The second annual Global Technology Awards were held at Assembly Technology Expo and were a great success. A team of international judges presided over the contest to select the best new product innovations introduced between July 2005 and July 2006.

The result was a celebration of some extremely innovative technology that deserves the description “the best in the world”. Below is a brief description of each category winner and the products submitted.

Adhesives/Coatings/Encapsulants

Henkel - Loctite® 3549 CSP Underfill
Loctite® 3549 is a high flow, lead-free compatible underfill formulated specifically for use with today’s advanced CSP and BGA packages. The innovative material is designed to quickly fill the space beneath the CSP and BGA packages and cures rapidly at low temperature, which minimizes thermal stress to other components on the printed circuit board (PCB) and allows for in-line curing to increase device throughput. www.henkel.com

Assembly Tools (there was a tie in this category)

Europlacer - Solder Ball Feeder
Europlacer’s new solder ball feeders provide a low-cost solution for solder ball assembly. By using exclusively licensed patent-protected techniques developed in conjunction with Novatec France, the innovative feeders enable reliable assembly of solder balls as part of the standard surface mount pick-and-place process. www.europlacer.com

Transition Automation - Permalex Paste Manager Self-Cleaning Squeegee System
Transition Automation Inc. introduces Permalex Paste Manager, an exciting and innovative self-cleaning squeegee system that offers an improvement to SMT printing lines. This new active wiper system is integrated directly into the squeegee holder and is designed to exceed the industry challenge of eliminating the conundrum associated with solder paste sticking to squeegees. www.transitionautomation.com

Bonding Equipment

Finetech - FINEPLACER® Pico AMA
FINEPLACER® Pico AMA is an innovative automatic micro assembler that offers users extreme modularity and flexibility. Because the system is based on a modular platform, it offers a high range of flexibility and can be applied to a wide application range. Additionally, the ability to upgrade and retrofit provides significant cost benefits to users ? it provides an “all in one” cost-saving solution. www.finetech.de

Cleaning Equipment

Aqueous Technologies - Self-cleaning Wash Tank
The self-cleaning wash tank has been designed with no horizontal floor surfaces, preventing solder paste from building up on the tank’s floor. Additionally, it is equipped with multiple funnels mounted on the tank’s floor. The end of the funnels feeds into a small diameter metal tube. Water is pumped through the tube at the rate of 15 ft per second, briskly sweeping solder paste into a specially designed filter housing where the solder paste is captured. Aqueous Technologies is a two-time winner, having taken home the award for cleaning equipment in 2005 as well. www.aqueoustech.com

Cleaning Materials

Kyzen - MX2188 Cleaning Material
Micronox MX2188 Low COD Aqueous Precision Cleaner is an innovative, powerful aqueous cleaning solution, designed to meet the latest challenges of lead-free, water-soluble fluxes while meeting RoHS and environmental constraints. The cleaner is intended for use at very low concentrations while cleaning tight pitch and low standoff devices. Whether batch, in-line or immersion, MX 2188 is perfect to meet the industry challenge of meeting cleaning needs with minimal environmental impact and low cost of ownership.. www.kyzen.com

Components

Autosplice - Solderball Pin Technology
Solderball Pin technology employs a highly conductive copper pin that incorporates a solder ball on the end that interfaces to the host PCB. Solderball pins add two important attributes to final assembly by providing additional solder and allowing the sub-assembly to drop slightly when the solder becomes liquid. This drop occurs when the weight of the module overcomes the buoyancy of the molten solder. It is made possible by the fact that the bottom end of the pin extends only part way into the solder ball. www.autosplice.com

Contract Services

WKK Technology
WKK Technology Ltd. (WKKT) is the manufacturing arm of the WKK (Holdings) Ltd. (WKK). Since it was founded in 1986, WKKT has grown to more than $218 million in sales for 2003. The company currently has a staff over 3,800 people worldwide. WKK has been named the 23rd largest Electronic Manufacturing Services (EMS) company
worldwide. WKK Technology is a two-time winner, having taken home the award for contract services in 2005 as well. www.wkkintl.com

