94 SMT Magazine • December 2015
1
The SmT Internet of Things—
back to basics
Different people have
different understandings
and expectations about
what the internet of
Things (ioT) actually is,
especially with respect
to how it could work
and what it could bring
to the SMT assembly in-
dustry. There are a lot of expectations to fulfil as
principles behind innovations such as industry 4.0
take hold.
2
Declaring War on Failure
in electronics
failure, in electronics,
while not necessarily de-
sired by either manufac-
turer or consumer, is ex-
pected. This is not to say
that the industry has not
attempted to improve
reliability. in this article,
Verdant Electronics' Jo-
seph Fjelstad writes that much is being done in an
effort to improve reliability with new solder alloys,
new fluxes, new materials, new equipment and
process parameters.
3
The rise of Structural
electronics
Structural electronics is
one of the most impor-
tant technological de-
velopments of this cen-
tury. it forms a key part
of the dream, first for-
mulated 30 years ago,
of computing disap-
pearing into the fabric
of society. it also addresses, in a particularly el-
egant manner, the dream of Edison in 1880 that
electricity should be made where it is needed.
4
Time to Ditch Heavy metal
for Soft rock?
Yash Sutariya and Thom-
as S. Tarter shine a light
on the often overlooked
topic when it comes to
PCBs for lEDs: reliability.
They wrote that compos-
ite materials can provide
both a thermal manage-
ment solution and a di-
mensional stability solution that has not yet been
presented through conventional materials.
Pete's ToP Ten
sMT Articles for
2015
94 SMT Magazine • December 2015
Pete Starkey
i-Connect007
Technical Editor
