Contact: Dan Green 847-790-5371 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE IPC FLEXES EDUCATIONAL MUSCLE AT FLEX CONFERENCE Northbrook, IL 05/18/99 Workshops and a two-day tabletop exhibit have been added to the agenda for IPC's Fifth Annual National Conference on Flexible Circuits. Taking place June 8-10, 1999, at the Holiday Inn Denver International Airport in Denver, Colorado, this event provides an unparalleled educational opportunity for anyone using, designing or manufacturing flexible circuits. Three workshops are being held from 8:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. on Tuesday, June 8. Bill Jacobi, Jacobi and Associates, and Thomas Stearns, Brander International Consultants, will give those not familiar with flexible technology an opportunity to learn the basics in their course, Flex Circuit Fundamentals. Russel Griffith, Tyco Printed Circuit Group, will present the electrical, mechanical and material properties of flex that designers need to understand in his session, Principles of Flex Circuit Design. In Flex as and Advanced Packaging Medium, industry leaders Ken Gilleo, Poly-Flex Circuits, and Joe Fjelstad, Tessera, cover the special characteristics of flex when used with chip scale, BGA and flip chip packages. The two-day conference begins on Tuesday, June 9, with a keynote presentation by Walt Hinton, chief strategist for Storage Technology. This year's conference focuses on laser processing technologies that are used to create extremely fine features and small diameter blind and buried vias. Also being featured are new material constructions that provide reliable, low-cost substrates. "Laser is a major player, not only in microvia formation, but also in other areas of high density flexible circuit manufacturing," says John Riley, IPC educational director. "The technologies being discussed at this conference will be commonplace in the industry in the next few years." The following presentations highlight the nearly 25 that will be made during the two-day conference: * Fine Pitch Flex for Medical Applications, Bill Burdick, GE Corporation Research - GE has developed a fine pitch flex interconnect technology, utilizing micro-vias for GE, military and commercial applications. Relative to fine pitch flex interconnect, Burdick will review this technology. * Highly Dimensional Stable Polyimide film APICAL(tm) HP and its Applications, Hiroyuki Furutani, Kaneka Corporation - Plasma display and multi-layer PWB applications rely on the development of precise circuits with high-dimensiopnal stability and heat resistance. APICAL(tm) HP has been successfully developed as the appropriate base film for this trend, and in his presentation, Furutani will discuss the properties of APICAL(tm) HP. * Laser Beam Drilling of Flexible Circuits Based on Polysiloxane, Sabine Kellerman, Bavarian Laser Center Ltd. - Polysiloxane foils are a new dielectric material with a high usage temperature as well as a high thermal conductivity for flexible circuits. In this presentation, Kellerman will explain how different sensors are used to detect reflected Nd:YAG laser light (directed or scattered) and the plasma plume can lead to an increase in process reliability and an optimization of processed time. Attendees at this year's conference are also going to have the opportunity to give their feedback on a recently released industry standard. Some concerns have been raised about tables used in IPC-6013, Qualification and Performance Specification for Flexible Printed Boards and its recently published appendix. IPC wants industry feedback to help decide what steps should be taken to improve IPC-6013. For information on attending IPC's 5th Annual National Conference on Flexible Circuits, contact John Riley at (847) 790-5308, e-mail [log in to unmask], or visit www.ipc.org. IPC is a US-based trade association dedicated to the competitive excellence and financial success of its nearly 2,600 member companies which represent all facets of the electronic interconnection industry, including design, printed wiring board manufacturing and electronics assembly. As a member-driven organization and leading source for industry standards, training, market research and public policy advocacy, IPC supports programs to meet the needs of a $26 billion US industry employing more than 250,000 people. ################################################################ TechNet E-Mail Forum provided as a free service by IPC using LISTSERV 1.8c ################################################################ To subscribe/unsubscribe, send a message to [log in to unmask] with following text in the body: To subscribe: SUBSCRIBE TechNet <your full name> To unsubscribe: SIGNOFF TechNet ################################################################ Please visit IPC's web site (http://www.ipc.org) "On-Line Services" section for additional information. For technical support contact Hugo Scaramuzza at [log in to unmask] or 847-509-9700 ext.312 ################################################################