March 2016 • The PCB Magazine 89
5
Conflict Minerals:
Negotiations Begin in Europe
on Proposed Legislation
Informal ne-
g o t i a t i o n s
between the
Eu Council,
C o m m i s s i o n
and Parlia-
ment (trialogue) started on the conflict minerals
dossier on February 1, 2016. The trialogue is an in-
formal, closed-door process in which the Council
and the Parliament try to reach to a compromise
on a legislative proposal.
6
New Year, New Outlook
for the Electronics
Manufacturing Industry
As an advocate for the elec-
tronics manufacturing indus-
try, my job is to educate and
encourage policymakers to
create a favorable legislative
and regulatory environment
for advanced manufacturing to
grow and succeed. From that
perspective, I think we should be proud of the sig-
nificant progress we made in several areas in 2015.
7
In Memoriam—Dennis
(Denny) J. Cantwell
long-time IPC member,
Dennis (Denny) J. Cantwell,
74, passed away on novem-
ber 12, 2015. Denny was a
very active member of the
IPC Flexible Circuits Base
Materials Committee until
his retirement from Printed
Circuits Inc. in 2009.
8
Robots, Wearables and
Implanted Devices in the
Age of Bionic Health
If you are an electronics
manufacturer and you
ask your business bank-
ers where their market
research suggests growth
will come from, they will
almost certainly identify
medical electronics as a key growth area.
9
How North American
Fabricators Benefit from
Attending HKPCA
Two new Englanders in shen-
zhen. It sounds like the title
of a play, doesn't it? headlin-
ing the bill is Peter Bigelow of
IMI, who explains to me why
even small American manu-
facturers benefit from at-
tending large Chinese shows like the hKPCA. he's
joined by fellow new Englander Alex stepinski of
Whelen Engineering, who discusses drill concepts
and the transition to zero discharge.
J
Mr. Laminate Tells All: CEM-3
Reinvents Itself (Again)—or,
Atari Game Boards on eBay?
CEM-3 was unusual as the re-
inforcement was a combina-
tion of woven fiber-glass fab-
ric and fiber-glass paper. The
resin system was a dicy-cured
epoxy resin yielding a Tg the
same as FR-4 at the time, of
110–120°C range. Because
it was all epoxy and all fiberglass, the properties
were electrically identical to those of FR-4.
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