IEEE-CPMT Society TC-1 Committee on Electrical Contacts
Meeting Minutes
Tuesday September19, 2009
5:00 PM
Vancouver, BC Canada

Chair: G. Witter
Vice-Chair: Bob Malucci
Secretary: C. Leung

Attendees:
Holm Conference Attendees

Opening: G. Witter

·  TC-1 of IEEE-CPMT meeting was called to order by Chairman G. Witter.

1. Approval of minutes of previous meeting - G. Witter

·  2008 meeting minute has been posted at www.ewh.ieee.org/soc/cpmt/tc1/ web page. It was approved.

2. Preliminary Report on 55rd IEEE-Holm Conference – Ed Smith

·        Total registration is over 100 with representatives from 6 countries.

·         Total of 51 technical papers with contributions from USA 10, Japan 8, China 11, Frnace 5, Germany 2, Austria 2, UK1, Switzerland 1.

·       Antler Lecture was presented by Dr. Frank Mucklich, Saarland Univrsity, Nanotomography of Electrical Contacts – New Insights by High Resolution 3D Analysis of Local Material Degradation”

·      Technical contents, audio visuals were good with no negative comments

·        The dinner social on Monday was well attended by 96 including spouses at the Grand Concourse.

·        The Joint International Conference and 2010 IEEE Holm Conference will be in Charleston, South Carolina.

 

3. Report on Intensive Course on Electrical Contact - Paul Slade

·        There is no course offered in 2009 but there will be a 3 day course in Charleston on Thursday to Saturday before the conference.  Feedbacks from the 2008 course showed new engineers welcome the course and companies continue to support it.  Feedbacks were uniformly excellent, good lectures, contents widely accepted

·        Connectors and arcing applications are of good interest

·        Suggestions were taken from the student feedbacks to modify the course for 2010

·        Course offered every 2 years is considered a good plan.

4. Report on CPMT Transaction –John McBride

·        CPMT now considers the Holm conference proceedings as an archived publication and will no longer take papers directly from the conference for second publication in CPMT journal

·        Good conference papers should be resubmitted with some additional work for new CPMT publication

·        CPMT is a slow process.  Eeven after fully reviewed, papers can take another 6 months to complete

·        It will take about 1 year for 2009 papers to be published in
CPMT

·        Changes from the conference paper must be considered significantly different for CPMT publication

·        Can submit as single column or double column format

·        Papers can appear earlier online in IEEE than printed material

5. World Calendar

·        Professor Jigao Zhang reported that the 3rd International Conference on Reliability of Electrical Products and Electrical Contacts in Wenzhou, China will be 18-21 October.  90 Papers are expected and generally with 150-200 attendees.  Good trend for higher reliability products in China is encouraging conference participation.  There will be factory tour and city tours, ladies programs

·        ISDEN 2010

·        Annual Electromechanical Engineering Meeting in Japan, Nov 19-20 in Tokyo.  2010 meeting will be in China.

·        ECTC meeting – in place of the Relay Conference, see Frank Rufino of Molex for info.

6. Publicity – Chi Leung

·        Web and CPMT newsletter will be the primary medium for TC1 and Holm information. Many members have used the web for info and registration to conference.

8. IEICE Tranaction – Professor Makoto Hasegawa, Chitose Institute of Science & Technology

·           IEICE Transaction (Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers) has special issues on electromechanical devices

·           Contact hasegawa@photon-citose.ac.jp for paper submission details

8. TC1 sub-committee Reports:

·      Material restrictions and substitution – Dr. Volker Behrens
EVL (End of Vehicle Life, Cd use in autos, no change from the past
ROHS consumer products, Cd allowed but subject to technical review again in 2014
REACH decrete, e.g. CdO will have to be registered and evaluated depending on current knowledge of the chemical
WEEE still in effect

·        Henry Czajkowski : NEMA is taking a proactive approach while some states try to adopt ROHS regulations. NEMA new strategic initiative is to influence legislative to be uniform and not as restrictive. Nickel ban is not an issue. Pb free tin plating has issues with tin whiskers. CA has adoption same as EU, China is process to be similar to EU.

·      High Frequency Connectors – Roland Timsit
Booming demand for technical expertise; 1-2GHz now, skin depth challenges to material selection; capacitance effects from Circuit Boards; 2 papers in the 2009 Holm cover some of the problems

·       MEMs and micro-contact technology – Bob Malucci
25 papers related to MEMs and connector field in this year’s Holm conference; 5 are in MEM; 3 are on crimp designs and reliability; Ag platin for high frequency connectors because of good conductivity on skin effects.

·      Motor Controls Technology - Henry Czajkowski
Cd is still allowed in North America and not much change; new designs maybe looking at Cd free especially in NEMA; low cost drivers are still important; NEMA an IEC, China spec (low cost device) with some reduced performance are now into products with Chinese manufacturers; AgSnO2 papers are good for keeping up with the future; IEC tends to be Cd free; NEMA depends, if IEC assigned to NEMA device, then it maybe Cd free

·        Vacuum Contactors – Paul Slade: strong trend in the 1000A 1000V with vacuum interrputers; renewable energy areas such as wind mills use CuCr for this power range; VI has size advantages; no standards in these new applications but size is definitely important

·        Arc fault detection  Dr. Xin Zhou
AFCI more momentum world wide; also may apply to new industrial applications; European AFCI at 220V is very different and need research; circuit breakers are now design to be low cost applications in China; renewable energy and solar applications would need new research in power switching

·        Telecommunication  – Werner Johler
Challenges are in switching of low level; market in 2009 was more resilient than other industries; trend to smaller and more efficient are pushing limits; contact resistance to be reduced from 200 milliohm to 2-3 milliohms; frequency at 50kHz now is to be .5 GHz; ambient to be 125C; latching designs getting to be more important since it helps temperature and energy; quality requirement is zero defect; higher isolation requirements such as 2500V open contacts; IEC working on new standards; solid state relays not happening.

·        Automotive – Thomas Schoeph: DC switching 300VDC for Hybrids; DC bus for solar and renewable applications

Respectfully submitted, Chi Leung, 9/2010

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