Nippon Mektron CDO Hirofumi Matsumoto
Photo: Ingrid Lee, Digitimes, September 2009
Demand for rigid-flex PCBs is expected to see significant growth between the second half of 2010 and the beginning of 2011 due to increasing penetration of smartphones, according to an analyst at Taiwan’s Industrial Economics and Knowledge Center (IEK) under the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI).
The analyst, speaking a technology forum in Taoyuan on September 17, estimated 180 million smartphones will be shipped worldwide in 2009.
Flexible PCB (FPCB) makers are the first to make rigid-flex PCBs, while Taiwan PCB makers, including …

IN A cramped and anonymous workshop opposite a housing
estate in the Isle of Man, a handful of people supervise hi – tech pressing machines that stamp out minuscule metal parts that form the key components of control switches for electric kettles.
The parts are produced according to a secret formula and are the sensors that recognise when water has boiled in an electric kettle and switch the device off virtually instantly.
The workshop is the nerve centre of Strix, a privately owned company that makes about two-thirds of the world’s output of …

Idaho Power Co. and Rocky Mountain Power, who want to snake a $7 billion network of 190-foot transmission towers across the West, face a tangled matrix of state and local barriers as challenging as the hardships faced by the pioneers who traveled much the same route on the Oregon Trail a century and a half ago.
The 1,500-mile route between Boardman, Ore., and Windstar station in Wyoming would connect power plants to energy users for decades to come.
“These are projects everybody needs and nobody wants,” said Lisa Grow, Idaho Power’s vice …

The sale of more than 100 homes in Tsawwassen, B.C, bought by BC Hydro after residents objected to overhead power lines, could be a boon for buyers.
The Crown corporation purchased 105 homes in the area this year as part of a voluntary buyout program offered to residents who didn’t want to live with the high-voltage overhead power lines running through their yards.
Homeowners had protested and fought the controversial power lines for years, citing evidence they cause cancer and demanding that the province bury them underground.
Earlier this year, BC Hydro extended …

The Fredon school board’s threat to close a school because of high levels of electromagnetic fields has revived a decades-old debate over EMF safety.
EMFs are invisible lines of force that surround all electrical equipment, from high-voltage transmission lines to home appliances. Humans routinely make contact with elevated EMFs with no adverse effects, but some science has shown prolonged exposure can increase the risk of childhood leukemia, brain tumors, early-term miscarriages and other medical problems.
Such a finding was produced by a 2008 study conducted by the World Health Organization, which found …