Workflow Challenges in Fabrication

Q&A with Paul Cooke

The job of the PCB designer is changing into extra sophisticated each day. Designers are actually appearing as what quantities to venture managers for the PCB, and so they have to be aware of the various trade-offs that occur throughout manufacturing, lots of which they’ll management in the course of the design cycle.

Paul Cooke, the senior director of enterprise improvement for Ventec Worldwide Group, is presenting a category at IPC APEX EXPO 2023 that appears at workflow challenges in fabrication, and the myriad drivers that may have an effect on yield, reliability, and value. Right here he discusses the small print of this Skilled Improvement course, what he hopes attendees will take away, and why designers and design engineers would profit from this class.

Q: Paul, inform us just a little concerning the Skilled Improvement Course on course of stream and defects you might be educating on the present.

A: I put this course collectively to provide designers, engineers, and so on., a extra in-depth have a look at what occurs to their design because it goes via the fabrication course of. It appears to be like at how the fabricator adjusts processes to fulfill the design intent and what occurs when it goes fallacious; it’s like a [IPC] 2221, 6012, 600, and 9121 course all rolled into one. It exhibits the complexity of the method and the way designs can have an effect on the method stream, yield, high quality and so on. We speak about reliability, for instance, of how one thing like by way of measurement may be affected by facet ratio, layer depend, drill parameters, desmear, and materials choice and the way they might all work together with one another to have an effect on yield, value, and reliability.

Q: Why ought to somebody attend your class?

A: It’s for anybody wanting to extend their information of the fabrication course of. It’s aimed toward designers and course of engineers at any stage. The course is designed to be interactive with a whole lot of questions and hopefully 30 years of data switch. Time allowing, we could get to cowl some rising applied sciences.

Q: This feels like an important class for PCB designers. What are among the trade-offs designers ought to pay attention to that may have an effect on yield and reliability?

A: There are numerous elements affecting yield, reliability, and finally value. We are going to have a look at every a part of the method, discussing how every may be affected, which attributes of the design have probably the most affect on yield enchancment, and the way the fabricator achieves the specified stage of launch.

Q: What’s crucial piece of recommendation you’d give your attendees?

A: Attend the course with a whole lot of questions and take a whole lot of notes as we are going to cowl a mountain of knowledge. By the top I hope they’ve a complete information of the method and study to all the time discuss to a subject software engineer previous to setting out on a brand new kind of design, to eradicate any adjustments later because of value, functionality, yield, and so on.

Q: Is there the rest you’d like so as to add?

A: I hope all of them benefit from the course, and I’m all the time searching for suggestions, good or unhealthy, in order that I can adapt and enhance for future lessons.

This text initially appeared within the December 2022 problem of Design007 Magazine.