Magazine Articles

The Soldering Corner with Shantanu Joshi of KOKI The Soldering Corner provides expert recommendations to common soldering problems and new industry trends. Actionable solutions are based on everyday experiences with hundreds of electronics assemblers. Problem: Eliminate Non-wetting and De-wetting De-wetting…

By Bjorn Dahle, President, KIC Whether we hype it and call it artificial intelligence (AI) or the more modest “machine optimization,” reflow oven optimization software is a great example of a smart machine. A reflow oven is a complex machine…

by Vitor Barros, KIC, General Manager Europe The theory is simple: Process electronics assemblies in spec every time and you will end up with a quality product. In practice, this is more difficult for numerous reasons, including normal and abnormal…

By Bjorn Dahle, President, KIC There is much talk these days about the need for factories to transform themselves into smart factories that use intelligent machines to build intelligent products, all interconnected via the Internet of Things (IoT). That is…

Bjorn Dahle, President, KIC With a level playing field in terms of access to talent, technology, knowhow, infrastructure, and financial resources, how can an EMS company build a successful business year after year, decade after decade? There may not be…

MB Allen, Product Manager, KIC A clear industry trend now spreading beyond the traditional North American and European markets is characterized by short production runs and frequent production line changeover. Improved technologies for line balancing, production planning, smart feeders, MES…

by SMT Today Editor February 2016 ZF TRW is a primary developer and producer of active and passive safety systems and serves all major vehicle manufacturers worldwide with an established footprint that includes facilities in more than 20 countries. It…

by Bjorn Dahle, President, KIC The electronics assembly industry is constantly evolving to manufacture requested quality while driving down cost. One area of recent focus is perhaps one of the last manual tasks in the production line, namely thermal profiling.…

By Bjorn Dahle, President, KIC Many printed-circuit-board production lines working in surface-mount-technology (SMT) markets in the US and Europe can be described as high-mix, low-to-medium volume lines. Many of these lines experience more downtime than production time, creating a serious…

By Bjorn Dahle, President, KIC, San Diego, CA In a world of more and more data, we need to choose what to monitor. Do we focus monitoring around a particular machine or do we monitor a process regardless of machine…

New concepts for maximum flexibility from a single source Rehm Therma l Systems,  Blaubeuren  {Germany)     Due to decreasing batch sizes and increasing product switching, the electronics industry needs greater flexibility in production . SMD lines must be set…

By Dipak Patel, Owner/Manager, and James Boyd, Process Engineer, Krypton Solutions, Plano, TX Krypton Solutions, a contract manufacturer in Plano, Texas operates in a highly competitive marketplace for electronics assembly services. The company prides itself on using advanced technologies to…