OnTrack: The PCB Design Podcast

Meet Alun Morgan, Technology Ambassador for Ventec, a world leader in the production of high quality, high performance copper clad laminates and prepregs with a world-wide distribution network. Alun interacts with customers around the world promoting Ventec materials, and brings the latest market requirements to Ventec in order to develop new products.

Watch the Video here. 

Show Highlights:

• Alun is a Material Scientist, with a B.Sc. Hons in Metallurgy from the University of Surrey. Once he became involved in PCB manufacturing he found it such a fascinating field that he has spent his entire career refining his knowledge.
• Everything Ventec does can also apply to smaller scale operations who are making PCBs.
• Alun was a Keynote Speaker at AltiumLive
• The FR-4 we use today has it roots around 60 years ago; there was an FR1, 2 and 3, as well as FR-5. According to the NEMA specification from the 1960s, FR is defined as Flame Retardant.
• FR-4 also means the fourth generation of materials in the NEMA classifications system. It defines the resin kind and the reinforcement type.
• FR-4 is an epoxy resin and the reinforcement is typically woven glass fibres for strength.
• The substrate itself is a composite of these two materials; the resin, the reinforcement and the conductor which is copper.
• Why the different composites? The main reason is its strength, it’s a very good insulator, and it’s available. It also bonds chemically to glass fibres very well.
• Lead-Free soldering created a major change about 20 years ago when lead was banned from electronic assemblies causing a range of performance issues.
• Higher temps expand materials dramatically, and because there is no reinforcement in the Z-axis, the expansion is considerable.
• When materials are heated beyond the TG, or Glass Transition temperature, thermal expansion is rapid and massive.
• The solution to this is adding inorganic fillers to modified, lead-free compatible materials to reduce the Z-axis expansion of which there are several types such as silica-based materials.
• Losses impact - some inorganic fillers have lower loss than the epoxy resin they’re replacing.
• How to choose materials? Talk to your manufacturers about the correct materials, ask which material they use the most and which of them work most successfully. Do beware of SI though, as this is a very fast-moving aspect currently.
• It is strongly advised to attend materials courses, and ask questions. Ventec is always ready to assist and answer questions. Go to a boardshop and see how these things are produced.
• Alun is also the EIPC Chairman and anyone involved with PCBs is welcome to attend their events. There are two conferences every year and the next will be in Austria, on June 14th and 15th. This will include a facility tour of ATNS, the biggest grossing PCB shop in Europe.  

Links and Resources: 

EIPC

Alun Morgan, Speaker at AltiumLive

Gerry Partida, Director of Engineering at Summit Interconnect Technologies, a world class PCB Fabricator, is back to discuss your data package and what he actually does with it. Gerry began his career in the Printed Board industry in 1984 at Everett Charles Test Equipment and joined Optrotech/Orbotech in 1986. He was a member of the team that introduced CAM automation, net list compare, AOI Cad Reference to industry. His current position is focused on cutting edge high density interconnect, high speed digital, Flex/Rigid Flex and RF/microwave printed circuit board fabrication for the military and commercial industries. He is a certified IPC trainer, and a member of the IPC-6012 and IPC-6018 review committees. He is an excellent resource for a wide-range of PCB related topics. Listen to the discussion and learn how to produce an excellent data package which will save you time, money and increase your reliability.

Watch the Video here.

Show Highlights:

• Data has to be modified for manufacturing
• 60% of jobs go on hold due to questions on the documentation
• What data is necessary for a boardshop? One set of Gerber Data for all the layers, legend, solder mask, all the circuit layers, all the drill files, and an IPCD 356 Netlist
• Ensure formats and resolution of Gerber and drill file settings have the same resolution
• What is unnecessary? Title blocks, crop marks; dots showing location on non-plated drill holes, zero sized apertures
• Often the hole count doesn’t match the data received
• The dimensions on drawings often do not match data
• Verify the count and quantity
• When last-minute updates must be sent to fabricator, send ONLY the file pertaining to that layer which the board shop can incorporate. Avoid sending an entirely new data set.  This will force the fabricator to verify all the data all over again.
• Always consider the reliability of design: drill diameter, aspect ratio, annular ring, drill to copper, and environment product will go into
• A fab drawing should not be an estimation but a quality tool used to verify that the board was built to all the requirements.

 

Links and Resources:

Summit Interconnect

Why do we need to protect vias? Here to answer is Gerry Partida, Director of Engineering at Summit Interconnect Technologies. Summit is an advanced technology manufacturer creating custom printed circuit boards. Summit focuses on complex rigid and rigid-flex products and offers extensive expertise in RF/Microwave applications. In today’s episode, Gerry will help us untangle IPC 4761 and get actionable info that you can apply to your designs.

Watch the Video here. 

Show Highlights:

• IPC 4761 comprises design guidelines on seven existing methods of via protection
• Combinations: Capping one side vs the other side, dry film soldermask with soldermask over, or via plugged with solder mask capped over with soldermask or not, plated shut via epoxy filled and plated over, or via and pad also known as Type 7 which is popular for HDI (High Density Interconnect)
• Why protect Vias? To prevent solder paste from running down an open via to the other side of the board, preventing solder balls on the secondary side, moisture protection, sealing to prevent chemistry entering and becoming trapped, to ease the subsequent processes, and finally assembly
• For via protection with a surface finish like ENIG or ENEPIG, both sides of the via need to be open during the ENIG or ENEPIG process.
• IPC 6012 Class 3 now prescribes the same thickness for copper wrap plating
• Why do people fill? Primary reason is to get the via at the pad connection in the component
• When you’re talking about High Speed Digital, you don’t want to go from trace to via
• Place via in land to avoid delay and reduced real estate for routing
• Slight reduction in reliability when via is plated, epoxy-filled and plated over versus a via only plated in the final
• Peel strength is much lower when you epoxy-fill is in the center and plated over
• You have to buy IPC standards
• Encroach soldermask clearances - encroaching soldermask on top of the LAN but not in the hole is an excellent solution.

 

Links and Resources:

Summit Interconnect

IPC standards

 

Click here to view all Episodes

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In this episode of the OnTrack podcast we have as our guest; Tyler Mincey, who is the VP of Engineering for Bolt. Bolt is located in San Francisco and Boston and is a hybrid venture that is part venture capitalist and part engineering team. Bolt offers a unique model to help startups get off the ground, and get product to market.

Watch the video here.

Show Highlights:

• Tyler’s background is in product design, especially the intersection of hardware and software product development
• Worked at Apple at new product development team for 5 years
• Digital agency in New York, doing web app and mobile app development in UI/UX
• VP of Product at Pearl Automation - automotive aftermarket startup
• Bolt - Mechanical, hardware and software as well as product development
• At Bolt we are a venture capital firm and we invest in concept-stage businesses developing technology products.
• Usually there is a physical aspect. We help companies develop feature sets and get traction in the market. We help build companies while they’re growing and have full time engineering resources to support the portfolio companies.
• Startups are different: More resource constrained, and less marketing muscle after launch
• Why did Bolt adopt a model that includes engineering support?
• When you need to create a physical product, these technology products require a lot of cross functional work completed, for a startup there are a lot of needs that can’t be fulfilled.
• The things available today make it possible for companies to create things faster and on smaller budgets than ever before.
• Project Vive is a good example of a new technology company that would not have been possible before.
• Bolt has about 70 portfolio companies at the moment: B2B companies, sensor systems, wellness devices, medical devices, and direct to consumer electronics.
• Digital native protocol brands, such as flower delivery services, or baby formula and other physical goods with the same challenges in design, quality control and logistics and acquiring and retaining customers.
• Bolt Portfolio Page
• Interested in companies building out infrastructure for space.
• What are common mistakes you see? We see people falling in love with the concept of their own product. We encourage companies to test with real customers as soon as possible. The product needs to be tested and iterated upon. Try to frontload the market validation as much as possible!
• Can people succinctly communicate the value of your product? Will word-of-mouth work?
• Does it have a snappy, succinct selling point?
• Is the experience of using it so sticky they don’t want to stop using it and they want to tell all their friends about it.
• Validation and verification of just their product specs is one side. Engineering the actual technology is a separate track.  Often people couple these together as one, but you can really do both in parallel.
• Why Bolt? Why Startups? There is a culture of sharing in software that hasn’t happened yet for hardware. We try to distill information here so people can tap into shared knowledge and if possible, avoid pitfalls that other people have already experienced.
• A few favorites: Core Wellness - guided meditation trainer, a consumer product with beautiful industrial design; OrbitFAB - orbital gas stations for refueling in space.
• Pitches can be submitted on Bolt’s website.

 

Links and Resources:

Bolt Blog

Bolt Portfolio Page

Tempo Automation - turnkey PCB fabrication

Core Wellness - guided meditation trainer

OrbitFAB - orbital gas stations

Submit Your Pitch to Bolt

In today’s OnTrack Podcast Judy talks to Mike Vinson, the COO of Averatek about their breakthrough innovation in which they use a semi-additive process incorporating a liquid metal ink as the catalyst seed layer. This special catalytic precursor “ink” can be imaged to create the patterns or areas where conducting metal is to be deposited. This ink controls the horizontal dimensions of line width and spacing and creates the ability to get down to 1 mm and sub-1 mm line and traces. Keep an eye on this technology! Welcome to the future.

Watch the VIDEO HERE. 

Show Highlights:

• Mike’s background is in semiconductors primarily in the area of interconnects.
• At Averatek they create HDI solutions.
• What does Averatek’s technology enable engineers and product developers to realize? Lower layer count, Improve Yield, Cost reduction and High Value
• What is Semi-Additive Process Technology? Fundamentally the ink carries plating onto the surface of the substrate, depositing them in very thin layers.
• Also called atomic layer deposition - Averatek calls it lipid metal ink.
• Process allows for very precise and very small circuits.
• Learn the jargon: SAP (Semi-Additive Process).
• Copper can be left undisturbed by the etching process.
• Can be run in a traditional board shop - new technologies are emerging.
• Lithography capital equipment is indeed a worthwhile investment.
• Liquid Metal Ink where are you in getting this to market? Strategy is to license and sell liquid metal ink.
• What type of design considerations will EDA tools need to build-in to enable design with this technology? Smaller lands and increased density.
• Evolution: Lines & Spaces first then other areas.
• Thieving areas parameters will change.
• This tech will work for both flex, rigid-flex, and rigid circuits.

 

Links and Resources:

Averatek website

Email: mike@averatek.com

In this episode of the OnTrack Podcast we echo the style of “Ask me Anything” and feature Ben Jordan and Judy Warner who will mine the AltiumLive forum for questions. Ben will answer your questions about Engineering and PCB Design and Judy will respond to topics related to manufacturing and supply chain. Join us today as we tackle the question: If we have only one or two EEs, do we really need data management?

For future episodes, you can submit your questions on the AltiumLive forum, and sign up to be part of the community. Or email your questions directly to us.

Watch the video here.

Show Highlights:

• The Lounge is where the community talks about interesting topics related to PCB Design and Electronics Engineering, not necessarily only Altium products.
• Today’s question from the lounge is: “Is the Altium Vault really worthwhile in a company with just two EEs??” Perhaps another way to pose this question is: is it worth having a formal data management system for your electronics design, if you’re only a small business? We could even ask, is it worthwhile for an individual design contractor? The short answer is: Absolutely!
• Statistics and analytics from webinars, show that 80% of designers do not even use a formal version control system.
• A version control system allows you to have a central location for storing data, and as you work and make edits, and save files; it must be committed to the system as a revision.
• Version control allows you to go back to any point in time and restore it. Also, it allows comparison changes, in context, in a team or if you’re an individual designer.
• A normal backup system does not give you associativity between that moment in time and what you were doing, or the engineering intent.
• A version control system is not a formal data management system: it doesn’t give lifecycle management or links to supply chain data.
• A true data management system would not permit release unless everything is saved, committed to version control and contains the latest revision. Including in the component library.
• Provides accountability in the way you use and store your data.
• What are some problems with footprints in manufacturing?
• Panelization, v-cut, scoring for breakaway tabs etcetera, not following procedure.
• Slow down to hurry up - spend time upfront to set up the system, then you can move faster.
• Documentation is essential in the industry for re-use and provides a lifecycle.
• Data management keeps you accountable.

 

Links and Resources:

Join AltiumLive forum, and check out The Lounge

OP’s original question and related question

Email new questions to: OnTrack@altium.com

 

The use of printed electronics is on the rise, and Chris Hunrath from Insulectro is here to talk about how to design for it. Learn about the different applications and design possibilities that are available to PCB designers. The proliferation of more advanced printed electronics materials from polyester film, polycarbonate, to transfer film for fabric and flexible circuitry have enabled interesting new applications for printed electronics. Listen in to learn the latest from Chris Hunrath, an expert in material supplies for circuit board design.

Watch the video, click here. 

Show Highlights:

• Insulectro has seen a significant growth in sales of printed electronics products, this is an area of massive growth.
• Printed Electronics have traditionally been used in RFID along with metal f
• oils such as anti-theft devices and security access cards - items with conductive inks and membrane touch switches, for example: coffee makers, dishwashers, rear window defoggers, etc.
• Interesting new applications include: glucose test strips, wearables - sensors of all kinds, automotive, and self darkening windows.
• Self darkening windows are used in skyscrapers and aeroplanes, silver conductive ink, placing current on the window, giving the user control and saving energy.
• Printed Electronics is a high-growth area: business doubled every year in the past five years, doing very well in both substrates and inks.
• Predominant applications driving this uptick in usage: Capacitive Touch switching, in general it saves costs, lighter in weight and has no moving parts (i.e. car dashboards: a lot of work being done on it today) makes it more reliable.
• The molded structure: print the matte side and ink moves with plastic when molding, circuitry is totally encapsulated in the injection molding process.
• Ink technology: silver  is used and is cheaper than gold and more conductive; silver flake or conductive particles make it possible to have the ink move with the plastic.
• Insulectro offers materials for Printed Electronics, some examples: polyester film - trade name Mylar and other brands, polycarbonate, transfer film for fabric and flexible circuitry in wearables.
• What’s the difference between conventional and printed electronics? Conductivity, and Resistance - know the sheet resistance and use a comparable copper thickness and width.
• Altium Designer 19 and Tactotek, who do in-mold structural electronics are working on relative design features in Altium.
• Printed Electronics whiteboard video
• There are inks that can sense chemistry and can be ion selective i.e. blood glucose, natural gas, carbon monoxide and so forth,
• Applications in wearables: Neural bypass, can pick up nerve impulses, movement sensors, chemistry sensors and more, and can withstand several washings.
• Higher silver loading inks can be used in many different applications.
• Chris shows an example of printed antenna that uses silver inks.
• Can be used in materials that you couldn’t use in a traditional PCB process.  
• Conductive ink kits for children - you can draw conductive inks with a pen.
• Chris shows an example of substrate with high temperature ink, that has a 500-degree operating temperature.
• Events where you can see examples at the Insulectro booth: IPC Apex in San Diego, DesignCon in Santa Clara and Insulectro typically at IT TechEX.
• Conductive adhesive is more ideal for components, soldering to printed electronics is very delicate.
• Screen printing is the main way to print and is very scalable.
• Printed electronics is easier and cheaper to get started and environmentally more friendly.
• Stay posted for more developments in this exciting field!

 

Links and Resources:

Tactotek IMSE / Printed Electronics Podcast

Altium Printed Electronics whiteboard video

IT TechEX

Listen in to Judy Warner and guest John Andresakis from DowDupont and learn about embedded resistance materials. There are several benefits that make this a beneficial technology. Did you know that you can take up to 90% of your decoupling caps off the surface of the board, while improving reliability and reducing inductance? Learn about several design considerations for using embedded capacitors and build on the knowledge of experts like Rick Hartley and Eric Bogatin who both addressed inductance in their AltiumLive San Diego keynotes.

Watch the video, click HERE.

