Recorded conversations and interviews on electronics design and manufacturing with the editors of PCD&F/Circuits Assembly, brought to you by the Printed Circuit Engineering Association (PCEA)
Episodes
Tuesday May 28, 2019
Tuesday May 28, 2019
What happens when an electronic contract manufacturer follows their customer’s instructions to the detriment of the product? Product failures, blame, drama, and a really big lawsuit.
Mike Konrad reviews the trials and tribulations of a contract manufacturer and their customer. Assembly residue-related failures (ECM) contributed to product failures, product recalls, and, ultimately, a multi-million-dollar lawsuit.
Misguided “best practice” techniques only made matters worse. This podcast will discuss what factors contributed to the “perfect storm” of product failures. Factors that go as far back to original product designs, printed circuit board fabrication, storage and handling, assembly, testing, and coating. While mistakes were made all along the way, product failures could have been avoided with a few simple process changes, adding mere pennies to the cost of each assembly while saving hundreds of thousands of dollars in litigation.
Monday May 20, 2019
Monday May 20, 2019
What's the optimal way to handle and store solder paste for electronics assembly? Tim O'Neill of AIM Solder shares advice and tales from the front in the latest edition of The Screw-ups.
Thursday May 16, 2019
Thursday May 16, 2019
Jim Barry is sales & marketing manager and technical liaison at PCB Technologies, a fabricator of rigid, rigid-flex and flex PCBs for high-rel applications. Jim has been in the PCB industry since the 1970s, and has prior experience with flex fabricators like Parlex and Eltek and EMS companies including Bull Technologies. He is one of the presenters at the upcoming SMTA Capital Chapter Technical Day in June. This all-day workshop features three talks on DFM/design for reliability/thermal and RF mitigation concerns. He previews the workshop with PCB Chat host Mike Buetow.
Tuesday May 07, 2019
Tuesday May 07, 2019
Kent McLeroth has been chief executive of Zuken Americas since 2015. He joined the PCB design software developer in 1995 after more than a decade designing hardware for a major defense contractor, where he was a Zuken customer. He discusses Zuken's growth, strategic acquisitions and outlook with PCB Chat's Mike Buetow.