PCB Chat

HDP User Group is an industry consortium made up of more than 50 leading companies that collaborate on research in order to reduce cost and time to market. Madan Jagernauth, marketing director and a project facilitator, discusses recently completed programs on low silver solder paste reliability, copper surface roughness models, the Pb-Free bare board materials project updates, and HDP's upcoming...

In recent episodes, we’ve covered high-level issues, such as hiring best practices, novel, training, methods, design for manufacturing, highly accelerated, life, testing, and more. On this episode, we’re going to go back to the basics. What common problems are assemblers experiencing today? What are the basics of assembly best practices? Which problems seem to live in perpetuity? To answer these a...

Moisture. The industrial world has been fighting moisture since the beginning of the industrial world. From a general point of view, moisture leads to issues such as Mold and mildew Rust Wood rot Damage to building materials Microbial growth And so much more. In the electronics world, moisture creates a host of reliability problems including: Popcorning Delamination of conformal coating Corrosion...

As all of you are well aware, Reliability Matters is all about reliability, specifically reliability of circuit assemblies. One challenge that seems to be persistent within our space is design for manufacturability, or DfM. If you’re a contract manufacturer, no doubt you’ve had the experience of being asked to build a product that seems unbuildable. One example that rings true was the introduction...

Industry icon Dave Hillman completed a 3,600 mile solo kayak journey down the Missouri River. Mike Konrad spoke with Dave about the inspiration for the journey, insights gained over his four-month expedition, and how his experience as an engineer helped him prepare for this epic experience. This episode features many photographs taken by Dave Hillman on his journey. The video version showing the p...

David Schild, executive director of the Printed Circuit Board Association of America (PCBAA), discusses the latest government policy and legislation for printed circuit board manufacturing in the US, the roadmap for government investment, the trade group's recent annual meeting in Washington, and "exposing the flaw" in the US Defense Department's procurement process. PCBAA was founded in 2021 to a...

Thermal interface materials are used for heat transfer in a variety of electronics applications. On this episode of PCB Chat, Claire Wemp, Ph. D, a thermal applications engineer at DuPont, discusses TIM1 materials (and explains the difference between TIM1 and TIM2), when and where they are used, who specifies them, and how they work. Wemp is also a member of the Society Women in Electronics, and i...

We all strive to build products that are reliable. If you’re listening to this podcast, chances are you are concerned about or at least interested in reliability. Where does reliability start? Who is responsible for reliability? What types of reliability testing can be performed? Mike Konrad's guest on this episode will help answer these and other reliability-based questions. Dr. Christopher Jacks...

The PCB/MCM design software market grew in the first quarter 2023, the ninth straight quarter of growth, according to the latest data from the ESD Alliance. Mike Buetow speaks with Wally Rhines, ESD Alliance spokesperson, and Merlyn Bruncken, market intelligence director with Siemens Digital Industries, about the record quarter, booming employment in the sector, and why the recovery in Japan be la...

When it comes to circuit assemblies, defects result in one of two situations. The preferred result of a defect is to capture it on your factory floor and repair it before it ships to the customer. The second scenario is referred to as an escape. That’s when the board ships to the customer and fails in the field. This is a scenario, all assemblers dread and strive to prevent. One way to prevent esc...

It goes without saying finding talent is a big deal in electronics design and manufacturing. John Watson is customer success manager at Altium, with more than 20 years' experience as a senior PCB designer. Watson also teaches classes on printed circuit design at Palomar Community College in San Marcos, CA. We discuss the Printed Circuit Board Design and Advanced Printed Circuit Board Design curric...

Can reliability training be both entertaining and effective? The Manufacturing Game's Michelle Ledet Henley has a different approach to traditional training methods. Henley has worked with The Manufacturing Game since 1998 as a developer of new simulations and training material. She has traveled worldwide in her capacity as a facilitator and trainer for The Manufacturing Game and other simulations...