Show Highlights:

• Senior Technical Marketing Leader - Interconnect Solutions at DowDupont; 30 years experience mostly on the materials side and now at DowDupont, soon to be the new Dupont.
• Embedded capacitance -cross connections with: Rick Hartley's keynote at Altiumlive (inductance) and Eric Bogatin's keynote as well
• This reduces inductance
• Film based materials now allow embedded capacitor layers to be 1 mil or below with excellent yields
• People were practicing some form of this 30+ years ago, but according to patents 25 years or so. There used to be material concerns, but with the advanced materials i.e. improvements in technology more is possible.
• What manufacturers are providing this service? Most of them!
• It's like a version of a rigid flex, without the flex part sticking out.
• This isn’t a very hard thing to implement, it wouldn’t be difficult for the manufacturer to get up to speed on this. The things involved are not difficult to learn.
• Learn more at IPC APEX - stop by DowDuPont and Insulectro - booth 624

 

Links and Resources:

IPC Standard: 2316 Design Guide for Embedded Passive Device Printed Boards

DuPont Interra HK04J Planar Capacitor Laminate

IPC Standard: 4821 for embedded passive devices

Rick Hartley on the Importance of PC Board Stack-up at AltiumLive

Eric Bogatin on The Value of the White Space at AltiumLive

Electronic Components Shortages, or part shortages are so big that it impacts nearly every aspect of electronics design and manufacture. Lead times continue to rise no matter how fast parts are being produced. It is just not possible for production to catch up. The reality of this current shortage means it’s time to be innovative, and guest John Watson has some ideas to help including an expert tip Altium Designer users can put to good use. (Hint: ActiveBOM can help!) Listen in to get background on the electronic component shortage, what pro PCB designers are doing to address the concern proactively and stay ahead of PCB component shortages.

 

Show Highlights:

Shortages first started with capacitors - specifically with multi-layer ceramic capacitors (MLCC) MLCCs  - 3 trillion created a year but the supply is still not meeting demand

This is a major crisis in the industry and its spreading

The part shortages are so big, it impacts every aspect. Shortages affecting: Board sensors, MOSFETs (metal-oxide semiconductor field-effect transistors), Resistors and Transistors. Previously unaffected supply chain areas are now being affected.

No matter how fast these are being produced, not possible for production to catch up.

There are three industries driving the high demand that is leading to part shortages:

• IoT - estimated 20 billion new IoT devices in next few years
• Mobile phone - 1.5 trillion mobile phones in next year. 1,000 capacitors in each phone.
• Automotive - 2,000 - 3,000 capacitors in regular / 22,000 capacitors estimated in electric car - as newer technologies are being pulled into regular automatic cars, just think of all the electronics i.e. safety features, automatic parking, etc.

 

New automotive organization:

AEC - Automotive Electronic Council is putting out standards that will be required for their components. Why? Because...

More rigorous components are needed in order to perform in harsh environments.

Almost 50% of those components have fallen out, or failed, to meet their tests.

 

On the component / part manufacturing side:

Converting lines from large components to smaller ones because not many people buying them.

Manufacturers shutting down entire lines so they can produce more popular sizes.

On the vendor side:

Vendors have moved towards part allocation - big companies get first in line for parts.

“You can only buy parts with if you have bought with us in the past year” - this is allocation.

Once a company is in allocation, they begin to stockpile components.

What kind of lead times are most common right now:

Short lead time - 16 weeks

Medium - 32 weeks

Long - 80 weeks

 

What makes this part shortage so different?

Mainly a market driven shortage, that cannot be pinpointed to a specific material shortage

It’s almost an ‘emotional shortage’ where people may be hoarding more than they need.

The extended duration of it is also unlike previous shortages.

It’s a scenario where the market compounded onto itself with its reaction to it.

HOT TIP: The next big thing is Broadband Satellite. SpaceX and low flying satellites to make everybody wireless. This is huge, it’s a lot of hardware.

Component Shortage Hacks to get through the Crisis:

• Overall, be as proactive as possible.
• Evaluate common design guidelines and step out of them. For example, can we change the norm values, parameters and tolerances? It doesn’t always require the most stringent guideline, there is room for adjustment, depending on the type of device and requirements.
• Be proactive, for example run your schematic through ActiveBOM and get flags on what components are not recommended. Don’t wait until layout, do it early on.
• You can also use Octopart, there are other free services.
• Leverage your procurement organization, give them the heads up with difficult components so they can be aware of the situation in advance.
• Create multiple footprints for designs.
• No single sourcing for components, don’t get tied into a single organization.

 

Where do you source parts or find out about availability during the shortage?

• Read the quarterly reports to get the latest, look at the numbers, watch the trend.
• Keep aware of the issues i.e. part availability reports
• Texas Instruments also has a lot of information.

 

PCB Component Shortages and using ActiveBom:

“ActiveBOM came out just in time. It has been the go to tool for us.”

Now we run legacy products through ActiveBOM.

Links and Resources:

John Watson Podcast on PLM and Library management

OnTrack article about Part Shortages

Watch John Watson clips on Youtube

Download the latest Altium Designer 19 today.

 

Altium Senior Technical Marketing Engineer, David Marrakchi is here on the show to talk about Altium Designer 19. This latest release is part two of three major releases Altium has planned to level up high-speed design capabilities. As an engineer who likes to wear multiple hats - and with experience in the field as an Electrical Engineer - David has done it all from developing requirements to schematic capture and PCB layout, across industries including home automation, military, and medical. Now he is bringing his rich skillset to the intersection of innovation and implementation by helping people understand Altium Designer and how to get the most out of the PCB design tools, easily and in the least amount of time. David is an inside expert on Altium Designer sharing his expertise on the overall processes of PCB design and product realization; playing a major role in creating product demonstrations, webinars, whiteboard videos, and interactive articles that illuminate the processes of printed circuit board manufacturing.

 

Watch the Podcast Video here and see more Altium Designer 19 videos.

 

Show Highlights:

Altium Designer 19 is released. David is hosting webinars to demonstrate new features. You can join live or on-demand--sign up for live webinars here:  https://www.altium.com/webinars

 

What’s new in Altium Designer 19?

 

High Speed Design Features: What they are and how do they help designers?

• Advanced Layer Stack Management: Impedance solver, material library (vast array, pre-defined) and microvia support. Very important for tracks carrying high speed signals.  
• Micro via (more info in the Interactive Routing webinar)
• Impedance modeling
• Material values - (there are always new materials coming out!)

 

New Part Search:

• Find a part that both meets requirements and that is also available!
• Search and filter with parametric information - global parametric supplier search. i.e. size, package, height, frequency, stock, model, and compare two parts.

Routing Improvement:

• New follow mode (allows for locking i.e. curves)  
• HOTKEY / SHORTCUT: ctrl+f to lock to contour

Trace Glossing Improvements

Draftsman

Multiboard

Printed Electronics

Check out this Podcast with Tactotek to learn more.

 

Altium has a culture that embraces a mindset of continual “Relentless Innovation”

 

Some users say they’d rather us fix more bugs--why do we choose to continually innovate?

 

What value do you think this commitment to innovation provides to our users and the design community as a whole?

 

If you are an existing Altium Designer User you can download the latest version now at Altium.com.

 

If you are new to Altium Designer, we invite you to get behind the wheel and take it for a test drive and see why Altium has become the fastest growing PCB Design company in the world.

Links and Resources:

On-demand Webinars  

Webinar Sign-up

Interactive Routing webinar

Learn about Design for Manufacturing

Buy Altium Designer 19

Altium Designer Free Trial

Stephen Chavez is a leader at a military aerospace company, former Marine, CID and CID+ instructor as well as an Executive board member of the IPC designers council. With 28 years in the industry and heavily involved with IPC, Stephen has a passion for PCB design and fabrication. If you want to keep learning or get involved in the industry, Stephen will encourage you to get connected, step out of your comfort zone and pay it forward. Listen in and get great tips about where to find training and how to push yourself to keep learning.

Listen to the Stephen Chavez Podcast or watch the video here.  

Show Highlights:

The Best Professional Development: 

• AltiumLive Munich - learn more or register today
• IPC APEX, San Diego - manufacturing perspective, fabricators, if you don’t have time to get into a board shop this is the place to be, machines are running live
• PCB West  - pure design for PCB designers; content is second to none
• DesignCon
• Del Mar Electronics and Design Show
• PCB Carolinas (1,000 people/ 1 day conference)
• IPC Designers Council, etc.
• CID Training
• Reading--Trade magazines - UP Media (Printed Circuit Design & Fab and Circuit Assembly) and 007 iConnect - the articles and content in these magazines are the best.

Get Involved!

• Ask around (for resources, help, mentors)
• Take Risks and take initiative--spend money, assert yourself
• Serve/Volunteer
• Networking/Relationship building

Live part of everyday outside of your comfort zone

• Don’t be afraid to ask questions--others have the same questions and dont ask!
• Expand your network, meet people
• My network comes with me in every new relationship I build
• Add value to others
• Don’t sit on the sidelines

 

Links and Resources:

The Digital Route, November 2018 Column

Breaking the Design Data Bottleneck, interview in iConnect007

AltiumLive Munich - learn more or register today

Altium Designer 19 - learn more or call your account manager to learn more

 

 

 

John Mitchell, CEO of  IPC, is advocating for the electronics industry workforce in Washington D.C., and participating in the Pledge to America’s Workers. Listen in and learn how IPC has joined in pledging 1 million new job opportunities for the industry, when John shares a "state of the union" about IPC’s current direction.

If you’re a current IPC member, you’ll benefit by finding out all that IPC is up to these days and and how you can get involved. If you’re not an IPC member or not sure what IPC is -  you will get a lot of value from this conversation just by learning about this incredible industry force and all that’s available, including educational programming and career development opportunities.

See the show notes and links to all the great IPC resources at: https://resources.altium.com/altium-podcast/john-mitchell-ceo-ipc-visits-the-white-house-pledge-to-americas-workers

 

Watch the video at: https://resources.altium.com/altium-podcast/altiumlive-2018-panel-discussion-printed-circuit-board-supply-chain

 

 

Manufacturing documentation is crucial. Get pro tips from Duane Benson of Screaming Circuits on how to deliver the ideal manufacturing documentation package, so all the technical details are documented exactly as needed. Every fabrication and assembly house is different, so it pays to prepare in advance and find out what documentation to produce for your design to be manufactured. You don’t want to miss this week’s episode; it’s full of practical advice so you can navigate fabrication and assembly effectively and know what to expect in this very complicated process.

See all the show notes here. 

 

Show Highlights:

• ActiveBom - use it! Excel is not the best tool for designing with.
• Traditionally a manufacturing house needs Gerber files. It’s a text file that creates a bit-map.
• More advanced/new way of doing this is with a single file, the most popular being is ODB++ (was proprietary, now public domain)
• What is Gerber X2? Allows you to put intelligent data on top of the Gerbers.
• Once you pick a fab or assembly provider, call and find out what files they prefer. It’s complicated to explain, so call your fabricator and assembly house.
• When you send multiple files, send the same versions. It’s really common to see different versions of files because small changes were made but not all the documentation was updated.
• IPC specifies pin location but so many of the footprints don’t follow the IPC standard.
• This is not a “no touch” process.
• If you need a fast turnaround, then be available 24/hours a day to provide answers and get back to manufacturer immediately. It’s a complex job, things happen.

 

Ideal Manufacturing Files:

• Everything is current and same version - everything checked
• Read me file - cover anything non-standard, covered clear and concise (include stackup)
• BoM in Excel format, possibly with substitutes
• Intelligent file formats i.e. ODB++
• If Gerbers, include Centroid file and certified that rotations are correct

 

Hey everyone this is Judy Warner with Altium's OnTrack Podcast thanks for joining again. You will see a familiar face on the screen next to me, but we have a great new topic to talk to you

about that I think you'll find very compelling. Before we get started you know, same old stuff.

 

Please subscribe to the  podcast, please let us know your ideas for future topics, and also

follow us on social media. Of course, I would like to be connected to you on LinkedIn. On Twitter I'm @AltiumJudy and Altium can be found on all the usual social media channels. Something I

don't think I've mentioned before on the podcast is that I also edit the newsletter for Altium, and it also carries the OnTrack brand, so it's the OnTrack Newsletter. Duane Benson who is with me today - from Screaming Circuits, has actually been featured in that newsletter and you can find that at resources.altium.com and also in that area of our website, you can find just oodles

of information. So many, many blogs on subjects you can filter by topic and I think you'd really enjoy it. So again that's resources.altium.com, so jump in and enjoy that.

 

Well Duane Benson's back again from Screaming Circuits, we connected again recently and we were talking about the the kind of muddy waters of manufacturing files and formats and what it's like for someone like Duane to deal with a variety of issues that come up and so I thought, as

PCB designers, that you would like to learn some tips and tricks - kind of what some of the obstacles are - and get familiar with some language if you're not already, and then hear from an expert of what a manufacturer - what a really good design Manufacturing file package looks like. So Duane, welcome back.

Thank you, thank you for having me I had a lot of fun on the last podcast and you know I have weird, geeky interests, and manufacturing files is one of them, so anytime I get to talk about one of my weird geeky interests, I'm happy.

 

[laughter] Well I track with that weird geekiness of you, so I know we talked - preparing for

this podcast - it should have taken like 20 minutes; we just went off on a bunch of different topics but hopefully you'll enjoy the results of our geeky conversations. So let's start out with

just defining what you are characterizing as manufacturing files?

 

Well there isn't a real solid definition of what a manufacturing file set is, but if you think about an electronic design of some sort that starts with an idea in an engineer's head, and it becomes

schematics, it becomes a Bill of Material, it becomes Gerber files, layout files, things of that sort.

 

Essentially it's an electronic file set of everything that an engineer would feel would be needed to describe their product, and it's in a format that a company like us, an assembly house, and a

board house and part supplier, can read to turn that idea into a working board. So there's an awful lot of things that go into it. You have to describe the raw PC board, you have to describe the components, you have to describe the assembly, and anything special or unique about it. So the manufacturing file set is all of those things necessary for someone, who is not you, who is not in your head, to take your design and turn it into a working board. Well in the case of electronic manufacturing service I think kind of one of the central pieces that comes to mind for me is the Bill of Materials.

 

So you want to touch on that hot mess?  [laughter]

 

The Bill of Materials really is a hot mess, it is one of the most important files. Unfortunately, this doesn't get the highest profile because it's not you know, the design. That's the bit that everything starts when we're building a board, everything really starts with the Bill of Material and that includes, a typical Bill of Material is again, that's what we need in order to communicate with the distributor to buy your parts, so it will have the manufacturers part number and every single character in that manufacturers part number is important. Some of these things are twenty characters but those little suffixes may determine the temperature grade or something like that, or how its marked, or how it's packaged all that's important as well as the manufacturers name. So you've got the manufacturers part number, the manufacturer's name, and in theory that should be enough. But we always like to be able to double-check things, we always like extras for quality control, so we would like the value of the component as well. So, if it's a 0.01 microfarad, 16 volt 0805 capacitor, we would like that, and then a package size. Again that's a double check, so if we get something that's not even close we can tell, hey that's not the right part. Then we also need the reference designator on the board, that's what tells us where the part goes on the board - the reference designator - and then a line item so that we can easily identify it. If we have to call the designer and say, you know hey this part doesn't fit, we can say it's line item six on the Bill of Materials.

 

So that was manufacturer, manufacturer's part number, the value, the reference designator, and a line item that we can use to identify it. Other things can go into the Bill of Material, but that's really the minimum set.

 

And I think, in my - at least, my experience in the past - and you can correct me here, because I'm not as adept as you are here. But I've seen Bill of Materials that are a little messy, and they only have part of the part number, so they just put in the part they know and then you're like, what do I do with this?

 

Yeah you know, a lot of Engineers have told us that they would love to be able to say, I just want 2.1 microfarad, 16 volt or greater cap, that's it and that's all fine and dandy if you know that, all those other parameters don't matter. A capacitor; it has the dielectric specifications, it has ESR or ISR specifications - you as the designer know if those things matter or don't. We as a manufacturer, don't know that they matter or not. If they don't matter, then sure it'd be awesome to be able to just pull some random capacitor, but we don't know that. So they need to know every single bit of that part number so we can get exactly what you want. That's a bit of a challenge, especially with capacitors and resistors these days, because of allocations - these things come and go out of stock so fast and, so anytime one of those parts is in the Bill of Material and it's out of stock, we've got to call up the engineer and ask for a substitution because again, we don't know if they need a high or a low ESR part and we've had cases where you know someone will send us a Bill of Material in the morning and if we go back to the distributor the next day, some of the parts are out of stock it's just absolutely crazy.

 

-Yeah.

 

What that says though, is the important thing is, when you create your Bill of Material, what you're doing over time as you put your design together, make sure that the very last thing you do before sending those files off to the manufacturer, is to verify that those parts are still in stock and if not, find a substitute that you know will work.

