Retronix @ Electronica 2012 | Munich, Germany - Part II

The second half of Electronica became very busy as there were many visitors at the booth wanting to know about Retronix, specially services like BGA reballing, IC Recovery, Anti-Counterfeit IC Testing and Alloy Conversion which were of special interest.

The BGA Reballing video and the IC Rescue video were grabbing visitors attention and every visitor was interested in our processes which does not involve any reflows! This process is exclusively offered by Retronix and it gives the ability to recover, reball, rework without any reflows. Most of the visitors at the stand were majorly concentrated from Asia viz. China, India interested in either IC Tests or Recovery. The second half of the day there was maximum footfall keeping the booth extremely busy at all times and each representative from Retronix were occupied in talking to customers | opportunities in explaining all the various aspects about Retronix.

Word start to spread even representatives from big companies started to pop by our booth to know more about this unique process and how it could mutually benefit and bring costs down creating synergy for both corporate entities. As was planned during the whole event in the evening from 4pm onwards the whisky tasting event was organised. The second half of electronica with reference to the whisky tasting event was very popular as word had spread over the first two days about the event and therefore many more visitors dropped by at the booth for the whisky tasting event, Retronix did not mind it as the company had well anticipated the big footfall and more the visitors the better it was for the company to explain its services and discuss business over some fine Scotch. The event again was declared a resounding success as many discussions turned into real opportunities and subsequently in the future a continuing business relationship.

For Retronix, Electronica 2012 has been productive in terms of brand enhancement and also business development and this concludes the story of Electronica for 2012.

To know more about Retronix please click here

To know more about the unique processes click here

To contact us for any enquiries please click here | or email us at 

info@retronix.com

Retronix @ Electronica 2012 | Munich, Germany - Part I

Retronix was an exhibitor at the recent Electronica 2012 held at Munich,Germany over 4 days from 13th - 16th November. Electronica is the biggest trade show for the electronics industry and is held every 2 years. This year there were over 2600 exhibitors from over 49 different countries.

Retronix was at Hall A6 | Booth 135 sharing a stand with the German partners Factronix and another company Topline. This blog gives out the experiences and thoughts over the first two days.

Compared to the other big stands around; we were happy that our booth got a fair amount of footfall; right from people becoming curious after seeing the video that was looping, to down right sparkling pens along with notepads that were given away to visitors at the stand. The first day we saw at least 300 visitors of which we could safely say that 40-50 were real opportunities that Retronix could provide services to and vice versa. Also on the first day Mr.Tony Boswell | Founder of Retronix Ltd. spoke on 'How to safely recover ICs from obsolete and scrap PCBs' which generated a lot of interest as it a unique service only provided by Retronix Ltd.

On the second day it became even busier as expected as we started getting visitors as early as 9 in the morning wanting to know about our services and the company as a whole. Retronix having worldwide locations was also a factor as many of our visitors came from all parts of the world right from China, Korea, India, Israel, Russia, USA and many European countries. Retronix was prepared with all kinds of information packs and brochures so that specific services could be targeted to specific type of companies. We observed a trend that many companies from Asia were interested in our Anti-Counterfeit IC testing services and companies based in Israel and surrounding areas were interested in the Hi-Rel industry services that we provide.

On both the days from 4pm-6pm we held a Scotch tasting event which we can term as a resounding success as each visitor not only got a guide to whisky by Retronix but also got to taste each type of pure original scotch from different regions of Scotland. This event was not only about the whisky tasting, many meetings and productive discussions on business were carried out and real positive outcomes in terms of business were signed and sealed.

The first two days of Retronix at Electronica generated a lot of interest in services and the unique processes that Retronix has developed and were termed to be productive and successful.

To know more about Retronix please click here
To know more about the unique processes click here
To contact us for any enquiries please click here | or email us at info@retronix.com


Retronix @ Electronica 2012 | Munich, Germany - Part II will follow soon.

Retronix Exhibits at the SAE 2012 Counterfeit Parts Avoidance Symposium

Retronix was one of the exhibitors at the inaugural Counterfeit Parts Avoidance Symposium held November 2^nd in Phoenix AZ. Speakers included Nicholas Torelli Jr, Director of Mission Assurance, Systems Engineering at the DoD and Phil Zulueta, Chairman of the SAE G-19 committee. Speakers discussed the growing threat of counterfeit and fraudulent ICs and components in the US supply chain and steps being taken to counter the threat.

Retronix presented its capabilities and extensive experience in Counterfeit Parts analysis, IC test and detection and its other component manufacturing services and Safe IC Recovery process for hard to source ICs.