Mike Konrad's guest is Dr. James Whitfield. Dr. Whitfield is an associate professor of physics at Dartmouth. He earned a bachelor's of science and chemistry and mathematics from Morehouse University and a Ph. D. in chemical physics from Harvard University. He was a postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University in New York, Vienna Center for Quantum Science and Technology in Vienna and Gant University...

Wally Rhines, the former chairman of Mentor Graphics and now spokesperson for the ESD Alliance , updates us on the latest PCB design software and semiconductor market trends (spoiler alert: sales were up again), and addresses why ECAD companies are hiring even in the face of layoffs among Big Tech. He is joined by Merlyn Brunken, director of marketing strategic planning at Siemens Digital Industri...

Flux says every step of the electronic design process is slow, expensive, and error-prone. The startup company’s engineers think they have a solution: a browser-based PCB design platform and programmable simulator.  Matthias Wagner, CEO and cofounder, and Kerry Chayka, product expert, both veterans of PCB design with companies like Facebook and Apple, discuss the problems that led them to develop...

The subjects of Industry 4.0 and Big Data have been widely discussed on this podcast. What is Industry 4.0? What data is our industry collecting? And, perhaps more importantly, how can we sift through all of that data to make it useful and actionable? To help answer these and other data-related questions, Mike Konrad interviews Ryan Gamble, CEO and Founder of Intraratio. Intraratio is a company th...

Eric Camden (lead investigator with Foresite) and Mike Konrad discuss electrochemical migration (ECM) and other failure modes caused by residues on circuit assemblies.

On this episode, Mike Konrad speaks with Mark Goodwin, COO of Ventec Europe, a supplier of copper-clad laminates and prepreg bonding materials for the circuit board fabrication industry, about supply chain challenges.

The Printed Circuit Board Association of America, or PCBAA, was founded in 2021 to advance US domestic production of PCBs and base materials. The organization is made up of corporate members of all sizes, and includes fabricators, assemblers and suppliers. My guest today is David Schild, executive director of the PCBAA. We discuss government investment in printed circuit board manufacturing in the...

VVDN Technologies is perhaps best known as a provider of end-to-end engineering and manufacturing of hardware, mechanical and electronic assemblies, and embedded software, among others. Founded in 2007, it now has 11 product engineering centers worldwide, plus seven manufacturing plants across India where its capabilities include SMT, injection molding, tooling, die casting, and metal stamping, am...

Metallic Resources is a developer of high purity solder for electronics applications, making paste, bar, and cored wire products, among others. Metallic Resources’ slogan is “not your typical solder,” and one big reason for that is the high purity solder it supplies. This is credited to the company’s electrolytic refining process. David Bao, Ph,D., director of New Product Development, Erik Ozan, s...

You don't have to be in the tech industry you understand importance and value of data. Industries have always collected various sets of data, first manually and, in modern times, automatically. The volume of data has historically been limited to the ability to capture and store it. Recent advances in technology have vastly increased the ability to capture and store data. The industry 4.0 movement...

APCT in February completed the acquisition of Advanced Circuits, a printed circuit board fabricator located in Aurora, Colorado. The acquisition nearly doubles APCT’s annual revenue, to $200 million, which immediately thrust it to the number 2 spot among PCB fabricators in North America, behind TTM. Steve Robinson, president and CEO of APCT, discusses the acquisition, the pending integration, and...

On this show, we’ve discussed many aspects of the electronics assembly process. We talked about reflow, thermal management, printing, soldering materials, additives, and so much more. What do all these topics have in common? When done correctly, they all contribute to the reliability of circuit assemblies. Today, we’re going to dive into the subject of cleaning circuit assemblies after reflow. For...

We are all aware of the “oldest profession in the world.” Perhaps the second-oldest is counterfeiting. Whenever a product is introduced, a counterfeit version soon follows. While the electronics industry has experienced counterfeit components from its inception, recent events such as the pandemic and supply chain shortages have fueled the counterfeit industry. Statistics by the Semiconductor Indus...