Soldertec opens its doors and widens its horizons
Soldertec opens its doors and widens its horizons
As the electronics industry tries to regroup, following the worst economic downturn in its history, soldertec has taken the brave step of repositioning itself on a new green field site at St Albans, Hertfordshire (Plate 1).
The new, state-of-the-art facility houses a suite of laboratories capable of performing over 30 different investigative and testing procedures on materials ranging from solder alloys to substrates, coatings and cable assemblies.
Plate 1 The Soldertec state-of-the-art facility in St Albans, UK
Formerly recognised as ITRI and sponsored by the governments of tin producing nations, the association has come a long way from its roots in Uxbridge in 1932. Following privatisation in 1995 a consortium was formed by the major tin producing companies to undertake research and development along more commercial lines.
This new ethos has driven Soldertec (Tin Technology Ltd) to seek more collaborative research projects, not all of which are directly related to tin. Some areas where Soldertec are pioneering some useful research are tin-based flame retardants, friction materials, pigments and coatings.
A large part of the company's work is concentrated on Lead Free technology and it currently participates with 15 other partners in ELFNET (European Lead Free Soldering Network), an EU initiative to manage the knowledge transfer leading up to the introduction of the new legislation in July 2006.
Soldertec are also collaborating with JEITA (Japan) and NEMI (USA) to prepare a text protocol for tin whiskering that will be submitted to the IEC in 2004.
The final element in Soldertec's metamorphis is their new web portal. This new multi-tiered membership site offer access to over 40,000 articles, 15,000 patent abstracts, legislation updates, roadmaps, alloy selection charts etc.
The challenge now is to roll out these facilities onto a global platform and to coincide with the opening of the St Albans site, the company has changed its name to Soldertec Global. Lofty ambitions indeed. But with over half of the world's tin produced in Asia and virtually all of their major sponsors based south of the equator, one can not help wondering if they are located in the right place?
