PCB Chat

PCB Chat 114: Matthias Wagner and Kerry Chayka of Flux

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 an all-encompassing tool that includes a programmable SPICE simulator for testing circuits with real parts and environments. 

RM 118: Making ’Big Data’ Useful with Intraratio’s Ryan Gamble

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 that provides on-premise and cloud hybrid software with platforms to track, manage, control, and automate the manufacture of advanced electronics. Intraratio serves the semiconductor, SMT, space/military, medical device and EV markets. Ryan earned a dual electrical and computer engineering degree and spent many years in the semiconductor industry. He’s responsible for improving product manufacturing and testing of commercial and space/military product lines including multi-core DSP, RF and silicon photonics devices. During this period he developed software systems to automate and manage quality and reliability of complex electronics, extending this to hyperscale web-based platforms that interconnect factories globally.

His passion is working with all levels, to identify and recommend solutions to business problems, based on a deep technical understanding of operational processes and product complexities.

 

RM 117: When Residues Cause Circuit Assemblies to Fail

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

RM 116: Supply Chain Musings with Mark Godwin of Ventec

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.

PCB Chat 113: David Schild of the Printed Circuit Board Association of America

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 US, the just announced allocation for PCBs as part of the Defense Production Act, and how innovation can't stop at design.

 

This episode of PCB Chat is sponsored by PCB East, the Electronics Industry’s East Coast Conference and Trade Show. Coming to the Boston suburbs May 9-12, and registration is now open at pcbeast.com.

 

PCB Chat 112: Vivek Bansal on VVDN’s Vertical Integration Model

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, among others.

The company in February announced plans to invest $100 million over the next five years in a new 100-acre factory in Tamil Nadu. That plant will add PCB fabrication capability, rounding out the firm's vertical integration strategy.

Vivek Bansal, co-founder and president of engineering, discusses the company's plans and future expansion in India and elsewhere with PCB Chat host Mike Buetow.

This episode of PCB Chat is sponsored by PCB East, the Electronics Industry’s East Coast Conference and Trade Show. Coming to the Boston suburbs May 9-12, and registration is now open at pcbeast.com.

 

PCB Chat 111: Metallic Resources on Reclaiming Electronics Solder

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, senior manager and head of the recycling division, and Jeff Giles sales manager of Metallic Resources talk about that refining, reclaiming, the pros and cons of risk aversion, and why some companies are wasting money stuck in higher cost solder assembly processes with PCB Chat host Mike Buetow.

This episode of PCB Chat is sponsored by PCB East, the Electronics Industry’s East Coast Conference and Trade Show. Coming to the Boston suburbs May 9-12, and registration is now open at pcbeast.com.

RM 115: Making Sense of ’Big Data’

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 has fueled both of desire and requirement to capture data.

We have created a "be careful what you ask for" scenario as we now are capturing data at an unprecedented rate but frequently lack the ability to discern and analyze all of our newly captured data.

Luisa Herrmann, head of product for Arch Systems, is helping to transform "big data" into useful data. Luisa has 10 years of experience in product management and product marketing, launching products, building teams, and scaling organizations in the data software space. She was most recently the head of product at Cape Privacy, an encrypted machine learning company, and before that she was the Head of Product at expert.ai, an NLP company. She has a degree in chemical engineering from the University of Pennsylvania and lives in the Boston area.

Luisa Herrmann may be contacted here:
lherrmann@archsys.io
https://archsys.io/

PCB Chat 110: Steve Robinson of APCT

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 APCT's new responsibilities as one of the largest North American PCB fabricators with Mike Buetow. 

 

This episode of PCB Chat is sponsored by PCB East, the Electronics Industry’s East Coast Conference and Trade Show. Coming to the Boston suburbs May 9-12, and registration is now open at pcbeast.com.

RM 114: The Remarkable Return of the Post-Reflow Cleaning Process

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 many assemblers, the cleaning process was replaced by the use of no clean flux technology. Time and technology have eroded the concept of allowing all residues to remain on the assembly. Today, residue caused failures are such a concern, that IPC recently and radically changed the way circuit assemblies are considered to be clean.

Mike Konrad's guests are Sal Sparacino and Eric Camden. Sal is sirector of sales at Zestron Americas, located in Manassas, VA. Zestron is a manufacturer of cleaning chemicals for the electronics industry. Eric is lead investigator for Foresite, an analytical laboratory based in Kokomo IN. Eric, is the person you call when things go wrong. Together with my experience as a cleaning equipment manufacturer, we’ll discuss how cleaning contributes to increased reliability, and we’ll review the reasons cleaning has returned as a mainstream assembly process.