 

That's a good - that's a very good point being the last check. You had asked me a little bit

about a feature inside of Altium Designer called ActiveBOM, so I did a little checking with Ben Jordan about that and so what I learned about that is that it's an interactive BOM management

tool, that's inside the design and it has multiple output files. You can scrub it at any point in the design process kind of like you're saying, do it at the end, but you can do it throughout the design process, and it will tell you the ability to parts, it can help you find alternatives. When you change a part in design it changes the BOM…

 

-oh nice, I love it.

 

Nice right, I know, and then flags will appear, like if you're designing and something is at risk of going out of stock, or end-of-life or whatever, a flag will appear on the BOM that will tell you; we better go check this one out and see what's going on. So those flags come up also kind of in real-time throughout the design process so I think that's a really helpful tool and you know I think a lot of designers that are using our tool are jumping into that because I think it would be a

really valuable kind of aspect of our tool. But I know some haven't either, so I just wanted to jump in quick - if you are using Altium Designer and you're not using ActiveBOM, use it

because I think it's an invaluable tool.

 

Yeah a surprising number of people just use Excel and well, that's what we end up needing, we need an Excel file as the output, but it's not the best tool for designing with.

 

I know and it's kind of amazing that you know, we can create these little suckers and we're still

doing our BOMs on Excel spreadsheet but, there you have it.

 

So why don't you go over the type of outputs that are say from a CAD tool - like Altium Designer or any other, the type of outputs that you would typically see?

 

Okay and this is where the industry is really on the precipice of change, but we're still stuck in the old world. Traditionally, a manufacturer like us, and a board fab house would need a set of Gerber files - and most people know what Gerber files are - if they don't it is a file - a set of files - and there's one file in each set for each layer. So copper would have - top copper would have a file, it is a text file, but I like to describe it as a one bit depth bitmap because it's a text file that creates a bitmap. So you can't, you don't at the moment, have any intelligent information in there. A pad for a component looks exactly like a trace, looks exactly like a pore, so that is the way it's done today but it's not  optimal, so you've got the Gerber file set again - one file for

each layer - so you'd output that from your CAD system and you'd put that into a zip file and that's what we would call the Gerber files. Within your CAD system, quite often people will have

an assembly instructions layer, or a fab notes layer, make sure you put those in the Gerber files also, because those are the only real opportunities to integrate information into that Gerber file.

 

Now if you're going to have the boards assembled, you'll also need something which may be called a centroid, that's what we call it, some people call it a pick and place file, and that has the XY location on the PC board of the component. It has the reference designator, again that's why we need reference designators, and it has the rotation of the component zero to the orientation and the top and bottom side. So Gerbers - with Gerbers you have to have that centroid, or pick and place file, otherwise we don't know where a component goes. That's the basic set and then we would also like something that would have notes that tell us the layer stack up you know, which layer goes where. That's really the minimal set. You also, if you have things like some people for example, don't want to put reference designators on their board and silkscreen. That's really a bad thing, but for aesthetic reasons people don't. Well, then you need a set of fab drawings that tells us where the reference designators are, so that would be  another thing that you would need to go in there.

 

Also in the fab notes would be, if you have overhanging parts for example, these little tiny USB micro-b connectors hang over the edge of the board, and they've got a little tab that goes down. Well if you're having your boards panelized and it's either a v-score or tab routed panel, you can't do that, and build that part, so you have to specify in the fab drawings: don't put a panel tab here, things of that sort. If you've got any special requirements, special material requirements, impedance requirements, ITAR or anything like that, again would go into the fab drawings. So, and the fab drawing can be in your Gerbers, in that fab layer, or it can be a PDF separately, but it has to be clear about what is where. Now that's the old way of doing things, which is still the current way of doing things in most cases right. There are a couple of industry movements to create intelligent CAD files that tell an awful lot more, so you can have one file that has the layers, it has the layer stackup, it has information, the XY information, it has all of that contained within the single file. The most common one of those, in use today is called ODB++, and that was a proprietary file format, but I believe that it's been released into the public domain now. If you can output ODB++ which your software can, that's an awesome way to deliver the information to your assembly house. And you notice I said 'assembly house' there; for some reason the fab folks are often behind the assembly houses in these new file formats because the Gerbers work perfectly well for building up a board.

 

It is so true, although I have seen more of the modern, more complex, the board houses that do more complex things, they typically have ODB++  integrated throughout their factory, it really leads to more reliability, I think it's a good thing - and of course IPC 2581 right?

 

Mmhmm, that's the next one good.

 

Which has been, I was looking it up the other day preparing for this, and I was thinking its' been like 10 years, it's been a long time coming. And I don't know all the ins and outs, but I looked it up, it was started in 2004.

 

Wow [laughter] 14 years ago!

 

I mean, I thought it was a long time, but 14 years, and again I don't know what the stop gaps are, but like you said, almost every CAD, I think all the CAD manufacturers output those files

Gerbers, ODB ++, 2581. You talked to me a little bit about Gerber X2 - can you tell me a little bit about that?

 

Gerber X2 - I have no idea if it's going to catch on or not, or if it's going to be a viable solution, but at some point, the consortium that manages the Gerber standard, decided they'd better get with the program or Gerbers were gonna go away, so they have proposed a new standard, Gerber X2, and I don't think it goes in as in-depth as the ODB ++ or the 2581, but it does allow you to put intelligent data or metadata on top of the Gerber layers. So as I said with today's

Gerbers - I can't tell if a piece of copper is a pad or a pore, it allows you to do that sort of thing, so you can connect up what components are where and whatever information is needed to assemble them. I don't believe that that specification has been signed off on yet and I have a feeling that it's going to be a little bit of a 'too little too late' but I'm just speculating on that point so.

 

Yeah, and also IPC has, I think you mentioned to me, the D3-56 which is test points right?

 

Yes, they have I believe, they have test points, I think they even have the full IPC 2581 specification it even has room for the Bill of Material.

 

That's my understanding.

 

Yeah I think it's a whole cohesive across all the fab and all the assembly processes but again,  it's not something I know a lot about and of course your NC drill files for fabrications. What

else do we need to talk about?

 

Well one of the, because those file formats are in such flux right now, one of the most

important things to do, is once you have picked an assembly partner and a fab provider,  give them a call or send them an email and say, hey what do you prefer? It's even complicated to explain this so I have to tell people, if you have Gerbers send us the Gerbers, and if you're sending Gerber send us the centroid and any Fab or assembly instructions. If you've got ODB++ send us that, but still send us the Gerbers, just in case we need them with the fab house and we need the centroid for this, but not for this...

 

[laughter] Oh gosh.

 

Call your fab house...

Can you just send us everything in every format and...

 

-and that you know, the law of unintended consequences pops up there sometimes

because we will get someone who sends us Gerbers and then we'll say, hey by the way, do you have an ODB ++ and they say yeah, so they send that off. Awesome; except it's a different version. When you send multiple types of files, make sure they are all of the same version, saved at the exact same time...

 

-the revision it's a different revision you guys... okay. Keep your revisions, keep your old revisions out of the mainstream.

 

Yeah, what we found is it's real common for, even after a designer hits save for the very last

time, and sends off their files they'll tweak the silkscreen or they'll say, that component wasn't

available, let me use this one and they make these tiny little changes but sometimes it's going to a different package or you know, that part was a 'do not stuff' so let me just take it out of the design now, and so we get different versions of files literally two days apart.

 

Oh god bless us all, I don't know how we survive this industry. When Duane and I were

preparing for these, this podcast I was saying, you know I left the industry for 12 years and I knew there'd be like a crazy catch up, but when I came back I said I felt like Rip Van Winkle.

 

I can feel like Rip Van Winkle after leaving for a weekend sometimes [laughter] and I'll

think everything's cool and then Monday...

 

Yeah he says, I feel that way every Monday [laughter] it's so flippen true!

 

It is you know, I'll walk out on the manufacturing floor and one of our engineers will say,

hey Duane, because I'm out in the outside world a lot and he waves me down and shows me some component and asks me, have you ever seen this before? What do they do with this? What are we supposed to do with this? And it's like. Oh yeah, I kind of read about that, and I talked to an engineer at a trade show, about that, and it changes so fast and you know, the

changes are not slowing down, they really aren't.

 

And we're managing them with spreadsheets and multiple file formats just to make it fun.

 

Yeah and you know, some of it, is our own fault. Because we like to do things fast and you know companies, there are a bunch of companies like mine, who have decided that, gee everybody needs to do this faster than they used to be. And years ago, when I was on the OEM side, to get a board built, it was typically three or four weeks to get it quoted, then three or four weeks for he NPI process, before anybody gets that out in their line. Well those six to eight weeks, we now do in six to eight hours. And so, when you have all that much time, you can go back and forth to the

engineers, you can ask questions. Now you know, 2:00 in the morning one of those questions that were you know, years ago we would have had a week to get answered, now we need it, you know it's 2:00 a.m. we need the answer by 2:10.

 

We can't blame everybody else, we have to blame ourselves a little bit too.

 

Right.

 

I'm gonna blame you. All your fault Duane [laughter] anybody asks me from now on I'll go, it's

Duane's fault. I think a lot of our manufacturing  folks would say the same thing, if Duane would just stop promising that.

 

Right yeah, exactly.

 

You mentioned a few problems that kind of come up during the chaos of all these different issues that we face and one thing was relative to rotation on IPC standards. Can you talk about that for a moment?

 

Yeah that's one of my pet projects or 'pet something.' The IPC specifies which pin should be at what part for zero rotation so you've got zero, 90°, 180°, 270°, 360° and anything in between, and what direction goes from zero to 90° on the front or the back, it's specified, it's in these standards, and these ones have been around for a long time. Well what I've found, is a large number of the footprints in CAD software, especially the CAD software that relies on user-generated content more than professionally generated content, a lot of those things, the zero - the pin1 zero rotation is wrong. So for example with an LED or a diode, the cathode is on the left, its horizontal pin one is on the left, and that's zero degrees rotation. We see them where zero degrees rotation has something vertical at 180 degrees, pin one on the right, all sorts of nutty things like that, and that's probably 80% of why we simply can't rely on data maybe even 90%. Theoretically, you should be able to output a set of files from CAD software, send it to a company like ours, and never talk to us and just magically get boards back. A huge portion

of why we can't do that is because so many of these footprints don't follow that IPC standard, and if it were a rare exception, well we'd assume they all do and catch the rare exception there. It's so common, that we have to disregard anything that any of our customers tell us about rotation. Which means we have to have someone look at every single part on that board.

 

Oh my gosh! It's like  a bad version of pin the tail on the donkey. Can you guess which one is pin 1? Have a nice day - oh on all these parts - oh my gosh I don't know how you do anything fast.

 

It's crazy…

 

But the cost, I mean some of these parts are super expensive and if you rotate them the wrong way, and you fry them or you wreck the board like, that was a bunch of money.

 

Yeah we have we run across $10,000 FPGAs we come across ‘one of a kind' parts that are going into some space mission so yeah we really can't risk putting those things on wrong, I'm sorry there are only four these parts in the world don't blow it, okay.

 

Well and do we - like you said so new parts come out, but when new parts come out, sometimes the standard hasn't been written yet correct?

 

Yeah we saw that a lot in the early days of the QFNs you know, QFNs all the leads are underneath around the outside of the part and there's this big metal heat slug or ground slug in the middle of the part. The IPC standards didn't cover that yet, and a lot of the CAD software folks had never heard from manufacturers so they didn't know what to do with it. The footprints all had that big heat slug wide open, so then what happens, you put solder paste on that, there's a much higher aspect ratio of heights to volume in the center pad, so the part rises up, it kind of floats up and then all the pins on the outside don't connect and for years, for a few years, nobody knew how to do that, how to make that work properly.  Again, if you've got a three week NPI cycle you can figure that out, but when you're doing it overnight... So we determined that you need a window pane solder paste stencil. Fifty to seventy-five percent cover to paste, and it works, but it was a couple of years before the rest of the industry caught up to that and with the tiny, tiny BGAs, point four millimeter pitch BGAs changed the rules on the pad and solder mask with larger BGAs you want non-solder mask defined pads, so you want the solder mask opening to be a little bit larger than the copper. Well with the point four millimeter pitch and

smaller BGAs, that causes the solder balls to squish, and you get bridging.

 

So you want a solder mask defined path?

 

Again the rest of the industry didn't keep up with that, because the component manufacturers threw these parts out, without figuring out how to build them...

 

That's wild.

 

Yeah and a lot of fun too, I think [laughter]

 

For those of us that are masochists and gluttons for punishment. [laughter] Okay in all that craziness that you've just spelled out for us. So for our listeners, tell us what a good or a great set, like a clean set of manufacturing files would look like if you could wave a magic wand, and you'd want to see a really clean set of manufacturing files come in?

 

Okay first of all, everything is the current and the same version, and everything was checked and double-checked just before sending it off to us. There would be a readme file, that includes anything that's non-standard is covered in that readme file, and it's clear, to the point, not wordy - it's not prose, including things like the the stack up. It would have a Bill of Materials in Excel format that has the information we talked about, and possibly even a few substitutes. And then

ideally it would have one of the intelligent file formats like an ODB ++ or an IPC 2581 - that would be the ideal format. If you're stuck with Gerbers, then it has to have a good set of Gerbers. Again with that stack up documented and a centroid file and of course we would love it if someone could could certify that their rotations were correct so we could believe the centroid file but that's really it. Ideally intelligent manufacturing files, a bill of materials, and Excel and a readme file and then if you are using Gerbers, then the Gerbers and the centroid.

 

Good - well hopefully that will help, hopefully people listen to this podcast and give you some cleaner manufacturing files Duane.

 

I hope so.

 

So, something you pointed out to me though, even if you got the perfect set of manufacturing files, we're not robots, and you said something to me: this is not a 'no touch' process.

 

Yeah.

 

-you can not throw it over the wall and go about your day so let's wrap up with your thoughts on that.

 

Well communicate you know, I saw a bumper sticker once that said: I didn't spend four years in engineering school to talk to people. [laughter] But the fact of the matter,  you know, we will talk to you using a few sentences. We'll make it short. But talk to us, and anybody who's building your stuff, don't be afraid to pick up the phone and call them, or to have an email exchange.

 

I know we - a lot of us nerdy people/geeky people whatever, don't like talking to people.

 

But we have to, and do that, do not be afraid. And if you've sent your boards off, and you're expecting a fast turnaround time, be available 24 hours a day. Companies like us will typically work 24/6 or 24/7, and as I mentioned before, if something happens at 2 am, and things do happen you know. So yeah do we continue the build without it or stop and wait for more? We may need an answer at 2 am - be available, make sure that someone can get a message at 2 am, and then get back to your manufacturer as soon as possible if they contact you. And then do understand that yes, we are all human, we know you're all smart people and we're all smart

people, but everybody... you know it's a complex job we're trying to do

 

Extremely complex, god bless us all for even attempting to do it, but we do it. We do it and a lot of times we do it quite well so kudos for us in the industry. Well thanks for those tips and kind of clarifying what a clean package will look like. I know it's kind of a convoluted - there's no clear, single path forward. So I think that's really, it's kind of really basic but as you can see from our conversation it's a lot more complicated than it appears on the surface. So thank you so much Duane, for taking the time to clear that up and let us know what works and hopefully give some good advices to some designers out there.

Well thank you for giving me the opportunity I always enjoy these opportunities you know.

 

We enjoy having you always, and I'm sure we'll have you back again.

 

So well, that's it for our OnTrack Podcast today, thanks again for joining. Please drop us a message, let us know what else you'd like to hear about. Tune in next time. Until then, remember to always stay on track. 

From Tesla to consumer devices, Mihir Shah has been a PCB designer among the best. Now, as Director of Special Projects at Royal Circuit Solutions, he is pioneering ways to make manufacturing easy for printed circuit board designers. Meet Mihir and Jon Lass, co-founder and VP of Engineering at Royal Circuits, and listen in as they discuss manufacturing best practices and share various insights on symmetrical stackups, solder mask, and copper weights. Get a wide range of PCB design tips and learn how same-day turn times on printed circuit boards is possible at high-quality board shops like Royal Circuits.  

Watch the video and read get all show notes. 

