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Product category: Boards and Backplanes
News Release from: Exception Group
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial Team on 09 June 2006

Nuclear scientists praise PCB supply

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The CMS experiment at CERN has bestowed its prestigious Gold Award to Exception EMS, the Wiltshire-based high-technology contract manufacturer.

The CMS experiment at CERN, the world's leading laboratory for subatomic particle physics, has bestowed its prestigious Gold Award to Exception EMS, the Wiltshire-based high-technology contract manufacturer The recognition comes as a result of Exception EMS' development work on an industry-first printed circuit assembly (PCA) that is enabling the analysis of vast amounts of data produced by subatomic research at CERN's laboratory in Geneva Switzerland

The complex PCA was designed by Oxfordshire-based CCLRC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, which worked closely with Exception EMS' sister company, Exception PCB on the development of the board.

The PCA was produced specially for the CMS project at CERN, which is currently undertaking research into several subatomic particles including the Higgs boson.

Mike Fairclough, Sales and Marketing Director at Exception EMS, said: "Our relationship with CERN began with our EMS and PCB businesses undertaking fast-track prototype work for Rutherford Appleton Labs, which is a long standing partner of the particle physics research organisation".

"Rutherford Appleton Labs were experiencing problems finding a PCB fabricator that could produce a large enough board with the quantity and density of optical, analogue and fast digital data processing components required for the CERN application".

"Our NPI and DFM team in Wiltshire worked closely with the engineering prototype team at sister company Exception PCB in Tewkesbury to develop the prototype design before agreeing the final production version with RAL".

Designed to analyse billions of units of data from subatomic collisions, these boards represent the pinnacle of PCA design, comprising a 14 layer card, thousands of interconnections and 36 large BGAs.

Exception EMS will be supplying 500 of the highly engineered PCAs to CERN over the next few months, in a contract worth over GBP 1.7 million.

CERN is the world's leading centre for subatomic particle physics research and is located in Geneva, Switzerland.

The CMS project is a worldwide collaboration of over 2000 scientists and engineers from over 30 countries including the major European nations together with USA and Russia.

The awards are given each year to a small number of contractors working on the prestigious CMS project.

Gold awards are given for outstanding technical achievement in work carried out for the CMS detector.

Over the past two years developing 30 preproduction boards, no operational problems have been encountered with Exception EMS currently producing boards ahead of the demanding schedule.

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