Just as Cinderella’s 12:00 deadline turned her coach into a pumpkin in the famed children’s fairy tale, at midnight on June 30th all electronics manufacturing will magically transform to lead–free. Well, not quite.

You’ve heard it before: "revolutionary", "one of a kind", "ground–breaking". All of these terms are frequently used to describe new technologies introduced to the marketplace.  

When the electronics industry first began to discuss the mandatory move to lead–free manufacturing, it was widely believed that the transition would also enable more reliable solder joints.

Few technologies have recently received as much attention as RFID (Radio Frequency IDentification).

In this study, all the exemptions proposed by the electronic industry are reported, all the official exemptions granted by the EU Commissioner are stated, and all the exemptions voted ‘YES’ by the EU TAC but not officially published in the OJ of EU are presented.

Although the United States has been slow to respond, conversion is inevitable, including in high reliability applications. 

With fine pitch assemblies, the accuracy and repeatability of the pick & place equipment become more critical to achieving an acceptable process yield.

The iNEMI Fiber Connector End–Face Inspection Project conducted research to quantify the correlation between fiber optic connector cleanliness and optical performance, with the goal of developing industry–standard criteria.

The industry is expecting that IC package developers will furnish innovative solutions to expand functionality and assure higher performance with each new generation of product offering.
 

Due to the higher melting point of lead–free Sn–Ag–Cu alloy, higher reflow soldering temperatures are required for lead–free PCB assembly. 

Development of an innovative chip technology is not all that is needed to achieve successful market positioning of new products.

The trend of increasing complication in the rework arena continues.

Consumer devices are driving a significant portion of today’s electronics industry growth.

The electronics industry’s transition to lead–free soldering has been characterised by misapprehensions.

When the solder iron pulls away, a solder spike is formed. There is, of course, more to it than that, as my experiments involving flux activity show.

Jetting adhesives for electronics and semiconductor packaging has provided enabling technology for high–throughput underfilling, small fillets and other applications for small, discrete amounts of material used in packaging. 

Printing of electronics is an escape route opening up for some in the troubled printing industry.