 

Hey everyone this is Judy with Altium's OnTrack Podcast. We are glad to have you back again, the podcast continues to grow and we thank you for listening and I know that you are tuning in because I have amazing guests like I have today so I would like to introduce you to my guest but before I do I would like to  invite you to connect with me on LinkedIn. I'd love to connect with you and share a lot of information relative to PCB design and engineering and also on Twitter I'm @AltiumJudy and Altium is on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn so we like to have conversations with you, not just monologues; so please connect and make sure you subscribe to our podcast too so we can keep making these.

Today we are with a couple of great people that are involved in US manufacturing of printed circuit boards. I'd like to introduce you to Mihir Shah, who is Director of Special Projects at Royal Circuits. Mihir actually was an EE and has lots of experience - hands-on experience - being in the trenches and doing design work. His father right, it's your dad that owns Royal Circuits Mihir?

[Mihir nods]

And so his dad somehow sucked him into the manufacturing industry. So we're glad to have him there actually, we need more young blood and also, we have Jon Lass who is the VP of Engineering. He's also one of the original founders of Royal Circuits, so gentlemen welcome thanks for joining today.

Thanks this is great.

So Mihir, I'm going to start with you. Why don't you tell us a little bit about your background and then give us a little blurb on Royal Circuits?

Sure, so as you kind of alluded to I'm an Electrical Engineer. I started my career at Tesla Motors where I was working on a lot of the cool things with Model X, and Model X, back in the early beta days of that vehicle. I just got crazy hands-on experience learning how to design your own boards hands-on for everything, just do things quick and get a design approach to rapid prototyping, which was great. And then I went to Taser - now known as Axon - where we worked on consumer devices that are - I mean literally - the Taser device.

So I was more on the power electronics side of the Taser weapon and some things on the body camera so a really, really great experience albeit limited, but really great in the short time that I was a fulltime design engineer. And then you know, somehow, some way, my dad convinced me to join the manufacturing side of things.

Yay Dad!

I'm kind of - one of the roles is always like: look, you were buying boards and designed them for a while, now come here on the other side and try to make it as easy, clean, and simple as possible for people to order them now that you've seen often times, what a pain it is, or all the mistakes that you kind of made, or things that delayed the time, cost etc can help on the manufacturing side and now, Royal Circuits, just to give a brief overview of who we are, and kind of our main value proposition. We're a big US manufacturer of purely quick-turn, prototype, printed circuit boards. The whole idea is one, two, three-day turns in the Bay Area, same-day turns and weekend turns - totally acceptable, and all owned and operated by us, all here in the United States.

So we have two factories: one right here in Hollister where I am now, right in the Bay Area, and then we have a factory down in Los Angeles that's purely flex and rigid flex. We really focus on that technology down there, so we've been doing this for over 20 years. You know, we have our customers range anywhere from large tech companies like ones you've heard of, like Google etc. Students, Stanford, Caltech, UPN, MIT and military.We're ITAR certified, and then thousands and thousands of other customers in that group and more. So we do everything from simple two layer boards all the way to 30 layer, HDI  , High Density Interconnect, PCBs, fab and assembly - no minimum order quantity.

So really, really focus on the low volume, super quick turn, with an incredible focus on customer service and making sure that people get their boards when they need them and at the price that they want them at, right here.

Wow, Jon can you tell us a little bit about your background in the industry and your history at Royal and what you do there?

Sure, so my background has been Engineering for about 30 years. I started out in the CAM/CAD industry and was involved in the very early days of photo plotting when we used to build boards with films that have,   actual direct imaging as we're doing today.

My dad and I founded the company 20 years ago here in Hollister and we - like Mihir pointed out - it's always been about quick turn, 1 to 3 dating, prototypes, all the way from 2 to 30 layers and, very exotic type of materials and boards. So we've been around for 20 years servicing our customers and we still have some of the same customers 20 years later.

That's a good report card! That's an excellent report card.

That's how we look at it too.

Well my favorite stat about the company - just to interject - is that we really do have a 1 percent turnover in 20 years. I mean, I really encourage you to find another company in the United States that has such a low employee turnover. Everywhere I'm looking, Jon is a testament to that, people don't leave, we just keep growing here and in LA. And in some of the other kind of businesses that we run, same deal. Customers first.

Ok so I'm going to become a board industry geek for a moment but I want to point out something about that, that may or may not be obvious to our audience; but something that I've noted when you do work with a board house that has low turnover, your quality remains consistent because there aren't people coming in muddying the waters all the time, are on a learning curve, or trying to insert something and so your processes stay a lot tighter and cleaner. And that may be something obvious but it's just something that I observed over the years working for multiple board shops and assembly shops.

It was a statistic, before I chose to represent one of those places is, what is your turnover? Because I knew that would create a lot of chaos not only for me, but for my customers, because of the fluctuation, customers, designers, will say to me: I was doing business with XYZ company and all of a sudden - they were great for eight years - and all of a sudden they lost the recipe and I go: uh-oh, they have had employees change. I know exactly what happened. So I know, we've all seen it, maybe an obvious point but something I thought worth pointing out to our listeners.

We appreciate that point, and I will also say that our Production Manager's been here for 18 of the 20 years, so again, it does make a difference.

It does make a huge difference. And Jon, your tenure there and being - yeah that's just wonderful. That's again, a great report on you guys.  So this morning what I thought we'd talk about is stack up and impedance, but from a manufacturing point - what you guys can teach designers and engineers that are laying out boards. How you can help them sort of avoid some pitfalls relative to stack up and impedance from a manufacturing standpoint?

So Jon, maybe I'll start out with you, or maybe you both want to kind of ping-pong this one  for the uninitiated, let's just talk about what kind of implications there are specific to stack ups with materials?

I mean that's where you start.

Do we have enough time?

[laughter]

We could do a whole thing on materials maybe we need to do that? Because you just said you had a lot of exotic materials I'm like: oh they're one of those. Okay so all right, let's talk about materials, sorry.

You know, I'm just starting - again just the very basics. Our main is FR4 high-temperature FR4 materials but we do get into a lot of Rogers materials for the RF type designs   a lot of hybrid combinations a little bit of Teflon so just there's different variances on what you can use.

But diving into stack ups, what a lot of people don't think about from the impedance standpoint is, what are we doing with the the outer layers as far as the copper weights and the plating? And I'm touching on that real quick, because when you start out with a half ounce copper foil and then you plate up another additional ounce - sometimes when they're doing the modeling in the software - they're putting in half ounce and they model it and they get a certain number. But in reality when you manufacture it, you're plating on the surface, so a lot of times I'll get, from design engineers: well my model shows that it should be, 50 ohms and you guys are coming out at 55 ohms?

It's like: well, you're not taking into consideration all the plating on the surface and that makes a big difference. And so we get a lot of that where there's a lot of model software out there on the internet people can go to. We use a software called 'Archeo' it's a very very deep system, as far as it actually takes into consideration all the dielectric constants of the materials you're using in your stack up.

For example, different cores are built with different prepregs, and so they have different dielectric constants. Some of the modeling software on the internet gives you one setting so you can put in 4.1 or 4.2 for your DK value but in reality, depending on how the materials build you have different DK values that can range all the way from maybe 3.8 to 4.2 on a certain materials like these; I sold a 370 HR for example.

So when creating the stackup, we have  all of that in there, we have all the pretty products the laminates that are being used, even the LPI and all the dielectric constants and when we're modeling that, impedance becomes very very accurate compared to the models are on the internet.

So - I wanted you to pause right there, you said LPI, so that's Liquid Photo Image of a solder mask. So do you typically put the solder mask in when you're doing your models?

Absolutely you do, because that's a big, big critical part. Another example - I'm glad you brought that up because again, they go out and model on the internet; they're not putting on the solder mask, they're not putting on the copper plating. As I mentioned, they get a completely different value, and then when we come to model it we're going back and telling them we need to change their stackup they may have defined on their fab drawing, because it doesn't meet the impedance requirements. And also you do get a lot of designers that understand that and they'll put notes on the fab drawing saying the manufacturer can adjust the dielectric, spacing, or the trace width within, plus or minus 10% to obtain that value.

Yeah, and like you said, I think that's a good point, say in the case of Isola, or any laminate, they might put a datasheet that’s about 3.8, but it's not exactly 3.8, it can vary in a minor way, from lot to lot, is that correct?

Not so much lot to lot as it is from material to material so they -  if you build all the way from 3 core to 47 core, they're using 106 and 108s and these are all prepreg styles that I'm mentioning, and each one has a different dielectric constant. So if you get a combination of them, you end up with a different value - and that again - depending on how your stackup is generated, one discussion Mihir and I had earlier today, is about designers that specify in their fab drawing the stackup they want you to follow, and they can send it to board house X, Y and Z but if, for example, let's say they have a four-layer and they want to specify they want 8 mil dielectric spacing between 1 & 2 and 4 & 3.

Well, we may use a different series of prepregs to obtain that than another fab house and again, DK values - different impedance readings. So all that comes into play.

Yeah and that's a trade off, that's a consideration the design engineer has to make in terms of how they're doing the prototyping, what the outlook is for them, and the turn times and the costing you know, there's other factors outside the actual design of performance on the circuit itself because if you do it, and you have it once, then you say this is my design so at least you will have more consistency amongst different manufacturers because you see, I need these materials, I need backup I did it - do it. But you'll have consistency in the final product but you more I mean most certainly, will not have consistency in the turn times. The available materials that different guys have, especially when you start getting to the more the exotics, and the high-frequency stuff.

So that could start playing into effect and people charge different amounts for it based on the lead time, what they have in stock, what they want to charge, etcetera as that gets complicated but at least, it'll be more close to a similar design on revision vs. if you say, look: I'm just gonna let the manufacturer do it and tailor it towards what I can get quickest and at best cost that'll still give me my main factors and whether they're controlled impedance or stackup height or whatever - and let them do that. So that's kind of the two different ways that people can go about designing.

My impression Jon, before you go on, is that a lot of designers do kind of hand off that stack off to their manufacturers. Do you think that's true?

Yes, we do get it kind of both ways. In some cases, we just get a stackup, for example, if they want it to be 062 plus or minus 10% that gives you the layers that have the impedance requirements, and then we go and generate the stackup and manufacture the board. To me that's probably the more straightforward way because you're guaranteed you get what you want.

Sometimes they're specific about what they want. They call out the dielectric spacings, the core material is everything and now you have to build that stack up, then plug in their numbers and model it, and then it usually doesn't come out the way they thought it was going to. And again, we touched on two reasons why.

So you kind of get a little bit of both. But what I was gonna start saying is, that we also offer a service, a stackup service that you can come to us at pre-design.  You've got your board all laid out, you're ready to do your routing, and you can come to us and say: hey, I have a six layer and eight layer design, this is the material that we want to use, and you can tell us a little bit about your design. Which layers are plane layers, which ones are the signals. We don't look at the reference to this is, ninety ohm diffs, and 100 ohm diffs, and then we can go ahead and model that stack up at that time. We can come back and tell you what size traces to use for the single-ended, the tracing space for the differential pairs, the copper weights, everything. We can come back and give you that complete stackup.

So now, that's using our materials. Our DK values, our stackup software, and then when you go to Roger design - if you use those numbers - then when we get back your design and your stack up - the project’s done.

Which I think's a really great model, because then you're doing this partnership - the designers telling you where they're trying to get - you're actually informing them, from a manufacturing standpoint, best practices, and I love that whenever that happens. I wish it happened more.

That's right, that's free of charge - again right at the beginning stage - to me that's the smoothest way to do it. And then you have a stack up you can actually send in with your data package and you'll be guaranteed you'll get what you want.

That's awesome, what a great service I love that.

You've talked a little bit about it, is there anything you want to add? The distribution of copper I get. I used to specialize in RF and microwave boards and that issue you talked about where they model it without the plating ending up on the outer layers right. The inner layers it doesn't matter, but the outer layers, you have to do multiple planing cycles and then it's completely outside of the range of what they simulated and I'm like: I don't know why, and without a fundamental understanding of the manufacturing process it's easy to see how that could get missed. Is there anything else you wanted to talk about? I'm gonna ask you guys three or four or five tips and tricks to give people who are listening some takeaways. But before I do, is there anything else you wanted to add relative to stackup in regards to manufacturing or distribution of copper?

Maybe just a brief... oh sorry Jon do you want to go?

I was just gonna touch on, you were talking about outer layers and then inner layers. If they want to use heavier copper, I like to point out that that's great on plane layers because when you have a heavier copper, your z-axis is higher and now when you go to put the prepreg in, you have to have enough resin to fill in there. And if you don't have enough resin then it can cause delamination or other manufacturing issues. So again, to point out, we get a lot of that too. We get a lot where they want 2 ounce copper on the inner layers, and they'll mix their traces and planes together and they'll be putting 4 mil traces on 2 ounces of copper. That doesn't work, that doesn't work at all.

Yeah and then you have a trace that looks like this [gestures] right like or this - they're not this any more there cuz that's a hard if... yeah it's not a good idea.

So just keep in consideration, from a copper distribution standpoint in layers. You have to nest prepreg in between them, it definitely makes a difference. So, if you're dealing with half ounce copper, no problem - you can pretty much do whatever you want. When you start getting above one ounce, then it starts changing the ballgame. So, from a proper distribution standpoint, just take that into consideration when you have - I'm going back to impedance - but when you have impedance on the outer layers and you're referencing to a plane layer underneath. Try to leave it all solid plane without mixing it with signals. That makes a big difference.

Because now, you have a nice, consistent, even, solid dielectric spacing between the two - so that's a definite plus. Like a six layer, for example, where you have power ground on layer 2 & 5 and then 3 or 4 signal layers, you have to use a lot more prepreg to nest in between there. So again, try to pull up most of your dielectric spacing between those two areas because you're going to need  more of it to nest the prepreg. So that's a little bit about copper distribution.

All right, all right guys, so let's talk about some real practical takeaways right now for designers and engineers who design boards that are listening today, from a manufacturing standpoint. I'm sure that you see some of the same oversights being made on a consistent basis. Can you give us three to five tips and tricks; things that designer should look out for when best design for manufacturing practices that you guys see. Mihir, why don't you kick off?

Sure, well mine has a bit of a tie-in more on the design side, because that is more of my background especially that's right now, but there's really two main design areas when it comes to stackups and manufacturability. It's the whole RF analog side and then this digital - high-speed digital - side and they're kind of characterized by two very different, but very heavy driving factors. On the RF analog side you generally find your designs more influenced by the necessity for a low dielectric constant, low signal loss, low leakage, and then generally these have a lower layer count so you really need a low and uniform dielectric constant and all these other things.

So your choice of exotic material is gonna be far more important. But you don't necessarily need to work - that's gonna be more of an important bigger part of your cost, and a factor in your design decision. It's just more important to the design. Whereas with a lot of more high-speed digital stuff, these are usually a way higher layer count, and they have all these other things like burying blind vias, really, really tight  traces, and just all these crazy ICs that have like a hundred pins of BGAs that needs all sorts of fan-out etc, and so your costs on that was gonna be way more driven towards the actual manufacturing time and the complexity, and to a lot of people it sounds obvious probably, on this podcast, it is.

But I mean you'd be surprised even as you're designing stuff, people really don't fully understand that buried and blind vias, while they're so easy to throw in on in Altium and just say, this is great, everything routes up perfectly. It does add a lot of cost and time. You could manufacture it, but it's seriously gonna impact your design when you have to do board back, so that's gonna be far more important than generally your choice of material. But obviously, as layer count increases that cost is going to be driven up too. So things like that. You have to take into consideration the differences in the designs and things that engineers are looking at when they're designing them and how that plays out usually in cost and lead time.

There's a lot of trade-offs aren't there?

Yes, that's right.

What would you say Jon?

Well let's tackle unbalanced stackups for a second. Because we get a lot of that-

Pretzels?

Yeah pretty much.

So again, I mean one of the things you need to take into consideration is, you want to have a symmetrical stack up. A lot of time too - especially if they're using hybrids - so they'll put a thick ten core Rogers on the top, and then something thin on the bottom. And again you want to have a balanced stackup, otherwise you're gonna end up with a warped board that to me is a very, very key thing, is to keep it symmetrical. We'll get those stack ups, we'll have to go back and tell them: listen is it possible, the chance of warpage, and try to explain to them.

