The 34th annual InterNepcon Japan, held at Tokyo Big Sight from January 19-21, was more of an industry collage than a single show. It included exhibitors from Electro Test Japan, IC Packaging Technology Expo, PWB Expo, International Electronic Components Trade Show, Fiber Optics Expo and International Fuel Cell Expo.

In spite of the recent weakness in Asia’s electronics industry, the exhibition and conference was a bit larger compared to the previous years. More than 1,200 companies had their own booths on the 50,000 square meter floor. Approximately 77,828 formally registered as attendees, but more than 130,000 people actually visited for the three-day exhibition. More than 9,000 people attended the technical seminars of the event. Nowadays, it could be the world’s largest event of the electronics packaging industry.

The major topics of the assembling section was probably on lead-free soldering. The major soldering material suppliers such as Senju Metal, Cookson, Tamura and Almit had huge booths. They were introducing not only soldering materials, but also entire systems, including machines. These companies promoted their broad capabilities and great experience as volume manufacturers. All claimed to be ready for the deadline of RoHS next year.

The automatic assembling of 0402 components is another item to consider for the mounting machine manufacturers such as Yamaha. (The component sizes are not 40-mil long with 20-mil wide. They are 16-mil long with 8-mil wide.) All of the vendors displayed new capable machines for the next generation of assembly lines.

Flexible circuits were still the major topics in the PWB sector. Unfortunately, there were only a half dozen of flexible circuit manufacturers such as Mektron and Fujikura because of the limited spaces. They were promoting smaller pitches than 30 microns with semi or full additive processes. Some of the flex manufacturers were introducing the advanced COF (Chip on Flex) technologies with small pitch flip chip, ACF (Anisotropic Conductive Film) and NCP (Non-Conductive Polymer). There was no new innovative product regarding flexible substrate materials. But the major material suppliers, typically Nippon Steel Chemical and Mitsui Chemical, discussed their newly expanded manufacturing capacities. Certainly, there is no longer a supply shortage problem now.

The EMS section was also a bit different from years past. All of the major EMS companies disappeared from the show this year. But several Japanese and Asian companies such as UMC, Kaga Electronics and Oki Electric had large booths instead. They have been introducing the new assembly technologies and expanded manufacturing capacities in China and other South East Asian countries. They have been getting more business from Japanese and American electronics companies, and some of them will be in the top twenty EMS manufacturers in the next two years.

The International Fuel Cell Expo was added as the new section this year. About 235 companies exhibited. They are not only fuel cell battery manufacturers, but also the manufacturers of the materials, components and equipment. The companies were expecting huge business with the portable electronics such as cellular phones and notebook PC in the next few years. Most of the people have been considering alcohol as the most possible fuel of the batteries.