Manufacturing Today held and interview with Michael Obrecht, the director of Siborg Systems Inc. about the future of LCR-Reader and Siborg’s software division. The interview will be published in Volume 18, Issue 3.
Obrecht spoke of a new model of LCR-Reader that will launch in the summer of 2018. This new model is a refined version; “It will be a much more powerful multimeter, less bulky and more fine tuned. We have improved on the LCR-Reader’s appearance, performance and functionality.” The new model will have a higher price than the LCR-Reader-MP, but will have better functionality, including a three-volt LED test, one-volt signal component testing for ceramic capacitors. Obrecht also mentions that the new device will have a lower signal-to-noise ratio, this is helpful for improving accuracy while testing lower value capacitances and inductances.
Siborg is beginning to refocus on the software side of things, including fresh ideas for very fast software tools for thermal design and updating their semiconductor process simulator MicroTec. “We want to enhance the functionality of MicroTec including the thermal analysis built into the semiconductor device simulator. It’s sold to a lot of educational markets and to semiconductor manufacturers.”
Used in over 100 universities and 35 companies worldwide, MicroTec is a robust process simulator that is computationally extensive for simulations for power semiconductor devices with large dimensions or solar cells. It includes 3 main software tools: SiDif for 2-D simulation of implantation, diffusion and oxidation; SemSim for steady-state 2-D simulation and SibGraf for 1-D and 2-D graphics. The product’s staying power is that it can perform with very little RAM and is more robust and faster than similar programs.
“One of the main features is that it can be quickly customized, this is great selling feature for smaller companies. Maybe our software can do 90% of what they want. Well, we can quickly do a modification to the software and that’s very important to them. Plus, we offer 24/7 support, which is much higher than competitors. We can serve pretty much anybody that does work on electronic circuit boards, it’s a very wide community.”
Siborg is currently offering a sale on all LCR-Reader, LCR-Reader-MP and Smart Tweezers devices in the LCR-Reader Store.