They need to be symmetrical, so that's something to take into consideration from the get-go. Another one that we get a lot of, and I think I touched base on it a little bit; is to take into consideration the copper weights you call out in the trace and space that you're routing. Because it makes a big difference. So you know, if you're going to be doing a three mil trace with a three mil space, we have to start with quarter ounce copper and then, on the outer layers we have to plate on the surface. If it's on the inner layers, you can do small trace and space on half ounce copper. But once you start getting to two ounce copper and above, you need to be around six and seven mil tracing space.

And we get a lot of that, where we have to go back and tell them: listen your design has four and four you're calling out for one ounce copper, two ounce copper, it's not possible, so we're gonna have to go ahead now and reduce the copper weight, or even worse, that they have to stick with a heavier copper. They have to go redesign their board and lose time.

Explain that, it may be obvious, but explain why that's impossible? I've run up against this a whole bunch of times, but explain because it may not be as obvious as it is to you and me Jon. Why can't you take two ounces of copper and do a four ounce or 4 mil trace or three mil trace, what happens?

There's two scenarios: one is when you give us a design that's 4 mil trace for the 4 mil space between trace and trace, and trace and pad. In order to finish - after etching that trace - we have to do what's called an x-factor. So now we have to increase that trace, X amount, might be one, two, or three mils depending on the copper weight. Because again, having copper it's a higher z-axis. So when you actually have a further distance to etch down to the base of the copper to get down to the laminate, you start losing the feature size as you edge the copper down. So we have to increase that feature size.

So if it's a 4 mil trace and it's 2 ounces of copper, we might have to increase that to a 6 or 7 mil trace. But if your air gap is 4 mils - now we're reducing that air gap down to 2 or 3 mils - which is not manufacturable. So that's where you'll be coming to the problem. And again you also have peel strength. I mean if you have a 3 or 4 mil trace on two ounce copper, I mean the chances of it actually peeling off the laminate is much higher, because you have a certain peel strength. So again, you're not gonna have a small trace on a heavy copper feature for various reasons.

And maybe even in more layman's terms, because this is what helped me understand it when I was doing - because you really don't learn this stuff when you're studying like for engineering or maybe, I don't pay attention.

No, you don't learn it, you don't learn it, you're right.

Simplistic, the thing is people, maybe we could even put this up on the video I don't know if you can add that or add a link? If you picture traces from the side view they're not straight up and down. Right?

Never.

They're at an angle, the reason they kind of look like they're little trapezoids - is because the top of the trace is under the duress of the edge - about the actual chemistry - a lot longer than the bottom. So as it edges down, the top is getting whittled away more than it is at the bottom. So you tend to add an edge like this - if your traces are really close together, you don't have that space in the middle. It looks like you have all the space in the world at the top, when you get towards the bottom of that z-axis, they're actually touching, so you can short out traces that's like the simplest example without getting too deep into everything.

Can you undercut in that scenario or am I thinking of it backwards?

Yeah, undercutting is a term you kind of get on the outer layers, but when you have the dry form you can kind of get it undercut but for the most part it comes to geometry. I mean, you have a very tight tracing space, and first of all, you have limitations on your gap. And even if you could increase the trace big enough, you're gonna end up like Mihir pointed out, with a very small trace on top and a larger trace on the bottom.

Yep it makes sense.

Oh yeah a lot of mechanical electrical kind of issues.

And as well, I have a friend in the industry who was in the board industry for 40 years, and he used to say: it looks good on paper, but he said physics trump's theory right? Like theoretically, it should work right, but he goes: but physics wins out every time. So Mihir, any more kind of practical design for manufacturing tips that you can think of, or Jon, either one of you?

I think we kind of - if people take at least a few tidbits from what they heard today - there'll be an immediate ROI on their time listening, to the success and speed of their design.

Good, well I'm excited to announce that Mihir and the Royal team, will be joining us at AltiumLive as our sponsors. They just let me know that today, so I'm very excited!

So I'm sure you guys will bring some sample boards, or some video and some great assets that they can look at. They can talk to you one-on-one, learn some more tips and tricks, face to face just gather information, which is sort of the magic of AltiumLive. Our goal is to just put the design community in a room with the supply chain, with people that are very knowledgeable, which are veterans in the industry and just let them rub shoulders and start creating new solutions or just collaborating for successful designs and take some of the pain out of it for all of us. So we're delighted to have you guys in San Diego in October.

I really needed an excuse to come to San Diego.

Right! I know, and it's on Coronado Bay, so we're staying at the Loews Coronado Bay Hotel so there's water on three sides of this hotel, and it's in October, which is like, October in San Diego is like heaven. It's like 73 degrees, on the water, so...

You already sold us!

Right it sounds like if you're not coming to learn some design stuff, at least tell your boss you are, and get a nice trip to San Diego... just kidding.

So anyways, we're glad to have you and I'm glad to to get to know you guys a little bit more. I know of Royal but I've never gotten to know you until this last week and so it's been a delight to get to know you both and learn from you. And thanks for sharing your DFM wisdom with our listeners, and we look forward to engaging with you more at AltiumLive, and we'll be sure to share many links.

I think I have eight links to share from Royal and you can dig more into what they do, who they are, and get to know them a little bit better as I have this week. So I'm sure you'll enjoy that. So Mihir, Jon, thank you again so much for joining today. Thanks for joining on our podcast.

Thank you, thank you Judy.

Well until next time please subscribe, join, engage with us at Altium we always enjoy learning from you and learning about what you would like to learn about. We're only making guesses unless you tell us specific topics you would like to learn about. So keep the comments coming. We look forward to engaging with you next time on the OnTrack Podcast. Until then, remember to always stay OnTrack.

See all the show notes here. 

Julie Ellis started her career as a representative for a semiconductor manufacturer after completing her Bachelor’s in Electrical Engineering. Now she is a Field Applications Engineer (FAE) at TTM Technologies, the third-largest circuit board manufacturer in the world. Listen to Julie and Judy discuss seamless global transfer and recommendations on working with offshore fabricators. Learn how to avoid excessive technical queries and how to migrate from prototype to production while optimizing global processes.

Bonus update on AltiumLive: Julie and Carl Schattke will be presenting at AltiumLive 2018, introducing new stackup and impedance tools in Altium Designer 19, so be sure not to miss them!

Show Highlights:

• Julie Ellis did a presentation about Documentation at AltiumLive 2017.
• What is Seamless Global Transfer? Transferring PCB manufacturing from onshore prototype level into production and offshore.
• Julie started her career at Hughes Aircraft, where she completed her Electrical Engineering Bachelor Degree - best decision of her life
• More women (not just circuit board barbie) need to get into STEM!  #WomenInTech. Julie always encourages young women who are interested in STEM, to get a degree that will enable them to move into fascinating jobs with a variety of opportunities.
• Julie’s first job was as a semiconductor manufacturer’s representative; realized she liked the circuit board side of the business more than ICs and migrated over.
• On TTM: It’s like working at Google for circuit boards, I can always call someone for answers about manufacturing best practices.
• Seamless global transfer - the concept is that you aren’t just designing for the prototype but for global manufacturing i.e. avoid 100 technical queries
• What makes migrating over such a difficult process? Because the 6-Sigma 6Ms, are not the same when it transfers over to Asia.
• What are the 6Ms?  Method, Mother Nature “Environmental”, (Man) People, Measurement, Machine, Materials.
• Equipment sets are different for mass production, production lines are longer, there is not as much human oversight, production lines must be scheduled and you cannot stop/start the process. The tolerances are different and they need to be accomodated in the designs.
• Throughput and drilling is always a bottleneck and to reduce this and reduce turn time, mass production sites have tweaked processes to get the highest yield.
• Internationally the general rule is 4 mil lines and spaces on half ounce copper; 10 mil is the most common size drill which results in an 8 mil finish hole size.
• As you go up in copper thickness you need to add a little bit to the pads.
• Blind vias are the ones that are on the outside but end up on an internal layer.
• Buried vias are buried completely inside the board.
• Working with offshore production house while still in prototype development phase.
• Recommendation - design for volume and technology. Qualify the design for the final production region and technology.
• HDI (High Density Interconnect) is anything 0.4 mm pitch and under that has a track running through the pads.
• Judy wants to throw everyone inside a fab house!
• There are at least 30 different processes required to manufacture one 4-layer board.
• Julie works directly with Carl Schattke and they will do a stackup presentation at AltiumLive 2018
• Materials are a significant cost in Asia, whereas here in the states the material is less of a cost (20% in USA, 50% in China).
• With production panels where you're trying to get as many cookies cut, you also need to consider and discuss with your manufacturer the tiny 2x2 inch pieces.

 

Links and Resources:

AltiumLive 2018: Annual PCB Design Summit

AltiumLive 2017 Presentation

TTM’s Interface Between Designer and Fabricator

TTM Technologies Website

Carl Schattke

 

Hi everyone this is Judy with Altium's OnTrack Podcast thanks again for joining. We're happy to have you again.

I would like to continue to invite you to AltiumLive, and I also wanted to put a shout out that we have a call for presentations right now, so if you are an Altium Designer user, and you have some tips or tricks or some kind of breakthrough you've had on design please contact me at Judy.warner@altium.com and I'd love to hear from you ASAP.

We'd love to have you present in San Diego or in Munich. Munich is January 15th through 17th and San Diego we are there October 4th, and 5th so look forward to hearing from you all.

Once again I have another talented and amazing guest with me; Julie Ellis from TTM technologies which as you know is one of the largest board manufacturing companies not only in North America but in the world today so Julie is an FAE at TTM and a very well respected technologist as well as a dear friend.

So Julie, welcome it's good to have you.

Thank you.

So Julie presented at AltiumLive last year on documentation. I've sat through many of her talks and learned much from her, so today we want to talk about what it takes to move jobs from onshore prototype level into production and offshore. She calls it seamless global transfer but before we get into that we'll hear a little bit about Julie's background. We both started in the printed circuit board industry in the 80s - which dates us a little bit I know -  we're not going to say the year we're just gonna go with the round numbers the 80s but I always...

-we were child savants though so we say we were 12

-we were 12

-five

-okay five, yeah we were five.

So Julie just came in and noticed my super cool Career Barbie of 2018, which is a Robotics Engineer Barbie. She's got circuit board patterns on her shirt and a laptop, she kind of looks like us, so we're just gonna call her Circuit Board Barbie and you know blondes... smart ladies you know. Finally, there's a Barbie we can really relate to, and we want women to get into science and STEM and everything - so go for it and aspire to be this Barbie here.

Right on, yeah! Girl Power. We want to get more women in here, and it's just about exposure and motivating others, so we hope that throughout this podcast we inspire maybe somebody to give a girl a little nudge out there. We've enjoyed long enjoyable careers. So, okay Julie before we get started, why don't you kick off and tell our audience a little bit about who you are and your background - how you got into this wonky industry?

I am Julie Ellis; I started as a Design Engineer at Hughes Aircraft Company. I was awarded a student engineering scholarship there, which paid for most of my schooling - the rest of my schooling after I moved out here from Iowa - so I always tell everybody that getting a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering was the best decision I've ever done in my life, so I really do encourage people. If you're interested in Math, Science, Biology - anything - get a good STEM degree so that you can always move forward into interesting, fascinating jobs with a lot of variety of opportunities.

It's a really, really good way to go and I encourage youth and people to get into this kind of field. So I started as - once I graduated from Cal State Fullerton - I stayed on it until the 1990s when things got really tight in the military market, and I was on loan to one department, but I couldn't hire in, so I took the first job that was offered to me as a semiconductor manufacturer’s rep and I had circuit board industry or circuit board experience at Hughes and as a rep I also had a couple of circuit board lines and I really, really liked the printed circuit board side even compared to the ICS and memory sales and everything.  So I ended up migrating toward the printed circuit boards. Fast forward eight years, landed a great job at TTM as a Field Applications Engineer just a little over four years ago and it's been a fantastic opportunity.

TTM is the world's third-largest printed circuit board fabricator, and we would probably be number two if it didn't include Flex because the top two manufacturers have a lot more flex and rigid-flex than we do, so I'm surrounded by experts in this field. It's like living in Google for printed circuit boards because whenever I really want to know something I can go call somebody within my company and find the answer, so it's it's really good working here.

Really it's impressive, and you're right - like you really can go to anyone to get the latest and greatest information on manufacturing best practices which are really, really fun.

So we wanted to talk today about Seamless Global Transfer, and I know that we've talked a lot on this podcast about there's no such thing as the quick and dirty prototype so why don't we just jump off from there? Like what does it mean? So you design a board it's gonna go into production, but you've got deadlines, you need to crank it out really quick, you crank it out really quick and then it's like: hey it works let's migrate offshore!

[laughter]

That’s right - that way exactly.

That would be like the worst case scenario, like you heading for Niagara Falls and not knowing it. So why don't you talk about the myth of the quick and dirty prototype and why you really need to think about global manufacturing up front while you're just developing the circuit board and designing it?

Yes, so Seamless Global Transfer is the concept that you're not just designing for your prototype to get it through a quick turn shop here in the United States in five days. Because I worked - one of the numerous positions - was as a Circuit Board Commodity Manager and a contract manufacturer and a lot of the projects we got had already been tested and proven and developed here in the United States. They sent it to us for mid-level production, we’d try to send the parts overseas, and everybody would come back with a hundred technical queries and say: we can't build it because we don't have this capability over in China. Oh, you need to change this on the design - it's not going to work, and by the time you've given your job to a contract manufacturer your engineers do not want to make changes to the design that they've already tested.

So global seamless transfer plans ahead and thinks about: what is our migration path from quick turn development prototype and taking it over until long-term production and so there's a lot of background that goes into that, and that's what Judy and I wanted to talk about here.

 

So what is it that you think that makes that migrating over makes that a difficult process?

Because the Six Ms: man, machine, materials, environment - which is another M that I can't remember. Everything is not the same when it transfers over to Asia. The equipment sets are different for mass production, the production lines are so much larger and often much more automated, so they can't get the human element,  you know. Watch this, watch that, we don't get the babysitting of our project over in China like we can here. In Asia or China, we have to schedule the production lines, and you can't just interrupt a line there to quickly throw this job in front of everybody else. The schedules are a lot different, the process tolerances are different, and because the process tolerances are different, we have to accommodate those in our designs.

Okay, so there seems to be a perception anyways that once we have a pretty robust design here that we can just kind of throw it over the pond. Why is that, I mean you just talked about some reasons but what are some like tangible snags you're gonna run into if you try to do that?

A lot of it has to do with the drilling. Like over in China most mass production shops, except for the really advanced HDI shops which would all go laser micro vias all the way through, as a rule don't drill using six mil drill bits because they're expensive, they break and they can't be re-sharpened and they break more easily and they have to be changed out twice as often as bigger drill bits. And bigger drill bits can be stacked, or you know, panels can be stacked. So if you can drill two or three panels at one time you've just got your throughput and drilling which is one of the largest bottlenecks in fabrication. You reduce your turn time significantly and time is money. What we're paying for in printed circuit boards besides materials, is the time it takes to get through the processes. So Asia and mass production sites have all tweaked their processes to achieve the highest yields, in the least amount of time, at the lowest cost. But there is a sacrifice to that and sometimes at the sacrifice of we need a better, bigger pad around a drill hole. We're going to stack two or three panels high instead of drilling a six mil drill and our plating processes are a little bit different so we may have to have more edge compensation. Which means that, that will drive a little bit larger requirements for line, width, and space.

So on those, is there a recommended -  that's kind of a broad question - but are there recommended kind of hole sizes and pad sizes and/or trace and space sizes to help on the throughput? If you have it.

Yeah kind of the general rule of thumb internationally, is 4 mil lines and spaces, on half ounce copper is a good start. Anything under that on half ounce copper is going to be a premium. And ten mil is the most commonly sized drill which would drop you down to an eight mill finish hole size. And we'd like to see the hole size plus ten mil for the pad. So if you've got an 18 or an 8 mil finished hole size, we would drill it probably at 10 or 12. We'd like to see at least an 8+, 10 and 18 mil pad on that hole. That's just for a single lamination through-hole in multi-layer printed circuit boards. As we go up in copper thickness, we need to start adding a little bit to the pads.

Okay, and how does that change when you start adding buried and blind vias in?

It depends on the construction. If we're talking like a real traditional blind via board; blind vias are the ones that are on the outside, and they end up on an internal layer. Buried are vias that are buried completely inside the board, and those are different technologies. But so if we're talking standard blind vias where we might have 1 to 6 and then 7 to 12, both being blind via stack-ups, we would actually stack up the material layers 1 to 6, drill and plate, and then we would stack up the materials layer 7 to 12 - drill and plate. And then we would laminate all those together, and then we would drill and plate and etch the outer layers.

