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F E AT U R E
Where value can be found This feature presents a mix of two elements. One is value-added services, where wire and cable distributors explain what they can offer and what makes them unique. The second is a range of wire and cable products, including some award winners, that are valuable in that they represent new ideas and refinements. There’s also a call for a new product.
... and lo, a golden wire fittingly leads off the valuable products Well, it’s not actually gold, but Heraeus AgCoat Prime Gold-Coated Silver Bonding Wire (AgCoat) glitters as a replacement for gold bonding wire. Germany’s Heraeus Electronics’s website explains the advantages of its AgCoat as follows. The semiconductor market heavily relies on gold bonding wire, especially for memory devices, and high-end smartcards. Gold bonding wire is ideal, but gold has a steep price. Pure silver is not a practical replacement due to its shorter floor life and the costs needed to form a gold-free Air Ball (FAB) at the end of a very fine wire that must be very consistent in size. That’s where AgCoat comes in. A silver-alloy bonding wire coated with a layer of gold on the exterior, it combines the advantages of gold and silver, offering an alternative to gold bonding wire for the packaging industry. “With AgCoat, Heraeus has developed the first viable solution to cutting costs while maintaining the comparable quality to gold wire,” said James Kim, product manager at Heraeus Electronics. Because AgCoat’s specifications are closely aligned to gold bonding wire, no inert gas is required. This means that manufacturers can use the existing production equipment. AgCoat has a floor life of 60 days enabling longer spool lengths for production efficiency. When looking at growth rates for IMC (InterMetallic Compound) in the electronic manufacturing industry, AgCoat also offers a slower growth rate than gold wires, providing better HTS and TC
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Heraeus Electronics’s alternative to solid gold bonding wire. performance in reliability, as well as no Kirkendall voids from the difference in diffusion rates of the metal atoms. Heraeus offers a wide selection and a varied portfolio of 4N 99.99/3N 99.9/2N 99.0 gold bonding wire types for selection to fit different segments, applications, requirements and problems. All gold alloy bonding wires are corrosion resistant and have a homogeneous chemical composition and stable mechanical properties. The 2N gold bonding wires have been specifically designed to withstand the harshest temperature cycles and high temperature storage conditions. The company has five factories in Singapore, Korea, Germany and China and a reliable supply chain. Contact: Heraeus Electronics, www.heraeus.com.
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F E AT U R E
Offering the most value-added services pays off for customers U.S.-based Allied Wire & Cable is a family-owned and operated specialty manufacturer and distributor of electrical wire and cable, tubing, and accessories. It carries over 30 million dollars of wire and cable products for all the major sectors, including government, military, aerospace, automotive, appliance, and telecom. Below, VP of Operations James Thivierge discusses the company’s business. as irradiated materials and fiberglass sleeving as the color Allied Wire & Cable (AWC) prides itself on having the would not soak into the insulation, could flake off over most value-added services (VAS) in the industry. Our VAS time, and not reach the desired shade. is very popular with our customers helping to save them Drum and box packing. Drum packing makes storing time, manpower, and costs. Having our physical machinand dereeling wire easier and quicker. We lay a cable in a ery all under one roof enables us to shorten lead times and circular motion into a drum, allowing for easier removal. A costs exponentially for each additional service requested. single drum can store up to 50,000 ft of wire, depending on Most of AWC’s orders require more than one value-added gauge size. Most drums are made of cardboard or pressed service, and the more there are, the more we can save paper with metal rings around the top and bottom. For box customers in terms of time, money and headaches. packing, AWC’s Box-O-Wire is perfectly designed to keep Cut, strip and tin. AWC can cut and strip your wire. We orders simple, protect products, shorten production time remove a small section of insulation on the conductor to and reduce on-hand inventory and excess material. make the installation process easier. We also custom cut As can be seen from the above, AWC provides valuewire to meet your exact needs, and remove the ends and added services that help customtin the stranding, so finished ers in many ways, but I’d like pieces are ready for installato share one story from Tom tion. Lyon that shows how those Inkjet printing and dyeing. capabilities can translate to Our non-contact inkjet printresults. We were contacted by ing makes identification and one OEM customer who had a custom branding easier, and high-end industrial product with is especially useful with PVC an unconventional and unique jackets. For dyeing, we color electrical component identifimatch and dye cables to meet cation method that required a specific customer needs. very small difference that made Braiding. We braid strands it difficult to use an off-the-shelf of copper wire, nylon strands standard cable color code. The or glass fibers on a wire or company had tried to do that, cable. Normally, we use James Thivierge by AWC’s seven high-speed braiding but it eventually caused techcopper, tinned copper, nickel, machines at its plant in Collegeville, Pennsylvania. nical issues for their aftermaror silver, and provide 80-90% ket replacement sales. There coverage. were also problems with training and production costs. Twisting. We lay individual wires together and group The hidden costs from these collective shortcomings overthem into multi-conductor configurations for quick instalwhelmed the convenience of using a standard product. lation. Depending on the AWG size, we can group up to 50 We were able to design a custom cable using a combinaconductors into one configuration. tion of our value-added services that met all of the circuit Extruding and taping. Per customer needs, we can pull a identification needs. It also enabled the customer to offer a wire or cable through a heated polymer to coat it with the branded, proprietary product that would protect its replaceresin. It is then cooled, solidified and inspected. We group ment aftermarket sales. Beyond those benefits, we discovindividual wires together into a multi-conductor figuration ered that by putting the material on a custom spool size, we that provides an extra layer of protection. For taping, we offer dramatically improved their receiving/inventory/ordering a variety of colors and materials, including Mylar, aluminum process, reduced waste, and had an overall positive impact Mylar, PTFE, polyester, Kapton, TFE, mica and FEP. above and beyond what they had expected. This was all Striping. Striping allows for easier identification in a done at an incredibly competitive price point; in some wire or cable with two or more conductors. It also keeps an cases, it was even less than the standard cables they had application organized and saves time during both installapreviously been purchasing. The blanket ordering process tion and maintenance. We can offer up to three stripes per also guaranteed stock and improved their cash-flow. conductor if needed. Contact us at walue@awcwire.com or visit us at Top coating. We can add another layer to a wire or cable www.awcwire.com to see if we can add value to your instead of completely changing the initial color. This is a company. Also, see p. 16 for more AWC news. good alternative for materials that cannot be dyed, such
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