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Solder Metal Prices Skyrocket, Especially Silver

Folks, Many people have been infatuated by the price of gold in recent months, but the price of silver has also skyrocketed.In 2000 silver was about $3.00 per troy oz.In the eight years that

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Moving from Silver Epoxy to Solder in Power Semiconductor Packaging

At the time of writing, the price of silver (Ag) was approaching the USD$50/tr.oz. (Troy ounce) level, and threatening to go higher. With 1 Troy ounce being 31.1grams, this makes the cost ofpure

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Crucible Filling for Thermal Evaporation

I have been further examining material optimization for thermal evaporation to prepare an upcoming poster session at the Society of Vacuum Coaters (SVC) Technical Conference next week. (Session 5 on

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B2B Crisis Marcom: 12 Critical Principles

If you've been in business to business marketing communications for any length of time you've heard parts of this. If you are a newbie, this might freak you out. Trust me on this one:

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Solder Preforms in a Hurry

I recently visited a customer that was doing a lot of hand soldering. I always marvel at the variety of techniques and processes that are developed in an attempt to reduce variability and increase

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PODCAST: Chrysler’s Errant Tweet, B2B Marcom Spending Rising, LinkedIn Crowd Sourcing

Listen up! Ijust participated in a podcast that covers some meaningful B2BMarketing Communications topics. Click the image †’ to listen. Topics covered include: LinkedIn launches

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B2B Marketing Communications Can Be FUN Once In A While

Here's an example of a hot new B2C video, being shown on Air New Zealand flights. It features fitness guruRichard Simmons, up to his usual antics. The same old message delivered in a captivating,

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Process Optimization

Folks, It was Wednesday evening and I had just finished a brief pitch on applications of SPC to a group of twenty.I was followed by Jim Hall, he spoke of process mapping using

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B2B Marketing Communications (Marcom) Needs New Job Descriptions

An analogy. Follow me on this one. RESIDENCE"A": This Saskatchewan sod house was built in 1907 with the tools and technology of the day – for that region. The people did what they

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Teardown of iPad 2

Folks, HIS iSuppli performed a teardown analysis of an iPad .They estimate that the cost of the bill of materials(BOM)is $336.60 for a GSM 32 GB version. Observing the BOM is interesting.Many of us

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Tin Whiskers found in NASA Study of Toyota Unintended Acceleration Issue

Folks, Many peopleresponded to my recent post, In Search of Tin Whisker Fails in Lead-Free Soldering. A few pointed out thatthe recent NASA report on the Toyota Unintended Acceleration Issuediscussed

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MD&M Show in Orlando

The week of March 14th Indium Corporation will be exhibiting at the MD&M (Medical Design &Manufacturing) show in Orlando, Florida. Actually it is one of many MD&M shows held throughout

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Partners in Photovoltaic Solar Cell Interconnection Standardization

I’ve been told that sometimes a good headline will include two things that seem to disagree. Using that logic, I’d say “cell interconnection” and “standardization”

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What is the best way to solder to Nitinol?

Nitinol (a nickel titanium alloy) has become a very important material, especially in the medical world. It is often necessary to "attach" Nitinol to another piece of Nitinol or some other

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Maybe THE BEST Blog Post of My B2B Marcom Career (totally copied)

Being good at anything includes recognizing greatness. In this case, Ijust read an awesome post (thanks to @PaigeGroup) about design – which can be applied to B2BMarcom. Please COMMENT if you

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In Search of Tin Whisker Fails in Lead-Free Soldering

Folks, In a recent post, I shared my perspective on the pluses, minuses and neutral aspects of lead-free solder assembly.In the minus category, I listed tin whiskers.A few people commented that tin

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The Development of the Combined Tabber / Stringer – An Interview with Pat Gallagher

It was a pleasure interviewing Pat Gallagher, who developed the first automated photovoltaic solar cell tabbing and stringing machine back in 1979. (Before I was even born!) Pat has seen the tabbing

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Lead-Free Soldering: Pluses and Minuses

Folks, I thought I would take a stab at listing the minuses, pluses, and “it’s a wash” aspects of assembling with lead-free (LF) solder.Here are my first thoughts.Please tell me

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ITO (Indium-Tin Oxide) Sputtering Target Reclaim/Recycling

ITO is one of the materials that makes the magic of flat panel displays (monitors, TVs, etc.) possible. When sputtered on in a thin layer, it acts as a transparent conductive film. However, the

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Status of Lead-Free Solder Joint Reliability in Thermal Cycle Testing

Folks, Back in October, I posted comments on lead-free reliability. In this post, I mentioned that I chaired a session at SMTAI on “Alternate Alloys”.At this session, Greg Henshall

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Electromigration (EM) and Electrochemical Migration (ECM)

I was asked this week to contribute to the upcoming IPC handbook (IPC-CH-65 HDBK) on the section on contamination and its effects on printed wiring assemblies (PWA’s). There is a clear crossover of

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