Printed Circuit Design & Fab Online Magazine - New Products

New Products

SAN JOSE – DEK has released the Horizon 02i, the first of the next generation Instinctiv machines. The printer includes a position-adjustable 15-inch touchscreen LCD of the Micron range to enhance ease of use and rapid operation on the factory floor. Micron-class low friction gullwing machine covers are also now fitted as standard, allowing deployment in clean environments as well as granting easier access to the machine during product changeovers and consumable replenishment.

The Horizon 02i is said to achieve 1.6 Cpk at ±25µm full paste on pad process capability, at12 seconds cycle time. It has a wide board size range, up to 508mm x 508mm, and is fitted with ESD safe transport rails as standard. Other standard features include DEK’s Intelligent Scalable Controller Area Network (ISCAN) technology, which reportedly enhances diagnostics and supports predictive maintenance in conjunction with DEK’s Internet-based support services.

Options include the DEK Gold camera machine vision package, which is said to accelerate fiducial capture and 2D inspection by leveraging wider 8.5mm x 11mm field of view, faster image recognition algorithms and optimized lighting.

ROCHESTER, NY– EMA Design Automation has announced the availability of products and services provided by PCNAlert for component event management, designed to allow customers to receive manufacturers’ part change notices in a timely fashion.

MILPITAS, CA – Lenthor Engineering has updated its Flexible Circuit Design Guide and is releasing the new version through the company Web site.

With more than 1,600 copies of the original release in circulation, Lenthor has updated the technical detail as well as adding colorful and descriptive graphics. The Flexible Circuit Design Guide (6.0) is intended for anyone who wants or needs to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the use, design and fabrication of both flexible and rigid-flexible PCBs.

DURHAM, NC - Valor Computerized Systems Ltd. introduced a new product lifecycle management toolset that supports DFM collaboration between PCB design and engineering teams across global supply chains. According to Valor the tool facilitates communications throughout the electronics design and manufacturing process, resulting in faster product innovation and design-to-manufacturing cycles.

The product release indicates that the tool provides a centralized, scalable platform with secure access to important design information and DFM issues that form part of the product development process. The complete workflow, including design changes, design reviews and final manufacturing sign-off, is intuitively managed, enabling companies to achieve the most manufacturable designs possible.

Julian Coates, executive VP corporate marketing and product development at Valor, said, "Even good accurate DFM results can get caught up in the tangled web of fragmented data and unstructured communication channels, thus hampering efficiency, accuracy and speed. Our new vShare dashboard captures all relevant DFM data in a centralized environment so that all team members can work in real-time with the same, graphically-rich data set. Communications and workflow are streamlined for speed, efficiency and accuracy."

The product uses standard internet browsers within a secure, web-based environment, that allows users to import DFM results from the DFM tools, as well as attach third-party graphical or text objects. The project leader can then filter, group and prioritize issues ready for collaboration. During this phase, members can share ideas or comment on improvements and/or corrections for each issue, or group of issues, up and down the supply chain. Reports can be generated to document critical steps, project status and details, or final approvals, and template-driven instant reports can be used to track progress. The project manager can assign projects, actions or issues to particular individuals, and monitor events until complete sign-off and approval is reached.

AURORA, IL – Vector Fields Inc. has introduced a new variant of Concerto, its advanced RF and microwave design software. ConcertoES offers 3D Finite Difference Time Domain (FDTD) analysis at a lower cost of the full version. It is being introduced with the release of Concerto version 6, which comprises Concerto's advanced 3D geometric modeler and FDTD solver.

ConcertoES can reportedly be easily upgraded to the full-scale version of the design suite. Both versions use the same geometric modeler and model formats remain the same, making it easier to reuse models across the range.

"Reducing the cost of FDTD modeling is a significant step to take,” said Managing Director Kevin Ward. “While the full-scale version is competitively priced, we were aware that not everyone can afford, or needs, all of the advanced capabilities that it provides. That is why we decided to introduce ConcertoES, allowing engineers to pay less for top design performance."

WILSONVILLE, OR – Mentor Graphics Corp. announces a new routing technology package that is reported to combine the knowledge of an engineer, the skill of a board designer and the power of an autorouter. According to Mentor, this topology router combines engineering guidelines and designer intuition to improve the autorouting function by following the engineers’ guidelines for bus topology routing and then automatically mimicking typical CAD designer manual edits to form clean bus structures.
The topology router consists of two applications. The first is a topology planner used by the engineer to plan and optimize the bus system and subsystem interconnects on the PCB. It assists component placement by allowing the engineer to plan logic pathways optimizing performance and layout.

The topology router automatically routes the bus interconnects following the pathways defined by the engineer. The resulting routing has structure and quality comparable to hand routing completed by experienced designers. The benefits according to Mentor include design cycle time reduction. The bus path data generated is stored and can be incrementally modified and reused for future designs.
According to Harry Potts, vice president and general manager of Mentor Graphics’ System Design Division, “…it has been an industry goal to mimic the talents and routing results of an experienced board designer as they follow the guidance of an engineer. By working closely with key customers we have been able to achieve this goal and supply our users with a tool that improves their productivity, quality, performance and manufacturability of the PCB."
The topology router is currently released to selective companies for evaluation and will be generally available in the fourth quarter of 2006.