Printed Circuit Design & Fab Online Magazine - Current

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CRANSTON, RI – Technic Inc. has released CU 2800, an advanced acid copper electroplating process designed specifically for improving leveling of high aspect ratio PCBs at reduced plating times.

Using an innovative, proprietary brightener compound, CU 2800 is said to provide significantly improved throwing power reportedly making it possible for faster plating times.

Technic CU 2800 provides deposit leveling without the use of traditional stress inducing leveling agents. The end result is said to be a fine grain deposit exceeding the performance requirements of the most advanced PCB structures.

All Technic CU 2800 components are fully analyzable using Technic’s Electrochemical Bath Analyzer as well as other established quantitative methods.

MUNICH, Germany and WESTFORD, MA – Zuken has announced the availability of free footprint data for Altera Corp.’s recently announced low-cost Cyclone III FPGA family. Zuken’s CR-5000 enterprise wide design solution users can download the Cyclone III footprint design templates, eliminating the task of manually entering footprint data into their CR-5000 libraries.

“At Zuken we see it as an important objective to do everything we can to facilitate the adoption of new technology for our customers,” said Werner Rissiek, Zuken general manager of Engineering, Europe. “Through our partnership with Altera, we are continuing to provide the integration needed within the electronics industry for our customers to remain competitive in the marketplace.”

The Cyclone III family is Altera's third-generation of low-cost FPGAs offering lower power with greater logic, memory and multiplier densities than previous generations. The availability of the footprint data as a free download from Zuken is another means to enable the efficient adoption of this new technology.

Free downloads are available for Zuken customers with a LinkZ login. Visit www.zuken.com/linkz

SYDNEY, Australia – Altium Ltd. announced the addition of new productivity-enhancing features for its Altium Designer unified electronics development system to assist engineers with handling high-speed design issues.

Altium Designer 6’s intelligent interactive routing system has been enhanced with the addition of a new interactive length-tuning tool specifically for high-speed designs. This new feature reportedly allows designers to quickly optimize and control net lengths by inserting “accordion” segments into a track. Tuning can be manual or rules-driven, and designers can select from several available amplitude styles. This feature is said to combine seamlessly with impedance-controlled, differential pair and multi-trace routing capabilities to give Altium Designer users a comprehensive interactive solution tuned for high-speed, high-density board design projects.

Enhanced control and display over PCB layers will reportedly have more efficient enhanced productivity when moving around large complex designs. The placement and editing of polygons has been streamlined to make the creation of large copper-filled areas fast and intuitive. Improvements have also been made to the way components and libraries are identified and used within the system to deliver greater levels of user control and flexibility. Creating and delivering output for designs that contain embedded board arrays has been improved with added intelligence for identifying layer stackup violations. In addition, enhanced output dialogs for Gerber and ODB++ now reportedly make it even easier for users to make decisions about whether to proceed with output or resolve compatibility violations.

MAHWAH, NJ – MH&W International has released Keratherm 86/77 for providing electrically conductive bonding sites on a flexible, thermally conductive material that can be attached to non-linear, heat spreading structures. Uses include the mounting of LEDs and other hot components on curved surfaces where FR-4, metal clad PCBs (MCPCBs) and other rigid materials can’t be used. It also replaces thicker, heavier PCBs where size and weight are restricted, such as in portable electronics.

Keratherm 86/77 is a flexible thermal circuit (FTC) that consists of a thin layer of etchable copper bonded to a highly thermally conductive silicone film. The material can be applied to curved and irregular heat spreading surfaces with peel-and-stick attachment. The material allows LED arrays to be placed along stairs and railings, inside headlights, across display cases and other locations where LED usage requires both attachment and thermal management.

The copper layer can be etched into a wide variety of circuit pathways. The conformable material ranges from 0.16 to 0.326 mm thick and can be secured with thermally conductive adhesive. Thermal transfer performance is superior to that of flexible circuits made from PI, PET and PEN films.

A single 86/77 flexible circuit can replace multiple boards, eliminating jumpers and connectors. Different copper thicknesses are available for specific power requirements. Kertherm 86/77 does not contain hazardous materials.

MONTREAL, Quebec, Canada – Cimmetry Systems has introduced AutoVue 3D Pro SME, the latest addition to Cimmetry's AutoVue family of visualization solutions, targeting the small and medium sized enterprise (SME) market.

According to a news release, strong demand for Cimmetry's native viewing technology has created the need to recognize the special requirements of small and medium sized enterprises and their tendency to work with the lower priced, mid-range 3D CAD packages. AutoVue 3D Pro SME is said to provide users of mid-range 3D CAD packages, such as SolidWorks, Autodesk Inventor, AutoCAD Mechanical and Solid Edge, with the freedom to choose their authoring tools and still work with different mid-range 3D formats from partners, customers or suppliers.

AutoVue 3D Pro SME reportedly features powerful native document viewing, markup, printing, stamping and collaboration capabilities for the leading mid-range 3D CAD packages, as well as leading 2D CAD tools, providing users with the ability to quickly view documents without requiring authoring applications or undergoing costly and error prone file conversions with publishing systems.

Customers that require the ability to view the higher-end 3D CAD packages, such as CATIA, NX or Pro/Engineer, may upgrade to the AutoVue SolidModel Pro product.

AUSTIN, TX – National Instruments Electronics Workbench Group has released Multisim 10.0 and Ultiboard 10.0, the latest versions of its interactive SPICE simulation and circuit analysis software used for schematic capture, interactive simulation, board layout and integrated testing. This platform reportedly extends the flexibility of virtual instrumentation to the electronics designer's benchtop, bridging the gap between test and design functions.

Engineers can use Multisim 10.0 to interactively build circuit schematics and simulate circuit behavior. According to NI, Multisim abstracts the complexity of SPICE simulation so the engineer does not need in-depth SPICE expertise to quickly capture, simulate and analyze new designs, making it especially useful in education.

Multisim 10.0 and Ultiboard 10.0 are said to introduce a large number of design features with a focus on advanced simulation tools, an enhanced component database and an expanded user community. The component database includes more than 1,200 new components and more than 500 new SPICE models. Additional enhancements include a Convergence Assistant that automatically adjusts SPICE parameters to correct simulation errors, enhanced data visualization and analyses, including a new current probe instrument and updated static probes for differential measurements.

Multisim 10.0 can be purchased as a complete, integrated design and test platform that includes Ultiboard 10.0 and National Instruments LabVIEW SignalExpress, the interactive measurement software that improves productivity by controlling all instruments on a benchtop. Multisim 10.0 is currently shipped in English; localized German and Japanese versions will be available in mid-2007.