Keywords
Citation
Holden, H. (2001), "Taiwan's first TPCA show quite a success!", Circuit World, Vol. 27 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/cw.2001.21727cac.002
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2001, MCB UP Limited
Taiwan's first TPCA show quite a success!
Taiwan's first TPCA show – quite a success!
Keywords: Taiwan, TPCA
Here I am at Taiwan's first Printed Circuit Association's conference and exhibit. This is not the first printed circuit technical conference in Taiwan. In 1989, Dieter Bergman and I had a printed circuit conference at the Grand Hotel in Taipei. From that simple beginning, the TPCA has created a very successful show. Everyone agrees, it is a cross between the best of JPCA and IPC EXPO.
The attendance was robust and the excitement was visible in the attendees. It reminded me a lot of the early California Circuits Associations days in the early 1970s. Its hard to believe that an area smaller and with less population than California can have 170 PCB manufacturers, 400 subcontractors, 20 laminate suppliers and 123 chemical/equipment suppliers. The product value for 2000 will be 134,000 million NTDollars, or 4.467 billion USDollars, third largest in the world.
The opening and keynote was given by Charles Wu, President and CEO of Compeq Manufacturing Company, the largest PCB manufacturer on the island and the most technically advanced, while being one of the oldest board maker in Taiwan. Charles started as a process engineer in the old Ampex (of Northern California) shop managed by James Olsen.
There are around 130 laser drills operating in Taiwan. This is the most outside Japan. Korea and China each claimed to have about 95 laser drills operating in 1999, this is about 10 per cent each of the estimated 950 laser drills operating world-wide in 1999. Compeq itself has 71 of these lasers (that is ~7 per cent), 23 making flip chip substrates, another 23 making cell phones boards and 25 in China. NanYa also has a large number of automatic laser drills but these have two-independent laser heads.
NanYa had a layout of their new KunShan PCB manufacturing site, 40 miles south of Shanghai. It is the biggest PCB complex ever built when finished, with ocean-going ships docking to drop off copper ore and silica, while picking up laminate, boards and prepreg for the rest of China. The 260 acre site will be ten-times what they have in Taiwan, already reputed to be the biggest PCB manufacturing complex in the world.
The technical conference
The technical program was excellent. In the three days, there were 72 technical papers and five market overviews. Each of the four concurrent sessions had between 50 and 100 in attendance. In my opinion, 19 of the papers covered information significantly new. The titles and authors of these papers were:
- •
"A true fast-curing FR-4 prepreg for multilayer PCBs", by Ching-Chen S. Chiu, ITRI.
- •
"High Tg and low Dk laminate for next generation printed wiring boards", by Jack Lin, NanYa Plastics.
- •
"Solid microvia connections for multilayer circuit boards", by Goran Matijasevic, Ormet Corp.
- •
"Enlarge window laser drilling", by Kuan-Po Chu, Compeq Mfg Co.
- •
"The design of HDI inspection test key", by Kuang-Wei Lee, WorldWiser Elect.
- •
"Asia, the growth engine for the world electronics industry over the next 20 years", by Shiuh-Kao Chiang, Prismark.
- •
"Solderability of immersion tin", by Wei-Hsin Lin, Gold Circuits.
- •
"Semi-additive plating on build-up layer applications", by Kevin Jan, NanYa PCB.
- •
"Testing technology breakthrough in HDI PCB-high density universal tester", by Lung-Kung Wang, Compeq Mfg.
- •
"Developing of film type dielectric and related study on their build up printed circuits board processing", by Kai-Chi Chen, ITRI.
- •
"Roller coated liquid photoresist process application", by Murasaky Yang, NanYa PCB.
- •
"The design and fabrication of buried resistors for the application of burn-in boards", by Been-Yu Liaw, World Wiser Elect.
- •
"HDI technology apply on organic flip chip substrate", by Dennis Lin, Compeq Mfg.
- •
"Pulse plating on high aspect ratio applications", by Zachery Lin, NanYa PCB.
- •
"Halogen free material for PWB applications", by Casper Chen, NanYa Plastics.
- •
"Three-layer substrate used in flex-based CSP", by Fu-Le Lin, Tai Flex Scientific.
- •
"Final finish – the reliability study of HASL, El/Ni/Au processes by electrochemistry", by Anderson Cheng, Compeq Mfg.
- •
"Competitiveness and profitability: using the latest management tools in information technology to improve PCB manufacturing operations", by Ivan Ho, Cimnet.
- •
"High density interconnect game-in market perspective", by Mark Chang, Compeq Mfg.
Many of the Western papers were sales pitches about their products or processes. The local papers were more substantial, with data and results. Many were DOEs about HDI-laser drilling and proved to be very interesting. I say that subjectively, because I found myself sitting with Goran Matijasevic, the only two non-Chinese out of a 100 people, listening to a paper in Chinese.
Fortunately, all the papers were written in English and the overheads were in English. We could follow along because the key technical words in the talks were also English.
Exhibits and booths
The exhibits were a lot of fun. The top 29 PCB makers on the island had booths and showed the boards they were most proud of. That's a lot of state-of-the-art boards! The CEMs have been to every shop to buy boards at least once – and so everyone claims to make boards for CISCO, Nortel and the like.
New features
The hot new materials were new RCFs (resin-coated foil). They are now made with polyethersulfone, halogen-free modified epoxy and low-dielectric, low-loss resins. The new equipment that caught my eye was three different NC drills and routers now made in Taiwan. A new NC router from Korea and a new laser drill from Korea. Other equipment like AOI, testers, exposure, conveyors, lamination presses, laser drills, etchers and plating lines were there as well. Steve Gold will give you a full run-down next month.
Next year, TPCA2001 will be the first week in November, one week before Productronica. Make a commitment to see it then!
Happy Holden