Electromechanical packaging Design to support functionality or to serve as functionality

Pradeep Y Sidd Abstract:

Today each one of us are so much dependent on the electronic products that without them our life cannot be imagined. Electronic products are embedded in to our day to day life. House hold equipments, medical equipments, entertainment gadgets, cell phone what not, electronic products are everywhere. An electronic product is selected by a customer based on functional requirement, this is the primary factor but if electronic products which can have ICs a wide range of passive components (transistors, capacitors etc) electrical/electromechanical components, cooling components, storage components and display components is not put together in a safer and easy to use way customer may not be interested to buy. So primary factor is kind of linked with a secondary factor called electromechanical packaging. Oftenly packaging is considered as a design to support the functionality but not serve as the functionality of the product but in todays world packaging has become one of the decisive factors to make the product function by satisfying all the standards related to both functional and safety. Packaging provides desired environment to the product to function as intended. This paper explains packaging, its importance mainly level 4 and level 5 packaging specifically related to special purpose machine design industry and throws light on the parameters which will counter the statement packaging is a design to support the functionality but not to serve as functionality. This paper documents the problem faced in packaging design and a design process which will help any packaging engineer to overcome the challenges and come up with a reliable packaging design. This paper is not a design guideline but an effort to document the packaging solution at an higher level and gives a better understanding of the packaging itself even to engineers who are not familiar with the packaging technology.

Important definitions
Packaging is broadly classified into five different levels. Level 1 packaging individual components like IC Chips Level 2- packaging any components on a module substrate / circuit board. Level 3 board to board inter connect structures Ex. Daughter board to mother board Level 4- packaging one or many boards in a individual chassis or enclosure Level 5- packaging many chassis or enclosure to form a large system.

are used together with closed proximity they may fail to perform due to electrical noise or cross talk. Electro mechanical packaging is a technology which will deal with design of the layout, housing or enclosure which will be built into the product itself and provides a safer environment for better functioning of the product and also provides user friendly user interface.

2. LITERATURE REVIEW
Electromechanical packaging is always viewed as a design to support the functionality of a system or product. Packaging problems like thermal failures, electromechanical interference are tried to be dealt by selecting more robust components during the design, which will certainly solve the problem but forcing to compromise on the cost. Design approach to empower the packaging technology will solve the problems as well help in reducing the development cost. Even when the cost is not a decisive factor effective electromechanical packaging will give a better structural support and user interface with giving higher importance to safety.

Packaging defined:Any electronic product will contain numerous electrical circuit components. These components can be transistors, capacitors, power supplies, circuit breakers, switches etc. These components are inter connected to get the required functionality to form circuits. Many such circuits should be used to build a functional product. Mechanical support is required to protect the circuits and also to provide a operating environment considering the safety and also proper user interface. Any product to work, it must be supplied with electrical energy which after consumption will produce heat. Since circuits work best within specific temperature range, excess heat should be dissipated and also when many electrical products 1

1. INTRODUCTION