MINNEAPOLIS -- HEI Inc. today announced first-quarter sales fell 3% to $8.9 million, but the company reversed last year's net loss.
For the period ended April 4, the net income was $268,000, up from a net loss of $440,000 for the same period last year.
The company credited improvements over the past two years at its plants. HEI manufactures flex and rigid-flex PCBs in its Tempe, AZ facility.
HEI CEO Mark B. Thomas said, "The current economic conditions are having an impact on the demand for our customer's products along with substantial pricing pressures for the products that we build."
CHANDLER, AZ -- ISOLA GROUP has entered into a non-exclusive license agreement with Sanmina – SCI allowing practice under US Patent Nos. 5,350,621 and 5,464,658, covering the use of square weave fabric materials.
“We believe that the adoption of Isola square weave technology provides a competitive advantage to Sanmina-SCI PCB Division because it allows increased design flexibility by providing improved registration and reliability to high performance applications,” stated George Dudnikov, CTO of Sanmina-SCI’s PCB Division.
Sanmina is the first PCB fabricator to license this technology.
TAIPEI, TAIWAN – Unitech, no. 32 in the NTI top 100, expects a 20% sequential revenue increase in Q2 according to Cheng-Hung Hsu, general manager, as reported by Digitimes. Hsu forecasted overall global PCB production value would drop 20% for the year.
Company chairman Pen-Tsao Chang commented on Unitech’s HDI board production, indicating production of 4+n+4 products has begun in the Taiwan plant and pre-production of 3+n+3 products has started in the China, according to Digitimes.
In May Unitech began manufacturing 1+n+1 HDI boards for CULV notebooks and is supplying products combining HDI and rigid-flex PCBs for smartphone applications.
TAIPEI, TAIWAN – HannStar Board Corp. plans to expand production capacity for HDI boards. The company will invest NT$1 billion (US$29.4 million) to increase monthly output from 100,000 square meters to 250,000 square meters.
OGAKI, JAPAN – Ibiden Co. has received Texas Instruments’ (TI) Supplier Excellence Award (SEA). Recipients are nominated from TI’s worldwide supplier base of over 14,000 companies. They are evaluated on several criteria including cost, environmental responsibility, quality assurance, responsiveness and technology. Ibiden is one of the top PCB fabricators, this is the third time the company has been awarded the SEA.
VIENNA, AUSTRIA – Werner Engelmaier received the TGM-Exner-Medal from the Technologisches Gewerbe Museum and the Austrian government. Engelmaier received the medal in recognition of his accomplishments in electronic packaging and interconnection technology during his nearly 25 years at Bell Telephone Laboratories and 20 years as an industry consultant. He is the president of Engelmaier Associates L.C. in Ormond Beach, Florida.
