PCB Chat

PCB Chat 75: Keshav and Tarun Amla of Avishtech on Electronics Stackup Tools

Design engineers are paying close attention to materials. It’s not just about the routing anymore. Keshav Amla and Tarun Amla are founder and CEO and cofounder and CTO, respectively, of Avishtech, a San Jose, CA-based developer of simulation and design software, specifically stack-up and 2D field solvers.  They discuss how their signature software enables better board design and how it came to be endorsed by Lee Ritchey, one of the leading experts in signal integrity and PCB design.

RM Episode 63: A Conversation with Reliability Expert Dock Brown

Dock Brown brings his more than 30 years of electronics reliability experience to clients of Ansys. Prior to joining Ansys, he spent 20 years at Medtronic where he most recently concentrated on cross business unit implementation of reliability initiatives for Class III medical devices. He was also responsible for supplier assessment and approval, on-going supplier audits, failure analysis, corrective actions, MRB, sampling, and ultimately full accountability for quality and reliability of commercial off-the-shelf and custom parts and assemblies from a worldwide supplier base. Earlier in his career, Mr. Brown also spent time at Sundstrand Data Control where he led the implementation of Boeing’s Advanced Quality System program and with Olin Aerospace.

As a volunteer, he has been involved with ASQ, IEEE, IPC, and SMTA. He was the keynote speaker at the SMTA Cleaning Conference and won the best paper award at the SMTA Microelectronics Conference. He has taught on the subjects of design for reliability, tin whiskers, statistics, design of experiments, and contributed to standards development.

Today’s episode is a little different than others. Dock will be sharing a very interesting presentation on the subject of reliability. If you’re listening to the audio-only version of this episode, you may want to view the video version so you can see Dock’s slide-deck. The video version of this episode, and several others are available on the Reliability Matters YouTube channel.

 

RM Episode 62: A Conversation with Cogiscan's Co-Founder François Monette

By now, most of us have heard of Industry 4.0, or the Industrial Internet of Things (IIOT), or Smart Factory, or Factory of the Future. The key all of these acronyms is Connectivity, Data Management, Material and Process Control, Traceability, and Analytics. It’s not as simple as collecting data. The data much be understood, useful, and contextual.

François Monette, is cofounder and chief business development Officer at Cogiscan, a company specializing in Track Trace Control products for the electronics industry.

François cofounded Cogiscan in 1999 with two other partners in Canada. François earned his mechanical engineering degree from McGill University in Montreal. François started his career at IBM, and worked at contract manufacturers, C-Mac and Solectron, before joining Universal Instruments.

PCB Chat 74: DuPont's Andy Kannurpatti

A little over two years ago DuPont opened its Silicon Valley Technology Center. It is also finishing work on a major investment at its laminates manufacturing plant in Circleville, OH. Andy Kannurpatti, global business leader - Films & Laminates, Interconnect Solutions of DuPont Electronics & Imaging, explains how DuPont is helping the domestic industry grow. 

 

RM Special Edition: A Conversation with IPC Chief Technologist Matt Kelly about IPC Apex

This year’s APEX Expo is a virtual event. Matt Kelly and Mike Konrad discuss IPC's new technical conference focus and review a small sample of the upcoming technical presentations and professional development courses.

RM 61: A Conversation with Flex Circuit and Additive Electronics Expert Tara Dunn

Tara Dunn and Mike Konrad discuss the world of flex and rigid-flex circuits including flex best practices when it comes to design and use of flex technology. They also discuss the new world of additive electronics.

Tara Dunn is a seasoned professional with more than 20 years in the electronics industry exclusively focused on the PCB sector. Her experience spans roles from manufacturing to sales and marketing.

Tara was the founder of Omni PCB, a technical manufacturers representative for the printed circuit board industry which specializes in quickturn projects, PCB design, high-density interconnects, and RF/microwave PCBs.

Tara is also the vice president of marketing and business development for Averatek which develops and licenses advanced manufacturing processes – and the key chemistries that enable them – for a variety of electronic products, including:
• very high-density printed circuit boards
• semiconductor packaging
• RF and millimeter-wave passive components

She was also a founder of Geek-a-Palooza. They get into that and so much more.

PCB Chat 73: AJ Incorvaia on Desktop PCB Software

AJ Incorvaia is executive vice president of Siemens EDA, more familiarly known as Mentor. He joined Mentor in 2013 after more than 25 years in software engineering at OEMs and other major EDA vendors.

He discusses the mainstream (desktop) PCB CAD market, its shift to internal sales channels, its upsides, and limitations with PCB Chat host Mike Buetow.

RM 60: Collins' Dave Hillman about Solder Voiding

Solder voiding has been with us longer than we know. Modern x-ray inspection technology has allowed assemblers to see and quantify voiding. Metallurgical expert Dave Hillman from Collins Aerospace explains the causes and possible remedies for solder voiding.

Dave Hillman is a metallurgical engineer in the Advanced Operations Engineering Department of Collins Aerospace in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He serves as a consultant to manufacturing on material and processing problems. He served as a subject matter expert for the Lead-free Manhattan Project in 2009. He has published numerous technical papers and was presented with the 2008 SMTA International Conference on Soldering & Reliability “Best of Conference” award and was the recipient of the SMTA “Member of Technical Distinction” Award. Dave was awarded the Da Vinci medal as a Rockwell Engineer of the Year. He serves as the Chairman of the IPC JSTD-002 Solderability committee. He’s also a member of the SMTA where he serves on the SMTA Journal and Soldering & Surface Mount Technology Journal Technical Paper Review committees. He’s a member of the American Society for Metals, the Minerals, Metals & Materials Society, and IPC.

If you’re in the electronics assembly industry, you’ve probably seen Dave at numerous technical conferences, imparting wisdom with a style unique to Dave.

Dave Hillman may be reached at david.hillman@collins.com

PCB Chat 72: Matt Wrosch on Transient Liquid Phase Sintering

Matt Wrosch is senior products specialist at EMD Performance Materials. An expert in materials science, Matt has held a range of research, engineering and business development roles in the electronics industry in 1997. He has a master’s in materials science and engineering from UC San Diego and a bachelor’s from Michigan. 

 

He joins PCB Chat host Mike Buetow to discuss transient liquid phase sintering (TLPS) materials, how they compare with solder paste, conductive adhesives and TIMs, and their applications in printed circuit fabrication and assembly.

RM Episode 59: CMOS Inventor Dr. Eric Fossom

Eric Fossum is best known for the invention of the CMOS image sensor better known as the “camera-on-a-chip” used in billions of cameras, from smart phones to web cameras to ingestible pill cameras to DSLRs.

In 2017, Eric was a co-recipient of the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering, the world's top engineering prize (and considered by many as equivalent to the Nobel Prize) for the invention of digital imaging sensors.

Eric was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame and is member of the National Academy of Engineering. He is a solid-state image sensor device physicist and engineer, and his career has included academic and government research, and entrepreneurial leadership of several startups. He is the John H. Krehbiel Sr. Professor of Emerging Technologies at the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth college. Eric also serves as Associate Provost of Dartmouth College for Entrepreneurship and Technology Transfer, and directs Dartmouth's PhD Innovation Programs.

Eric recently co-founded another startup with his former students, Gigajot Technology, Inc.