So those definitely have different rules because the two outer layers already have plating - additional plating - on the outer layers which means that we have to etch through thicker copper because of the foil plus the plating, and we're going to require slightly bigger line widths and spaces on that particular design.

So one thing we were chatting about as we were preparing for the podcast, that I thought was obvious, but also fascinating, is the idea of working with your - you know, I kind of want to move into now, sort of takeaways for our audience. So you were talking about working with your offshore production house while you're in your prototype development stage which I think is kind of counterintuitive. I don't know, is it?

Actually, if we are in the prototype development stage, it's the best way to do it because if - I always recommend that my clients design for volume. Whatever their final volume is you know, we all know the term DFM, but we really have to take it to heart to figure out, qualify the design for the final production region. Final production technology, whether it's a single lamination or a multi-lamination that's not HDI board like I just brought up, or whether it's an HDI board that has blind and buried vias, but with laser micro vias and advanced HDI board which I categorize as anything 0.4 millimeter pitch and under, that has a track running through the pads. So if you start at your before-prototype stage, qualified the design for the volumes and the technology so that you can pick your final production sites, get the design guidelines for those sites, get the stack up for those sites, and have the stack up and the design guidelines identified before you even route the board.

And if you do that then you're not going to route a whole board, send it over to China, and China is going to say: oh sorry those line widths and spaces, there's not enough space for us to compensate the etch and artwork during etch, we can't build it this way. Go increase your spaces, and if you don't have room on a tightly designed board, or if your pads aren't big enough to achieve the annular ring that you're asking for, your design is no good for manufacturing. So my term is ‘design for volume,’ but it means whatever your volume is. And the reason I'm doing that, or I'm saying 'your volume' is because we have customers that do 200 printed circuit boards a month, and we have customers that do a million circuit boards a month. And the shop that does the million circuit boards a month is not going to take the 200 circuit boards per month order, but they have a much higher level technology - so I can't design for that technology knowing that I could never run it in that particular site.

Right, so it's both volume and technology.

I feel like it's such a good service, in many ways on the prototype end, that we can kind of do push-button ordering now, but I also feel like what's has been lost is how complex the fabrication process is and I just wish -  I want to throw everyone inside a fab shop. Because it's like when you - think you can just push a button and then a package shows up on your door; you know what I'm saying?

That every shop is a little unique is for a variety of reasons. It's not - for reasons that enable different types of technologies - they do it with high intention and lots of precision and all of that, and so you have to design for that shop. It's not just push-a-button and out it comes. Especially the more complex the board gets, so, on the one hand, I'm a fan to get the prototypes out fast, onshore when you can, have maybe available that kind of service. But on the other side, if you're going into volume, I don't know - I think it gives people sort of a false perception of what it's like on the other end.

Talk about - I think you mentioned this stack up; getting this stack up right at the... I really like that DFM right, design for volume, that was kind of a new concept to me that you introduced me to. So you're saying that the stack up should be kind of vetted and worked out with the volume as well as, what kind of board, what kind of technology buried/blind vias, you have the space levels to also work out the stack of details.

Yeah we need all that information to be able to create the stack up because most of those multi-layer boards with VGAs also require controlled impedance like for the high-speed digital that we're doing all the autopilot, industrial controls, medical controllers, everything seems to be working off some sort of USB and PCI, and we need to manage the controlled impedance. Controlled impedances based on line width, space, and how thick the dielectric is and to a little teeny effect, how thick the copper is. So we have to play all these together while creating a stack up and also keeping track of, if we're doing stacked or offset micro vias. We build those from the inside out and just keep adding layers, drill the outer layer down to the next layer, then on both sides then we add two more layers drill the outer layer down to the next layer.

But each time we do that, we have to figure out how we're going to plate those and how thick the plating is going to be and those are process variances are you know. There are process capabilities and variations from site to site, and there can be unintended consequences along the way, like putting additional copper on that outer layers - it's the more complex it gets you have these: if you do this, then this you know, what I'm saying there's so many!

Anybody who has seen my presentations knows that I always say that I'm always splitting hairs. Because a human hair is about 2.5 to 3 mils in diameter, and I'm always worrying about unintended consequences because if a customer comes in and they say: I want thick plating inside my hole walls you know, give me 2 mils of plating inside my hole walls. Well for one I can't think of one fabricator in China that would do that. The IPC standard for class three is 1 mil average plating in the hole walls. But the other thing is, remember whenever we plate inside the hole walls we're also plating the surface, the outer surfaces, the thicker those outer surfaces get, the harder they are for us to etch fine lines and spaces.

Well, why don't you just put it through the machine that just spits out the board Julie?

We need a magic machine!

If I could do that I wouldn't have to be here... I'd be somewhere on my own Island in Bora Bora...

Barbie we need a magic machine to spit out - maybe Barbie will get you to know either a Barbie plane and maybe she'll have a Barbie magic PCB?

That'd be great.

Then you know, in Barbie's world I think we'll just spit it out, I know - it's very complex and by the way. Let me stop right here and say that Julie helps every top brand that you could probably think of in Silicon Valley and beyond; helps them to do their stack-ups and come up with these you know, calculations to help work out all this hair-splitting and she's very skilled and capable. And that's why she will be presenting at AltiumLive with a senior PCB designer who she works with directly which is Carl Schattke, I cannot tell you what brand he works for, or I would get in trouble, but suffice it to say he's in Silicon Valley and works for the top electric car manufacturer and I am delighted that Julie and Carl will present on stack up on this very subject, and you couldn't get two more qualified people - I’m so excited that you're doing that.

Thanks, we are too - I think it will be fun.

It'll be really fun, and so they're so used to being deep in the weeds they'll be such a resource.

So before you move on though, it's not just the stack up, it's also the pad stack line, widths, and spaces that need to be provided to the customer with the stack up. Because we want to make sure that they know all of those design requirements before the board guy starts routing everything.

You talked about DFM and DRC's for final site and prep for the prototype. Is that - I just wrote myself a note here - have we covered most of that here?

Yeah, we have for the stack up and the design rules. But one thing I'd like to bring up is everybody's trying to stay competitive and because of the processes and the way that production panels are laid out in Asia. Materials are a significant cost over in Asia compared to here in the prototype shops. Here we pay for the quick turns, for the setups and things like that which are insignificant compared to those. So the material here is only about 20% of the average cost compared to 50% of the cost in Asia.

So if you can also plan your size to fit well up on a production panel so that like, imagine an 18 by 24 inch production panel, and you're trying to get as many cookies cut on that production panel, but you also want to think if you've got really small pieces your assembler is not going to be able to load those tiny little 2x2 inch pieces. Their conveyor equipment can't hold them, and it would take them forever to go through those linearly, so another really cost-saving exercise is to work with both your fabricator and your assembler to come up with a multiple up-array for smaller boards and also make sure that you know whether you've got enough clearance on the two long sides of your array, or your printed circuit board for the parts to be conveyed through assembly.

There's sometimes parts hanging off the edge which really makes things fun.

Yeah and that needs to be planned for in advance, whether: do you need an extra rail on a leading edge, because there's a big connector hanging there, or is the assembler going to put that on after the fact? But if you also take into account design for assembly - put all your test points on the board because once the board is designed and you can access test points, nobody's going to be able to go back in and design an in-circuit test fixture or functional test fixture and unpick those plates.

So don't just design for volume. Like I said really, truly design for DFX, design for fabrication, assembly, test, and long-term reliability.

Good, good, good, good advice. So can you give some real-life examples from your real life career? We won't name names of brands but suffice it to say there; you work with major consumer brands that if we could say names everyone would recognize them and tell us some of the, you know challenges that they had by actually not thinking about some of these ideas ahead. And these are the brightest of the brightest - I think what we want to share here is, everybody is challenged in this area, right? It's a challenging area, so we're not saying, oh we're so smart, and you know the audience what do they know? No, the top designers, the top printed circuit board designers almost in the world,  are challenged by some of these issues. So just talk about some real-life examples and how it went wrong or how it went right?

 

Okay one real-life example in the last quarter was a major commercial customer like you said, they had worked with a - probably a Silicon Valley shop - they built their boards, tested them out, proved them, and they wanted to go into mass production. Their start date is like August, to start delivering mass production so that they can you know, start shipping their product. Well it turns out they had a design that had a six mil drill - mechanical drill through a standard thickness board with a ten mil pad and when I said, remember I said like, do your finish hole size plus ten for the pad, this only gave the hole size plus four, and it wasn't enough to make sure that people wouldn't totally drill you know, have too much because of misregistration material movement.

Every time you add a process, you add misregistration. Nobody in Asia would take this business, and we actually had to help the customer convert the whole design to another via structure type to be able to pull it off. And the way this happens is one of two things: if you're a major customer and you go to a, you know like a smaller shop, they are going to be so hungry for your business they're not going to say, no, no, no - we can't do that. They are going to babysit every single panel and put them in the drill machine by hand and make darn sure that they're going to get that for you.

Or there are probably a few select super, super advanced shops that are just doing onesie-twosie jobs and they can meet these kind of requirements, and these tight process tolerances, using direct imaging everywhere you know, using single headed drills for the production panel rather than five or six spindles that we use. And so it's not even saying that that particular circuit board fabricator was a bad designer - it's just that they're only designing for their site capabilities and probably pushing technology to make a big customer happy.

Right, and that may be their niche, that may be their niche market - but again they're not thinking particularly ahead, they're trying to help their customer be - - so it's kind of myopia. They're just designing for that, and they're great shops, they're great shops very, very capable, but not unless you tell them up front or you start this conversation up front it can go bad like that. On a consumer product that, okay it's August let's go into production and then wait, stop. Stop everything and the cost, the headache to that customer, they have to respin the board, run the protos over again and do all the testing over again. And now, schedules are lost, time to market is lost, you know so that it can become really painful very quickly and very costly.

Yeah very costly.

And I had another similar design that my customer had a design with 5 mil mechanical drills and 9 mil pads and most shops I know don't really drill mechanical 5 mils. So that was a tough one for him to go into production. So that's a real common example. The wrong size drill with the wrong size pad, or one that I just saw recently, was a really thick dielectric that still needed a blind hole and it was planned on being a laser hole because they wanted some big RF circuits on the outer layer. Which means they needed a thick dielectric and normally if you're using laser micro vias you have very thin dielectrics. And I was able to confirm that we can do it over in China but it's - it wouldn't have been my first choice for a design you know, and it kind of set me back but - but we were capable on that one.

Yeah so, you have a saying that I like which is: pick your experts wisely. So tell us what that means? What you mean when you say that; pick your experts wisely?

Well if you're going to listen to an expert, they're going to segue you to the path that they know, and if you pick the wrong expert and they take you down a garden path that nobody else can fabricate. I know that there are shops that they'll say: let's do this and let's have the customer design it this way because then they can't go anywhere else. It's a way to guarantee their business.

I can confirm that you know, I've seen entirely that. It locks you into that job.

It locks you into that job, and you know, I can see both sides. I'm like this ambidextrous Gemini so I can see both sides of the story. I can see an internal engineer wanting to secure future business for their location. But on the other hand, it may not be good long-term for the customer. And I'm in it for the long haul you know, I've been both sales and technical support, and a lot of times I have to work with customers to make slight modifications and design engineers; these are your babies. You don't want to have somebody coming in from the outside and saying, you know what, I really can't quite achieve that. Can we tweak your design a little bit? Who wants to hear that?

But if I have credibility, as somebody who's thinking for the customer, for the fabricator, and working towards the best solution long-term. I've - you develop trust, and you can get better work done. So, I choose to do the good path even though it probably means that I tell everybody I'm a conservative designer and so that means that if you design a stack up - if I design your stack up, give you the design rules, if you can meet them chances are one of my competitors can also do the work. Yeah, but on the other hand you know, the relationship most of the time means a lot.

Right it does, and not everybody has both the technical depth that you have, the integrity you have, and you have reached to top, top fabrication experts in the world. So that gives you a really broad perspective which I appreciate.

So Julie thank you so much. This has been so great, and I feel like we've just scraped the surface but I would like to invite our listeners, if you are available, to come to AltiumLive and Julie will dig into - she and Carl Schattke have an hour-long presentation plus QA and, will be introducing some new stack up and impedance tools in Altium Designer 19, and so they will be giving a really rich treatment of the subject of stack up. So if you want to hear more from Julie, come on out to AltiumLive, and we would love to have you. Thanks again Julie, it's always - I always learn from you every-

- - thank you.

Every time we talk.

So there is one other thing that we should talk about.

What should we talk about?

Okay the other background of seamless global transfer is that if you're working with a company that has multiple sites like DTM - we can take that - we can take the lessons learned from the prototypes, and transfer the data, and transfer the lessons learned over to the final fab site, so that it's not a new learning curve once it goes overseas. And that's a real advantage about really paying attention to this.

Right, which is a good point.

Yeah.

Do you transfer the learning curve along with just the data files right?

That's right yeah.

So good point. Okay, thanks for inserting that again. This has been Judy Warner with Altium's OnTrack podcast, and Julie Ellis of TTM.

We look forward to you joining us again next time. Until then, remember to always stay OnTrack.

Hybrid construction is a huge growth area with a lot of opportunity for PCB designers. Learn from Chris Hunrath, VP of Technology at Insulectro, as he provides several valuable insights about the latest in hybrid construction trends. Get facts from an expert in material properties and how to use and combine them in the PCB assembly process. Learn more about polyamide film and its properties, how to use the FR4 as glue, and many more ways to make hybrid construction more familiar and approachable. Join us in this week’s OnTrack Podcast where we bring insights from the manufacturing floor to PCB design teams around the world.

 

Show Highlights:

• Chris will be a speaker at AltiumLive in October, so be sure not to miss him there, the title of his talk will be announced very shortly
• Chris sheds more light on the topic of inductance and plane inductance which was recently discussed by Rick Hartley in our Podcast: What to Avoid in 4 and 6-Layer Stack-ups
• Embedded capacitors: one of the things that you don't get from embedded capacitor material or planner capacitor materials, is high capacitance, so an individual component will give you a relatively high capacitance level
• There is a capacitance shortage right now too
• Also, there’s a desire to remove surface capacitors for several reasons. You get rid of the vias, you get rid of the inductance and increase the circuit density
• Even when capacitance per square inch is small you don't need as high a capacitance, because you're getting rid of a lot of the in-plane inductance and that's exactly what Rick talked about in his podcast
• Nowadays, with thinner materials, Rick’s recommendation makes sense
• Polyamide film, typically used for flex circuits can be used in a rigid board because it has a thin dielectric layer and has a very high dialect for standing voltage and you can make it really thin
• You can build it into a rigid board and get the properties you need to get rid of those capacitors which leads into hybrid construction, how do you process them?
• The building blocks used to make flex circuits. If you're using an Acrylic which we talked about in a previous podcast laminates its standard FR4 temperatures. True Polyamide films laminate at much higher temperatures like 600° F.
• You can't expose FR4 to those temperatures so in the case of very high capacitance materials you would use the FR4 as the glue and you would just use the core as its print match it, bond treat it and then build it into your FR4 part
• You can’t mix B-stages in the same spot when you laminate that all together the FR4 would be broken down
• Materials on the High Speed Digital side should also have the RF properties and you want to be able to mix those materials so it's becoming very popular
• Hybrid Constructions - a growth area - it’s become like gourmet cooking - there is new media to work with - a material science based area
• Components typically added to outside of PCB are now being embedded inside the PCB
• Solder paste reflow and interconnects can be a downside
• The new materials allow you to do things you couldn’t do before.
• Coins can be used to add inductance if you need to just for heat sinking purposes.
• Bleeding printed electronic technology into PCBs: DuPont have a very interesting liquid polyamide technology that cures at 300° Fahrenheit which is very low and we're exploring the opportunity to use that in lieu of solder mask. It would just be screened on.
• If someone needs information on Hybrid Constructions or sintering paste, please email Chris.

Links and Resources:

Chris’ email address

 

Listen to Chris Hunrath’s previous episodes:

Why is Spread Glass popular?

Flex and Material Sets

Paste Interconnects and Paste Sintering

View all show notes and VIDEO here.

