Sept 2011 Vol. 2, Iss. 44

Dear Subscriber: 

Recently my daughter received her license to drive a vehicle in the state of Illinois. It was an exciting time for her as well as a great time to test my patience as an instructor as we parked and reparked the car hundreds of times. She also passed the "dad test" by demonstrating the ability to change a tire and "jump" a dead battery and check and fill all the important liquids. I will savor these times. 

Thanks for all of the attendees at the recent IPC Midwest who attended our hands-on session on reballing techniques, rework of BTCs and high lead count devices.

A big thank you is also in order for all of the attendees who asked lots of questions making the sold out BEST SMT Printing Symposium a success. Thanks for all of the out of town subject matter experts! The video will be available soon.  

We look forward to being with you at the following events:

SMTAI (See invite below) Dallas October 17

SMTAI Invite 2011 Advanced Rework

IPC Online webinar on "Rework of High Thermal Mass Boards" is scheduled for December 13th. 

Hope to see or hear from you at one of these events!

Bob Wettermann
President, BEST Inc.

Based on demand from its customers, BEST now offers 2 ways to get PRACTICAL certification and training of your inspectors

A. All IPC-A-610 certifications from BEST now feature an add-on BEST module for the inspection of PCB assemblies. All IPCA-610 candidates, whether CIT or CIS, will be given boards with induced defects to review. If the candidate passes this time-sensitive testing satisfactorily then a BEST certificate will be issued.

B. A one day inspector review from BEST can augment existing in-house training as inspectors will gain insite on how to inspect boards, what defects to look for. Time will be spent Xraying both BTCs and BGAs in order to learn to pick out defects. Students should already know the IPC-A-610 specification.  

This is a practical way to test your inspector/s and develop new strategies for visual inspection to increase outgoing QC levels. 

Call Katy Radcliff at (847) 797-9250 to discuss details.  

Jelly Battery-Future Brings Greater Safety? 

Researcher have what they describe as a jelly which replaces the volatile and hazardous liquid electrolyte currently used in most lithium batteries.The newly developed jelly batteries should prevent "thermal runaway", during which batteries can reach hundreds of degrees and catch fire.

The scientists are promoting that their jelly batteries are as safe as polymer batteries, perform like liquid-filled batteries, but are only 20%

of their cost. 

The secret to this breakthrough lies in its blending of a rubber-like polymer with a conductive, liquid electrolyte into a thin, flexible film of gel that sits between the battery electrodes.

Electronics manufacturers such as Apple got around the safety problem for their lightweight laptops with a solid polymer electrolyte, but in doing so, the power output was negatively impacted.

"The polymer gel looks like a solid film, but it actually contains about 70% liquid electrolyte," explained the study's lead author, Professor Ian Ward from the University of Leeds.