01245 496123
Home Page: http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/bwillis
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