 

Hi everyone. This is Judy Warner with Altium's OnTrack Podcast. Welcome back, here we are again with your friend and mine, Chris Hunrath from Insulectro who's going to teach us about paste sintering today, which I don't know much about, but we're going to learn about it together. But before we get started, remember to hit all the typical Altium social media platforms Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter please follow me on LinkedIn and also remember we are recording on YouTube as well as Podbean and we can be found on all your favorite podcast apps.

Alright, so today we're going to talk about - I don't even know how to set this up entirely cause I'm just as much as a student. So Chris, welcome back! Thank you again, and I know this isn't a new technology - it's just not one that has crossed my path. So tell us about what paste sintering is and what the applications are, and benefits to our designers that are listening today?

Okay, interconnect technology, as you mentioned is not new, what's happened recently though is there's been some new material developments that make it more feasible for the circuit boards. Certainly in ceramic fire technology, metal - powdered metals have been used to make interconnects and traces and circuits on ceramic circuit boards, but those fire at 850-plus degrees Celsius, which would obviously destroy most PCB materials so there's some new technologies out now. There are different kinds of pastes that are used for interconnects. The one that we work with, and the one that we promote, is something from a company called Ormet, and their material is interesting because it sinters at one temperature and then it forms a new alloy with a higher melting point.

Okay I feel like we need to back up and explain what paste interconnect technology actually is. Like how it's performed and then we can go into the material science part just so I can keep up, Chris I want to be able to keep up.

So multi-layer PCBs - also not new - typically what you do is, you print and edge any number of layers, you drill and then you plate. Typically electroless copper, to make the non-conductive surfaces conductive, and then you build up the thickness with electrolytic copper.

Mmm-hm.

And some people call it a semi-edited process, because you are using the electroless first as a seed layer. There are some other technologies used to make that dielectric surface conductive, and then you build up with electrolytic copper and so that's how you link the layers of the z-axis.

So if you think of a classically - as a circuit board - as a web of foils printed and etched, all your XY  connections, and then the drilled holes - whether they're laser drilled, blind vias, or drilled through holes, the plating links everything in the z-axis. Now one of the challenges when you do that, is you're consuming real estate at all the layers. So let's say you have a 12 layer multi-layer - relatively simple multi-layer by today's standards - but you need to connect layer 1 to layer 10 you've taken up the real estate in all the other layers - you can't route circuits in those places, because there's a via in the way, unless you wanted them to connect to that via and they're part of that net. So there's a term called any layer HDI - I don't know if you're familiar with that term? Basically it means you could put a via anywhere you want in any layer. Nowadays that's done typically by what we call build up technology. So you start with a core of some sort - again it could be double sided, it could be a multi-layer core, and then you sequentially build layers and you only go one layer deep with a laser drill sometimes two - depending on the design - but that's not true for any layer.

Anyway, you go one layer deep you plate, you print and etch, and you do it again and again and that allows you to put vias almost anywhere you want in any layer, the downside is, it's almost like building multiple circuit boards. So the cost really starts to increase. And of course you're putting the board through multiple lamination cycles and that has some undesirable material side effects depending on the material. Some materials can withstand three lamination cycles, some six, some ten, but it is hard on the materials to go through that lamination process, over and over again.

Right.

Especially electric phenolics, which are very common for lead-free assembly, because they're relatively economic and they're also -  they also will survive lead pre-assembly, but they tend to get more brittle every time they see a thermal cycle though, so that causes some issues too. So what paste interconnects allow you to do, is change the sequence in which the vias are formed. So instead of laminating drilling and plating you can actually drill, add the paste, and then laminate, so it changes the build sequence and this is important both for the fabricator and the designer to understand what that means. So typically what you would do is, you would take a B stage layer of some sort; you can either drill it and paste, fill it with what we call a postage stamp process or you could pre-tack it, vacuum tack it at low temperature to a core of some sort, or substrate, laser drill through the B stage, apply the paste and then when you laminate the paste interconnects, the layers in the z-axis - you could literally take a piece of prepreg, laser drill it with a stencil or with a Mylar Stencil, I'll talk about how that works in a little bit - apply the paste, remove the Mylar laminate between two copper foils, and now you've got interconnects inside a double-sided cork.

That's cool.

So then if you print and etch that, now you've got a core with connections between the layers with no visible vias; they're all internal. Yeah there's some technology around the paste and again we can talk about that, in a little bit.

So how is it applied - is it squeegeed in?

Yeah.

Okay, just like with a silkscreen?

Well no screen - so what typically what you do is, you apply a 1 mm Mylar mask to the B stage and you tack it simultaneously. Then when you drill through the Mylar and the prepreg B stage to get down to your copper features, then you apply the paste, and the Mylar's your mask, and then you remove that just prior to lamination.

And that stays inside the hole? It doesn't just I don't know the consistency of it. My mind was - pictured it just wanting to drop out of that hole - but it must have some kind of stability?

Yeah it's a liquid and there is a tack right. There are a number of ways to do this, but the most common method is to laser drill, apply the paste, dry the paste... you would do it a second time to top it off and then when you remove the Mylar, the liquid paste stays on top of the paste that's already been applied. Then you dry it again, then you go to laminate.

Does it air dry or do you have to cure it what do you do?

You don't really cure it because it's metal powder - metal powder based - so there isn't really a polymer matrix. Unlike print electronic sinks - which is a again another story - you would just dry off any of the carrier solvent used for the application process. It is a liquid - well it's a paste, not a liquid - but but when you dry off the the solvent that's in it; which is less than 10 percent by weight, then it's just powdered metal and that's how it makes a connection. So think about this right, you've seen a lot of PCB designs - imagine a 32 layer board, which most shops can do, but it's not at the low end of technology. Imagine splitting it up to two 16 layer multi layers right?

A lot easier.

A lot easier to build and then you just paste them together at the end, and depending on the design, you can electrically test each half and only use the good ones. So your risk is  light.

Oh, right.

There's a lot of advantages to this. Or what if you want to put together three 16 layer multi layers, or four, or 18 or four 18 layer multi layers - it's been done you know. Now a shop; instead of trying to build a 72 layer multilayer - if they're building 18 layer components - it's a lot more manageable.

Hmm, that totally makes sense. So you explained some of the benefits -  it's a nightmare, and you've seen, we've all seen these cross-sections of these crazy stackups with all the sequential LAM and drilling cycles and all of that. And then - and also kind of an unintended consequence you can get, is you can - from a performance standpoint - if you do enough of that right can't you get excess copper on the surface features?

Yes - that's a very good point. So in other words, if you're going through many plating cycles depending on how you break that up and you're trying to meet a wrap requirement,  that could definitely add up and make it - make fine line etching more difficult there's a lot of - there are some some drawbacks to traditional processing and then with with an Ormet style process, or a paste interconnect style process, you can eliminate some of those things even with an RF design.

Let's say you have very sensitive surface features and you don't want to play with that layer. You might want to put on the surface finish, the nickel gold, but you don't want to put any additional copper - you want just the original foil copper. You could do that with this paste because you could create that as, almost like a double sided board, and then bond it to the rest of the stack up at the very end, and you're done.

Interesting. So I think you mentioned too, there's some good signal integrity benefits, did we cover that I don't recall?

No, so one of the things that a lot of designs call for is something called back drill. So you're familiar with that, so you do the back drilling to get rid of the unwanted copper. So again, in my earlier example let's say you're connecting layer 1 and 10, and let's just say it's a 22 layer - 26 layer multi-layer. You're going to have a lot of extra copper metal in that via that you really don't need or want. So common technology is to back drill down to layer 10. Now of course drilling to that precise location or depth, to remove the copper up to layer 10, but not beyond. It can cause a reliability concern that's a bit of a challenge. So there's those issues.

What you can do with the paste technology is let's just separate that board at layer 10, and not put a via on that half  that goes from layer 11 to whatever the other layer is and you're done. So you can eliminate back drilling and the parasitic effects of having that extra copper and the via so that's another application. So there's some signal integrity benefits, there are some RF applications, there are some high layer cap, multi-layer applications, but also many layer HDI applications; it really depends on how you design it and use the paste.

So if you're a designer what kind of design considerations do you need to make up front?

Okay, my recommendation would be is: think about the design, think where it would make sense to split up the layers and provide the most design benefit. Generally speaking, we like the via to have a one-to-one or less, aspect ratio. Now that might sound restrictive, but it's only in that one B stage layer.

So then that's an important consideration. So in other words, if I have 5 mm of B stage, I won't want my via to be 5 mm or larger where I'm going to apply the paste. It has to do more with the paste physics and how it fills the via and then of course the pad, the receptor pad that you're putting the laser drill via on, needs to be a sufficient size for where the paste doesn't have the opportunity to run on one side or the other of the pad.

So we do like an annular ring around the via, that's going to have a lot to do with how well you can register your laser drilling, usually that's pretty good. The other consideration is, the B stage you use, spread glasses - bringing up spread glass again. Spread glass is good, because it tends to keep the paste corralled, whereas if you have an open weave and that prepreg resin's melting and flowing and during the lamination cycle the paste could run to that area. So spread glass is better. Higher viscosity resins tend to be better. We like low flow prepregs. So those are some of the design considerations.

Another design consideration is - and I've seen this happen before - where if you have a ground area and you're making a lot of paste interconnects along a wide track. You don't want to put the paste interconnect to the edge of the track because what ends up happening is, during lamination, the resin wants to flow off the surface of the track down the sides to fill - hydraulic effect, and it's going to move the paste with it. I've seen vias actually move during lamination. So just some common-sense things. Keeping in mind that it's the B stage where your interconnect is. You want to make sure you put that in some good locations, and in that particular case all they had to do is, go back and shift the vias a little bit to one side and then everything was fine. So it's just those kinds of things. Certainly they could contact us, we can give them some design hints and I can give you some literature to go along with this video or podcast.

Yeah, yeah, very good. Ormet and the paste interconnect - paste sintering - has been around for a little while. What's been the sort of acceptance of it industry-wide? Is it being widely accepted, is it just on certain applications?

It's been around a long time. It was primarily used for quick-turn mic review work, and also large format boards where you're literally stitching very large boards together so you can - again the idea is you can make boards that are nearly finished and then electrically interconnect them. The nice thing about the Ormet paste is it doesn't melt at reflow assembly.

Hmm, so it changes chemically right, so once the sintering is done then it doesn't change, then it doesn't morph and heat?

What attracted us to this technology over some other paste interconnects - because there's other processes where you would apply a paste of some sort and then make a connection with pressure in the z-axis - but what interested us in the Ormet material is: the paste melts at one temperature and alloys - so the paste is basically copper particles with a tin alloy powder. When the tin alloy powder melts - and the melting starts at about 130° Celsius, it starts reacting with the copper and forms an alloy with the copper instead. What's interesting about the Ormet material is, it's alloying with the inner layer coppers as well, on the PCB layers. So we have a metallurgical joint, not just a pressure or contact connection.

So it's - and unlike, the tin lead or lead-free alloys and solder, the melt - the new melting point, when it forms an alloy with copper is one phase is 415°, the other is 630° Celsius. So it's not going to remelt that assembly. So it's a permanent connection, so really the paste applications from other technologies like flip chip and whatnot packages where you didn't want to have a secondary or - if you have a secondary reflow operation - you didn't want to have any more remelt. It has some applications there. Or a down hole assembly is another application where the board might be subjected to the temperatures near the solder melting point is another good application for this material.

So that's what interests us because you know when a board's in use, it heats up the z-axis expansion with other types of pastes interconnects, you have a resistance change every time the board is heated even from, let's say 40, 50, 60° Celsius in normal use, not even in any kind of environment - parts of the board would heat up from the components and you'd have a change in resistance, and that's what this is designed to circumvent because it forms that metallurgical bond with the copper inner layers.

Interesting.

So yeah it's a different technology than the paste you would use in printed electronics.

Okay well that's been fascinating. Again I feel like a newcomer to old technology but - and I've known about Ormet that I think got acquired by Merck now, but I've just never had someone sit down and explain it to me. So thank you for doing that.

90 layer multi layers people are getting - 90...

What!

Yes, 90 layer multi layers with paste interconnects yeah.

That's crazy, I didn't even know a 90 layer board existed I guess.

Yeah I've only really seen them into the 60s I guess personally, so.

Yeah you know, one common design was a 72 layer multi-layer, again made out of eighteen layer components, and  one of the things with the chip tests the ATE companies, they built some high layer count multi layers and you need a lot of IOs, there's a trend to go to wafer level testing were you’re testing the entire wafer. You need lots of interconnects and that's one way to get there, is to use the Ormet paste to put in lots of layers. So we're seeing more interest in it lately, and I think that's one of the reasons why the technology hasn't taken off until now, is because there just wasn't the demand.

Right ahead of its time maybe a little bit...

Yeah.

Well, I know you've shared with me some cross-sections or I think you did, and so please be sure to share those with us and we'll put those up on our website and we can share your website and Ormet or Mark's website, so the designers can get more information. Is there any place else besides your two websites that you would recommend for more information?

You know I've mentioned HDPUG (High Density Packaging Users Group) in the past - they're actually contracting some PCB manufacturers to make some HDI test vehicles with paste interconnects. So there's going to be some data - anybody who's an HDPUG member will have some access to some really good reliability data and they're pretty complex boards so it'll really push the technology but for breaking up big thick and ugly PCBs, that's pretty well-established.

Yeah very cool. Okay well thank you. So tell us about that fish on the wall behind you?

[laughter]

So it was a gift from my sister, actually it's made from recycled materials so there's an old PCB cut up on there, and the old spark plug wire, and a few other odds and ends. Some artists put together actually I didn't buy it; my sister bought it on Catalina Island and somehow we went out there as a family trip and somehow she smuggled it off the island and gave it to me just before she headed back to Virginia. So it was kind of cool.

Oh that's fun a good throwback to your diver self.

Yeah so - just the last thing on Ormet, is 'paste don't plate'.

[laughter].

Is that their tagline or is that yours?

Actually that's their tagline. We were sharing it with the IPC shows, but another nice benefit to the Ormet - which I didn't mention earlier is - there's no electrolysis, no plating processes in these interconnect layers so it circumvents all that.

Which is like bizarre for me to think about but...

Yeah but if you're capacity constrained, no plating, that's another benefit.

Well thanks again this has been really good. If you have anything else juicy to share with the listeners just email it over before we get this one up.

Okay.

And thanks again for this one. Now I know we've talked about exploring down the road a little bit on copper foil, integrity issues, and also printed electronics. So I'm sure I'll hit you up again soon Chris.

Yeah definitely. I would like to talk about some of the material science behind printed electronics and I know you guys are working on some new design tools and print electronics; there are a lot of different ways to use that in electronics... I should back up, but there's a lot of different ways to use conductive inks in electronics there are so many different versions of the inks.

Which is another subject I know nothing about so it'll be good. I'll be a student with our listeners and, I know they're out there, I know what conductive inks are, but as far as all the applications, all the different materials available, that just seems like something that's in writing a lot, that people are really turning towards a solution.

Lots of new technologies are coming out in that space and it's going to be fun to watch it all.

Yeah yeah it will be.

Okay Chris, thanks for another good podcast and we'll see you soon.

Thanks for having me.

My pleasure. Again this has been Judy Warner with the OnTrack Podcast and Chris Hunrath from Insulectro, we'll see you next time - until then - always stay OnTrack. 

Meet Andy Shaughnessy, Managing Editor of iConnect007’s Design007 Magazine. Listen in to learn about all the resources available to PCB designers from this industry publication, website and e-book publisher brought to you by iConnect007 which publishes of a variety of specialized publications relative to the electronics industry. Learn more about what resources are available, as well as where you can meet Andy and other members of the iConnect007 team.

 

Show Highlights:

• It was the PCB Design Magazine, now it is Design007
• Resources on the iConnect 007 Website: THE DAILY NEWS, SMT WEEK, INSIDE DESIGN, MIL/AERO007 WEEKLY, SMT007 Magazine, PCB007 Magazine, DESIGN007 Magazine and FLEX007 Magazine
• Design for Manufacturing (DFM) Ebook
• Next up: PCB West in Santa Clara, and AltiumLive 2018: Annual PCB Design Summit

 

Links and Resources:

Design007

PCB 007

SMT

PCB China

Flex

Register for Newsletters

iConnect 007 on Twitter

Micro Ebook Library

Design for Manufacturing (DFM) Ebook

AltiumLive 2018: Annual PCB Design Summit

 

Meet Andy Shaughnessy, Managing Editor of iConnect007’s Design007 Magazine and learn all about AltiumLive 2018: Annual PCB Design Summit as he interviews Judy Warner in this special bonus episode of the OnTrack Podcast. Learn everything there is to know about AltiumLive from Judy and Andy and find out what Altium has planned for the PCB design community.

