The new century has provided extraordinary opportunities for new product development and manufacturing improvement through the creation of technologies in prototyping and manufacturing. These new technologies enable better allocation of financial resources, save time and create a culture of anticipation and innovation rather than one of design and development. Rapid Prototyping (RP) is at the forefront of this revolution in manufacturing. RP is based on completely new additive techniques that produce fully functional parts directly from a three-dimensional Computer Aided Design (CAD) model without the use of tooling. This offers the potential to change the concept of prototyping, manufacturing, service and distribution with opportunities for producing highly complex and customised products. Small and Medium sized Enterprises (SMEs) are the foundation of the UK economy, generating value and making a significant and crucial contribution to its productivity and performance. The current trade and industry situation has boosted the importance of the SMEs in both developed and developing countries due to the increased reliance of the international partners, but the important point at this stage is that these SMEs should be ready to embrace this global technological challenge. The context of this research, within industrial/manufacturing SMEs, has significance for stimulating new product development, productivity and competitiveness through the deployment of RP technologies within the SMEs. A broad literature review has been conducted, and a longitudinal mixed methodological approach was adopted for the data collection. This has involved a structured questionnaire survey followed by semi-structured interviews with the Executive Managers of SMEs from the industrial/manufacturing sector in the South West of England. The analysis of the collected data, in tandem with the supporting literature, has revealed the factors that influence the deployment of RP technology in SMEs. These findings were formulated into a strategy to help SMEs in making the decision of whether or not to deploy RP technology. The strategy was validated through evaluation and feedback from the Executive Managers of a number of SMEs. This research has contributed new knowledge in the area of RP deployment in SMEs which could potentially have a role in assisting their business survival through increased growth and competitiveness.

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The focus of this document is on the gold ribbon bond testing and creation of a bonding map for the new gold ribbon Auto-Bonder at Keysight Technologies in Santa Rosa, California. The new Auto-Bonder replaces a nearly 50-year-old machine that no longer had any documentation for the original process of thin-film microchip ribbon bonding. The original process was developed in the early 1970s to provide an electrical connection from the top to the bottom of the microchip. The electrical connection takes the place of what would be a via in a modern silicon microchip. Gold wire bonding is a common practice for modern IC manufacturing, though only performed on the top surface of a chip or housing, and thus little research has been done on gold ribbon bonding. The thin-film microchips are as thin as 0.010”, which introduces many difficulties of scale and work holding. The Auto-Bonder tooling set up is critical to understanding the complexity of the parts being handled, as there are many components that interact with and could alter the performance of the bond. Final bond results were consolidated into a bonding map that illustrates the temperature and pressure required for good bonds across all thin-film chips used on the Auto-Bonder. Though most of the chip setpoints agreed with each other, the alumina substrate chip, model number 4924, had a different bonding map. Due to manufacturing requirements, the possible explanations for the bonding map discrepancies are discussed, not investigated.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Lehigh University, 2000. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 177-183).

Thesis PlanB (M.S.)--University of Wisconsin--Stout, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis--PlanB (M.S.)--University of Wisconsin--Stout, 1998. / Field project. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2005. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1955. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 235-245).

Thesis, PlanB (M.S.)--University of Wisconsin--Stout, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.S.)--Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, 2006. / Adviser: Roger Chang. Includes bibliographical references (p. 54-55)