    SAE 2012 Counterfeit Parts Avoidance Symposium

   Retronix at SAE 2012

Learn more about IC Testing here
Learn more about IC Recovery here
Watch the relevant videos

Retronix Anti-Counterfeit IC Testing: Eliminating the risk for ICs to fail in the field

Retronix was contacted by a broker based in Germany who had bought some scarce ICs from China that were needed for a client. The client did not want to buy from China but did not have any other options.

When the ICs arrived in Germany, they knew there was an issue:

•          They were not packed properly or vacuum sealed and
•          There were obvious signs of damage and flux residue 

Unsure of what to do, they contacted Retronix and sent us the ICs for review.

There were 942 pieces in total. We confirmed there was no attempt to counterfeit the ICs by blacktopping, but there was some damage evident. We immediately removed 121 pieces from the stock for severe body damage and popcorning.

The remaining ICs were checked for the correct alloy, and had the solder on their terminations refreshed, then cleaned.

The ICs were then electrically tested, and 739 passed, and were deemed ok for assembly.

They were returned to the client and subsequently placed on PCBs. Three PCBs failed due to the IC Retronix refurbished, but when replaced the PCBs still failed, so it’s debatable whether the fault was that IC.

The remaining PCBs had no issue with the part.

However if the customer had just placed the ICs without sending them to Retronix, then  203 PCBs would have immediately failed, or worse, failed soon in the field.

If you want to learn more, please contact us here
Watch the video for IC Testing here

The Retronix advantage: Recovering and reusing ICs from scrap or obsolete PCBs

A CEM had a large customer base of complex telecoms PCBs, and found these difficult to debug if they failed after assembly. This was mainly due to their being such a large amount of revisions, the techs found it difficult to be familiar with all of them.

Subsequently there was a lot of PCB “shotgunning” going on. This was the practice of making an educated guess at what IC was causing the issue, and changing it. This meant a huge expense in ICs, most of which were thought to be fine; it would be a solder problem causing the fault (open or short under the BGA).

So they introduced an exercise of sending the removed ICs to Retronix for IC Recovery, and putting them then back into the repair loop. For IC Recovery were also sent 3^rd time failed PCBs.

This resulted in a 61% drop in IC cost in the repair area, with no noticeable difference in test yields.

All the ICs were tested electrically by Retronix before being returned.

If you want to learn more, please contact us here

Watch the video about IC Recovery here

Retronix working with Service Repair Companies

A cell phone company manufactured its product in Asia, but had an EU Service based operation for EMEA. The service operation had small easy fix/replacement centres scattered around EMEA, but central repair facilities for PCB debug and repair issues.

It bought parts in bulk from HQ, but experienced many issues with parts shortages, over stocking and obsolete stock at the end of life for a product.

Retronix introduced a programme whereby they recovered the scrap PCBs from the company’s CEM manufacturing operations in Asia, (which were previously landfilled) and recovered the ICs locally. The recovered ICs were then shipped to the EU and held by Retronix free of charge. The service company had online access to all parts held, effectively parts held which had cost nothing, and were known genuine.

The service company would then call off parts as needed by its repair operations. At this point the parts would be refurbished using Retronix’s “IC Rescue” safe process and shipped in a few days to where they were needed. At this point Retronix would invoice for the refurbishment, which was a fraction of the cost of buying new.

The service company experienced no issues with these parts, which were brand new with zero hours use, and had been recovered using the safe “IC Rescue” process.

This successful programme slashed the parts costs of the service company, in terms of both buying and sourcing, as well as reducing obsolete costs massively.

If you want to learn more, please contact us here

A possible solution to “Hard to find electronic components”, when you cannot find the new parts, on time

A USA based OEM was looking for Xilinx parts but they could not be found within the timescale. It was offered parts by a broker in China which were advertised as “refurbished”. After further investigation, the OEM found out the parts were on scrap PCBs which the broker had bought from a local CEM. However the part were still on the PCBs, and the PCBs were in ESD bags, in boxes.

The broker was planning on outsourcing the recovery and refurbishment of the BGAs to a local company in Shenzhen, however Retronix was asked by the OEM to do the BGA recovery.

IC Recovery/ IC Repair

We recovered the Xilinx parts and others from the PCBs locally in Shenzhen. This was done using our new “IC Rescue” process that recovers ICs without a reflow cycle in order to comply with the IC manufacturers’ specifications.  The parts were packed and shipped to our European facility. Shipping of the ICs only was low cost. The remainders of the PCBs were sent for recycling in Shenzhen.

BGA Reballing

Retronix then removed the excess solder from the BGAs, using a controlled process without reflow or abrasion, then cleaned the parts and immediately reballed them. The parts were mechanically & electrically inspected and packed to be shipped to the USA based OEM.

The parts were placed without any issue and zero failures were reported.

Certificate verification

The remainder of the parts were held by Retronix pending sale by the broker, and were sold with a “Retronix Certified” certificate of conformance, protecting the broker and the end user.

If you want to learn more, please contact us here