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Show-and-Tell-2019

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REAL TIME WITH... IPC APEX EXPO 2019 SHOW & TELL MAGAZINE I I-CONNECT007 75 ing we were going to be talking about this, but I couldn't get near them. Bergman: They were very busy. Just before I got here, I walked over there to see what was going on, and it's still pretty packed. What's fascinating is the attendees are very engaged. We have some- body from each company because every piece of equipment is from different companies. They're talk- ing about how it works for them and what they're doing. From the interaction between the attendees, I think it's a great demo. Feinberg: I spoke to a couple of people in some of the booths that had the CFX supporter sign. I said, "I see you're supporting CFX." I'm say- ing that not knowing a whole lot about it and hoping they don't ask me much. I'd be much better off now than I would've been three or four hours ago. Not only did I get an affirma- tive, but a strong affirmative about how happy they were to be supporting CFX. In one case, it was the owner of the company. Overall, it sounds impressive. You have come a very long way from the first demo last year. It's some- thing to be very proud of. Bergman: Definitely. The standard was approv- ed a couple of weeks ago. The ballot closed, so the first revision was done by the middle of January. I still have to get it published, but it's approved and done, so 1.0 is fixed. We have several hundred messages—over 300 now— and we recognized that there are more mes- sages needed. But at some point, we created a parking lot for new messages as the com- mittee agreed we needed to get the main core settled. We thought, "We have 70% done, so let's vote on this. This will add high levels of value. People can start working on their imple- mentation. Then, we can add extra messages." Now that version 1.0 is done, work will begin on the additional messages. I'll tell you an even a cooler thing that blew us away and has been super exciting. The SDK was written in .NET Windows format. So, this comes with a higher processing overhead. You need a Windows system to run that. We have one member who makes soldering irons that said, "I can't put a Windows system in my sol- dering iron. How am I going to do that? I can't afford that." So, this company went out, got a small chip, and used Linux. Feinberg: I was just going to mention Linux. Bergman: And they put it in the cartridge so now they can track how long the cartridge has been used. They even have a feedback mecha- nism to the operator that says, "You're making a good joint," or, "You're making a bad joint." You can then also communicate that to your execution system. Feinberg: Not only that, but they have open- source software, and for a small company who likes that can say, "You did this really well, but we like this better. We're going to do some writing." Bergman: Correct. Another interesting point to share is you mentioned robots earlier. Because I needed duplicates for each piece of equipment, I couldn't get a commitment for a second sol- der paste deposition system. One member vol-

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