Dispensing Equipment

Asymtek - AxiomTM X-1022 Dual-Lane Dispensing System
The Axiom X-1022 is a high-volume dual-lane dispensing system for multi-pass or large-die underfill operations, or applications with long pre-heat cycles. Equipped with Asymtek’s patented jetting technology, common problems associated with conventional needle dispensing are virtually eliminated (bent needles, chipped die, dripping). The X-1022 surpasses the wet dispense speed, accuracy, and throughput capabilities of other systems. Asymtek is a two-time winner, having taken home the award for dispensing equipment in 2005 as well. www.asymtek.com

Environmentally friendly products/services

Kester - Ultrapure® K100LD Lead-Free Bar
Kester’s UltraPure® K100LD is an innovative lead-free bar solder alloy for the electronics industry. K100LD is a patent-pending, low-cost alternative to traditional silver-bearing lead-free alloys. Unlike many other lead-free alloys on the market, K100LD is a silver-free alloy primarily containing tin and copper with the inclusion of two metallic dopants to control the grain structure and the Copper dissolution rate. The lack of Silver holds the material cost to an absolute minimum for lead-free soldering. The lack of lead and silver in K100LD makes this product the most environmentally responsible bar solder alloy available. www.kester.com

Hand Soldering – Rework & Repair

Cookson - ALPHA® CoolCap™/CoolShield™ Thermal Management Devices
Tightly packed, high pin-count integrated circuits (ICs) are a considerable concern, often limiting the ability of process engineers to develop successful methods to replace ICs without disturbing the surrounding circuitry. To address this requirement, Cookson Electronics has introduced the ALPHA® CoolCapTM and CoolShieldTM devices, specifically designed to protect adjacent components from excessive heat proximal to a thermal rework event. CoolCapsTM completely cover adjacent ICs near the rework site, and keep the protected device’s solder joints up to 60°C cooler than the nearby thermal event. The thermal protection provided by CoolCapTM technology ensures that the solder connections of adjacent devices do not experience secondary reflow, thus maintaining their electrical and mechanical integrity. CoolCapTM devices are available for most popular BGA and QFP devices. www.cooksonelectronics.com

ID Systems

Tyco Automation Electronics Group - Reel-to-Reel RFID Assembly System Line
Tyco Electronics introduces a new, innovative line of reel-to-reel RFID systems. This RFID line is an updated industry first ? it is the only RFID product to feature an entire line of systems. The system features many characteristics, including throughput up to 9,000 cph, a full 20" wide Web process capability, 12 ?m placement repeatability ? 3 Sigma and much more. In addition, user benefits are high ? the system offers either passive or active designs, direct die pick from wafers down to 0.008", and positive displacement dispense technology. The next-generation Reel-to-Reel RFID Assembly System now features a completely modular construction, allowing for unlimited future capacity expansion. It is fully capable of placing ancillary components such as batteries, and it also is capable of tape-and-reel die placement. The Line meets the industry challenge of providing high-quality RFID technology at a cost that is beneficial to users. Additionally, it results in a creative application of technology ? The RFID Line combines existing Tyco systems into a new unique configuration in order to produce the most advanced and high-performance RFID tags. Tyco Automation Electronics is a two-time winner, having taken home the award for ID systems in 2005 as well. automation.tycoelectronics.com

Inspection - AOI Systems

CyberOptics - Flex ULTRA Automated Optical Inspection System
The Flex Ultra automatic system delivers advanced detection with faster speeds and higher resolution, increasing overall product quality and providing consistency of performance. Featuring unique technology that yields robust defect detection, high measurement accuracy and inherently low false-call rates, the Flex Ultra can meet users’ PCB assembly inspection needs ? from defect screening to process monitoring ? in one low-cost system. Regardless how the system is used, it will help increase yields, reduce scrap and decrease field returns, providing users with exceptional cost benefits and return on investment. www.cyberoptics.com

