Prize winning partner - traceability in electronics

We always like to celebrate when one of our Sales Partners is a winner - and so we did at the Productronica show in Munich last month, when Practical Components won a Global Technology Award in the category of Components for the Aegis Traceability and Control Validation Kit.

Aegis Industrial Software Corp, the leader in manufacturing information management systems, and Practical Components, the leading supplier of dummy components, have partnered to offer a traceability and control kit that validates manufacturing processes and provides detailed product and process traceability. The kit provides the physical materials and procedural guide to determine a factory’s traceability and control capability, and rates the results in a formalized matrix. These ratings demonstrate manufacturers’ capabilities, communicate these capabilities to customers or auditors, and provide a starting point for improving capabilities.

We would be pleased to send you a copy of Practical’s free catalog, which is organized by package type/category with each product accompanied by drawings, description, and part number with special attention to lead-free availability and formulations. You'll find details of the award-winning kit on page 52.

Silicones and LEDs - removing heat and enhancing light

Optics and packaging are playing an ever more important role when designing LED-based products which are both efficient and maintain performance over long periods of time. Silicone elastomers have proven themselves to be versatile in solving a variety of design and production issues. Our sales partner, ACC Silicones, have published a guide to products and applications in this growing field.

These include Optically Clear Encapsulants, a range of gels with differing cure cycles and physical properties. Together with harder silicone elastomers we can offer a product for most LED potting applications which require optical clarity. In particular, we can offer refractive index from 1.40 to 1.49, with an exciting new product available at 1.53.

Dissipating unwanted heat away from the diode to a suitable heat sink is essential for overall performance and can easily be achieved by selecting a thermally conductive silicone encapsulant. When selecting a thermally conductive encapsulant there is always a trade off between flexibility and thermal conductivity, due to the nature of the fillers used - as you raise the conductivity you will also see a rise in hardness. ACC Q-Sil 553 has been proven to provide a good balance offering reasonable conductivity whilst retaining a low modulus and hardness, thus reducing stress during the thermal cycle.