Inspection - X-ray

Phoenix X-Ray - nanotom®
In February 2006, phoenix|x-ray® completed the development of the revolutionary computed tomography (CT) system nanotom®. This very compact system allows to analyze samples of diameters up to 120 mm (4.7 inches) and weight up to 1 kg (2.2 pounds) with the exceptional voxel-resolution of <500 nm (0,5 microns). The CT system consists of a granite based CT-construction and a special digital detector wit 5 Megapixels. It is the first 160 kV nanoCT® system worldwide which is tailored completely to highest-resolution applications in electronics and material sciences.
The new CT-software datos|x of phoenix|x-ray® offers an easy operation and requires only minimal training. www.phoenix-xray.com

Placement equipment

Siemens AG - SIPLACE D-Series Placement Platform
The new SIPLACE D-series platform features a combination of innovative technology coupled with innovative value. It covers standard and high-performance needs of electronics manufacturers equally. Based on a standardized platform, the SIPLACE D-series masters any speed and flexibility requirements with its compatibility and configuration options. If necessary, production lines can be easily expanded. Depending on the combination of gantries and heads required, four different versions are available. Siemens AG is a two-time winner, having taken home the award for software in 2005. www.siemens.com

Printing Equipment

ICON - i8 Fully Automatic Screen Printer
ICON Technologies’ Icon i8 is innovative because it represents something of an industry first. Setting the benchmark for assemblers seeking the lowest cost of ownership, Icon i8 delivers superior performance and value, coupled with everything else expected from a high-level printing platform but with a must more cost beneficial price. Wielding exceptionally high throughput and immense flexibility, Icon i8 has been specifically developed to meet the precise industry challenges of the fast-paced Asian electronics market. www.iconprinter.com

Programming

BPM Microsystems - Helix Programming System
The Helix system is innovative and able to meet the industry challenge of providing the quality of automated device handling less expensively because it offers tubed parts input and output as well as up to eight sockets for device programming. The operational sequence of the machine is to pick the part from the tube, transfer to the programming socket, program the part and return to the programmed tube. The precision tooling head requires no vision system for handling fine-pitched parts and features an overall throughput of 800 devices per hour, providing increased speed and throughput rates. At the heart of this automated programming system are two BP Microsystems Enhanced 7th generation sites with FX4 socket capability. Easy to use and implement, the integrated motors open and close programming sites in synchronization with the placement and retrieval of parts. BPM Microsystems is a two-time winner, having taken home the award for programming in 2005 as well. www.bpmmicro.com

Software

Dek - Instinctiv
Re-defining the ergonomics of machine user interfaces, Instinctiv uses Human Factors techniques such as those most commonly found in virtual reality technologies to display complex machine and process data in an easily accessible format. Coupled with advanced graphical techniques, Instinctiv also employs TimeToGo real-time indications of consumables levels, enhancing operator information by displaying remaining paste, paper and solvent levels and time before replenishment. Extensive on-board help and error recovery means that operators using Instinctiv can maximise uptime, achieve higher productivity with less training while assessing and optimising complex processes. www.dek.com

Soldering equipment

Soldering Materials

Indium Corporation - Indium5.1AT No-Clean Pb-Free Solder Paste
Via-in-pad technology for BGA components has reduced PCB real estate requirements, but this can also lead to significantly increased voiding. Indium5.1AT delivers voiding in the 5% range when soldering BGAs with via-in-pad technology – much better than the next-best competitive product. Longer soak-type reflow profiles can help reduce via-in-pad voiding, but that can contribute to poor wetting, solder balling, and shorts. Indium5.1AT can be optimized based on all these potential defects, as well as on board size, board density, and throughput requirements, not just voiding. Indium is a two-time winner, having taken home the award for soldering materials in 2005 as well. www.indium.com

Test Equipment