 

Links and Resources:

AltiumLive 2018: Annual PCB Design Summit

Ted Pawela Podcast

Design007

Meet the Keynotes at AltiumLive 2018

REGISTER for AltiumLive 2018: Annual PCB Design Summit

 

View all show notes and VIDEO here: https://resources.altium.com/altium-podcast/let-them-build-robots-all-about-altiumlive-pcb-design-summit

 

Sini Rytky, VP of Product Management at TactoTek, and Tuomas Heikkilä, Senior Electronics Designer, join Judy Warner on the OnTrack Podcast to talk about Injection Molded Structural Electronics, or IMSE, the integrating of electronics inside 3-dimensional electronics to create smart surfaces. TactoTek is a leading provider of solutions for 3D structural electronics, enabling the integration of printed circuitry and discrete electronic components into injection molded plastics. Listen to how TactoTek and Altium are combining forces to research and develop design rules for this entirely new technology. Learn more about this and how you can meet them at AltiumLive 2018.
 

To see all the show notes and VIDEO click here. 

 

 

*This communication may contain forward-looking statements about strategies, products, future results, performance or achievements, financial and otherwise. These statements reflect management’s current expectations, estimates, and assumptions based on the information currently available to us. These forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve significant risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause our actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements contained in this communication, such as a failure to add previewed functionality to our products or the potential impact on our financial results from changes in our business models.

 

Transcript:

Hey everyone this is Judy with Altium's OnTrack podcast. Thanks for joining again. I have two amazing guests hailing all the way from Finland today and I look forward to sharing them with you. Before then I ask you to please connect with me on LinkedIn, on Twitter I'm @AltiumJudy and Altium is on all the traditional social media channels Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

So today we have a look into the future of technology with TactoTek and I have two wonderful guests, Sini Rytky and Tuomas Heikkilä. So we've been working here at Altium closely with Sini, Tuomas and their whole team there and we are excited to show you, kind of this cutting-edge technology, and the amazing things that they're doing in Finland to advance a whole litany of advanced electronics manufacturing and technology and while we continue to work feverishly on AD19 and getting in the traditional functions that you would like, I wanted to give you a sneak peek on something more for the future. This is not going to be in AD19, but we continue to work together, sort of on a research kind of function, with these two and all of TactoTek. So I'm excited for you to learn more about them - so let's get started. Sini, Tuomas, welcome.

Thank you Judy for having us here.

So Sini, I think I'm going to start with you. Can you tell us a little - well before we get going, why don't you both introduce yourselves and tell us your background in the industry and what exactly your role entails at TactoTek?

Sure, so my name is Sini Rytky and I'm heading the Product Management at TactoTek. In practice it means that my team is responsible for technology productization and roadmapping and go to market strategy and planning. And also technology partnership development. My personal background: I am a Software Major, but spent about 20 years in mostly hardware driven business. In electronics  manufacturing and test automation in consumer electronics and automotive industries. It is my first podcast ever - I'm very excited!

How about you Tuomas?

Okay so my name is Tuomas Heikkilä and I'm the Senior Hardware Specialist and I have worked for TactoTek, for almost six years now. All of this time I have designed and developed. I oversee technology from an electronics point of view. So my background: I have worked also in the mobile phone industry before joining TactoTek.

Along those lines Tuomas, can you tell us about - for those that aren't familiar what the acronym IMSE means?

IMSE means Injection Molded Structural Electronics.

Very good because I know we'll be using that term a lot and because you guys are sort of cutting-edge I thought there's maybe some people in the audience that might not be familiar with that term. So Sini, let's just jump right in. Can you talk about - I'm asking you three really big things: the technology, the market, and really the problems it solves for technologists in the marketplace?

Sure to start off with the technology; like Tuomas said, our technology is called Injection Molded Structural Electronics which we call IMSE. To put it simply in one sentence, we are integrating electronics inside three-dimensional plastics, and as a result we can create smart surfaces with electronic functionality such as capacitive touch functions, illuminated icons and wireless connectivity such as Bluetooth and near-field communication.

So when we look at traditional electro-mechanics assembly, they typically consist of one, or a multi PCB structure along with the surrounding mechanics and from a design point of view the challenge is that many times it is restricted with, for example, dimensional constraints or space limitations or weight limitations.

And then from a manufacturing point of view; they typically have a large number of individual toolings and assembly phases. So with IMSE we can solve many of the problems for traditional electronics and mechanics, but we can also create totally new use cases and integrate electronics in places where traditional electronics and mechanics fail to do so. So, if we just briefly visit our process. We start by printing colored and conductive inks on flexible films, and continue by mounting surface mounted electronic components and continue by forming that film along with the components into a three-dimensional shape. And then finally, we injection mold all of that into a single piece assembly. So when we look at the benefits the IMSE part structure - if we compare it with traditional electronics and mechanics - we can save up to, I'd say, 90% of the assembly depth, save up to...

Wow!

-yeah that's a big number.

That's a big number yeah, and up to 80% of the part weight and at the same time, of course, we're enabling beautiful, seamless, smart surfaces and we can create - we talk a lot about point of views at TactoTek, and by that we mean, that IMSE enables intuitive user interfaces. So no longer do we have to have a complex HMI with all of the centralized functions, but we can create point of view functionalities. So for example, integrating capacitive touch enabled volume control on top of speaker modules.

So those are some of the - let's say challenges and benefits, that we've seen. And then when we look at the market, so obviously, this is a cross-industry technology, so there's -  we see a lot of benefits from various industries. A very common application for IMSE is a human machine interface and we are currently working, for example, with the automotive segment; creating for example door trims and overhead control panels, appliances control panels, and we also work quite a lot with variables. So creating electronics in textiles...

Oh wow.

-yeah and that's actually...

I actually didn't know you were doing wearables, or that had escaped me in previous conversations, that's amazing!

Yes, yeah-yeah so the fact actually, that we are injection molding everything into a single part assembly, it also means that it's fully encapsulated, which means it's protected from debris and moisture. So yeah, so definitely when you think about electronics in fabrics our structures - we call wash and go, so they are very durable, and they can withstand like dozens of cycles and washing machines.

Wow.

Yeah, yeah. And then maybe a couple of words about the business model. So we are licensing our technology for IMSE design manufacturing and validation. Which means that our customers, they can both benefit from the possibilities that IMSE creates in product design, but they can also enhance the vertical integration in a way that they can perform functions, that were previously outsourced, and further extend their offering for customers.

That's unbelievable - and I can - - my mind is just spinning with the kind of enablers that I can see, that this is going to bring over time. So thank you for sharing all that. On a more practical level, Tuomas and you know, the people who are listening to this podcast are typically engineers and printed circuit board designers. Can you talk a little bit about the kind of practical effects on PCB designers and the implications they would have, from a design standpoint, in designing what you're calling smart structures?

Yes. So if we first compare traditional PCB design and IMSE design there are few main differences which come from materials that we are using in IMSE technology and also the 3D shape. So if we first consider those materials: the substrate of printed film circuitries are the difference. So in IMSE technology we have quite a large patene plastic film, and if they convert this for rigid PCP - there is a big difference.

Yeah.

Another thing is trace resistance. So when we are printing traces using silver inks there is always some resistance, so we can never think that this resistance is zero.

Right.

So we have to always consider this in our design. Of course it depends on the ink used but the typical resistance differs between printed silver ink trace and pcb solid copper trace - roughly 100 times bigger. So there is a huge difference in resistances as well.

Okay.

The third, which is really related to materials is dielectric. In PCBs there is no need to design, especially dielectrics, between two conductive traces but in IMSE design we need always to design a dielectric layer between two conductive layers and also, as I earlier mentioned, this 3D surface - I would like to highlight this as well - because it means that when the final shape of the product is somewhat kind of the correct 3D shape.

This means that the printed circuit would need to be designed a bit different than any PCBs.

So I'm gonna ask you more about those materials in a minute. But I was really impressed when I first saw it. I really thought it was a one- or two-sided only circuit structure and I'm really impressed to find out that no, it can be multi-layer and like you said Sini, completely encapsulated, so that opens up a lot of opportunities I think. So Sini, can you talk more specifically about the materials that are used for structural electronics?  I know Tuomas just mentioned the silver inks, the dielectric materials, that you can do multi layers. Just the materials overall are really different, so can you talk a little bit about those please?

Mm-hmm - yeah and I would say the key essence of our technology is really the know-how and understanding, of not just the individual materials, but the four material stack ups. So we need to, first of all, we need to obviously understand how all the elements perform together like the films, the inks, the components and so forth, and it's...

As if it wasn't complicated enough; the traditional boards.

-yes! So it all has to work in synergy and it's of course, it's like one thing to understand how they perform when they are in 2D, but in our case we are then also bending and stretching everything into that three-dimensional shape. So that process as a whole, has a huge effect on the material characteristics and performance values. Like Tuomas mentioned before, for example, the conductive ink resistance changes over the manufacturing period so it's a big pile of materials research and chemistry as a whole that we have done to understand the behavior of different material stack ups. So we - of course we try to be on top of what works together and of course - what doesn't. So...

And so do you publish those, or will you be publishing those in the form of a datasheet, so when a PCB designer might move into this space that they'd have some guidelines?

Yes. So obviously, the material stacks are one element of our licensing content. So we are able to provide our customers with validated and functional material stacks that they can use to test our building products.

How long have you been at this? Because I know you work with materials and that, that is a long, arduous process. It takes a lot of discipline.

Mm-hmm - yeah so we've been around since 2011 and we've used a lot of time and effort for exactly materials research, and creating the validation processes. So now we're in 2018 and we are mass manufacturable so it takes time.

Yes it sure does, yeah when I've talked to friends that are chemists, it just takes a long time. So, back to you Tuomas, with all those different materials, and you mentioned also embedded components. So I would like our audience to learn more about the implications which you began to talk about - with the printed inks, the silver inks, and what not. But what are some other implications of those different materials? And what kind of components - because you're really talking about embedded components here I take it? So help us understand that a little bit more?

So like Sini said, understanding materials and materials tax, those are very important. So as I earlier said, this trace resistance for example, it is a big thing. Also another example is this flexible film which are speaking back to SMD process, for example. So typically we are using small SMD components like LEDs, resistors, diodes, transistors...

Traditional?

-traditional yes.

Oh okay.

Traditional off the shelf components.

But when we are selecting components on our IMSE products, the key element is the height of the component. So the component should fit inside the product, it's the first thing. The second thing is that when we are injection molding the product the melted plastic flows over the component - so the component should stand this injection molding and yes, the thinner the component the better.

Okay so - and I am certain that you have to take in consideration the thermal implications of what kind of thermal conditions those components can survive in?

Yes we have also considered this.

So for our listeners; I just want to let you know we're gonna connect all kinds of links and pictures because if you're like me you need some visuals to really understand - this is sort of hard to do - in the form of a podcast - it's a little difficult to talk about, but again I want to remind our listeners that we are recording simultaneously on YouTube and also we're not showing visuals here but we will put up a myriad of links and photos. Because if you're like me, you need pictures okay so.

Yeah actually we have a white paper regarding this.

Okay.

Will you share that with us Tuomas? Okay great.

Yes yes. Okay. It's just in our webpage so we can share the link of course.

Wonderful and the other thing that I wasn't clear about is: so you do the printed portion of the process and then you mold. It's not like you're creating it on a 3D surface right? Or does it go both ways?

We first print, this is 2D, then we place the component; assembly process, after that is forming process, the film takes its 3D shape, and after that comes injection molding.

This is actually the reason why we are doing this, is that we want to enable our customers to use just standard electronics manufacturing equipment. So when we are placing the components in 2D, it means that we don't have to have anything like 3D pick-and-place or anything like that - you can use standard PCB manufacturing equipment.

And then you mold. Which seems so counterintuitive? I don't know how you guys are doing it. I think you're magicians so...

You have to come and see it. I know - oh speaking of which also I'd like to let our listeners know that I'm delighted that Sini and TactoTek have agreed to come be a sponsor at AltiumLive they will have a booth there. They will have physical samples and you'll be able to see this and if you're like me , I think this all of a sudden aha moment happens when you can physically see - or like Tuomas said, read a white paper and you have some kind of visual representation of what's happening. And you will gasp. It's really incredible to watch so I invite you always to come to AltiumLive in San Diego or Munich and see them there.

So let's jump into how Altium and TactoTek had the good fortune to come together. Sini you started to talk about a challenge you guys had to face in that, there was a gap in the design tools to support your technology so, our team have been working with you for a while so can you tell us, sort of what that process has been like and, sort of how we've been working together?

Yeah, so I think for us, how we have worked so far is that, obviously we have a lot of design disciplines that contribute to the IMSE, structure not just electronics and mechanics, but also graphics design, antenna design, and illumination design. So all of those different design elements have to work in perfect synergy, because we don't have those separate structures but we only have that film and everything is on top of that one or two films. So the element that we have been missing so far in the design tools is the support of design for IMSE type of parts.

So we've been using Altium Designer for years for electronic design, but we've been sort of manipulating the tool which is meant for PCB design and we are using familiar functions for something else. So today we are not just using the tool anymore but we've been very, very happy to start really working with Altium and doing research on specific features and automation we could integrate in the tools in the future to enable more efficient design process for IMSE and printed electronics as a whole.

Which is so exciting to me. So if I understand you correctly, then we're really starting to develop design rules for a whole new technology?

Mm-hmm - exactly and in that way obviously shortening the learning curve for new technology and bringing it to the hands of the actual end users; the designers of the products.

Well I really love that you guys are using traditional mainstream tools like Altium Designer so designers, their ramp-up on the technology can be quicker and just using kind of some familiar things like a 2D manufacturing process so there's not this whole giant - there's not 20 obstacles in the way and such a learning curve, and such a huge investment, change of equipment - you've really been really thoughtful in integrating existing technology but then tweaking it.

Yeah, exactly.

Which is really exciting. Tuomas because you've been specifically on the hardware side; I look to you sort of as the voice of our audience. Can you talk about some specific examples in regards to things like stack up, DRC's. Can you give us some kind of down and dirty, you know, where the rubber meets the road sort of examples of how that's fleshing out?

Yes. So if I first start with the stack up; currently we are using PCB layer stack up in our designs, which is not it's not pure IMSE - and this stack up, this causes challenges and generates a lot of more work when we have transferred in design files between EGIT and for example in the simulator tool. So if we have a tool where we can define IMSE stack up as it is in real products, it makes the design process even faster. Second thing is the dielectrics. So at the moment we are designing and checking dielectrics manually.

It's time-consuming and there were still missing dielectrics in certain places and this caused failures during our production. This is very, very critical, so if the tool has, for example, dielectric generators, check the position for each dielectric and then place it according to user definitions, so it makes design even faster, and also makes the production more easier for us because there are no failures anymore.

Along those lines - from inside of the tool, will a designer actually have helps to help them choose a specific dielectric or is that something they'll need to know ahead of time? And then those dielectric constraints will be inside the tool - or do we know yet?

No we don't know yet.

Okay that's a good answer. That's okay. You know, I really see from my perspective in the industry, this tighter - and the lines between mechanical you know ECAD, MCAD, all the different design disciplines. the lines are just blurring - and I think that's never more true than with your technology. I think you made the lines disappear which is exciting and so enabling! Is there anything you wanted to say about that Sini, just about the different disciplines, or specific challenges that may come into play? Because you're bringing all of these things into play?

Yeah I think one very good example and Tuomas, I'm sure you are more familiar with them, is for example, a simple file transfer. So we need to be able to, first of all in IMSE, we have to be able to convert first a three-dimensional shape into a two-dimensional form. Then design electronics layout, then convert back to three-dimensional format, and during all of those processes, we need to have a file transfer mechanism that actually works in between the tools. So yah, like you said; the lines are blurring and we're excited to see how we can help in enabling this in the tools.

Well I'm very excited - before we wrap up is there anything I might have missed?

Thank you both for this interesting conversation, and I'll be sure to share your white paper and any links you like to share. Is there anything I may have missed, just because of my own ignorance - neglected to ask either of you about today?

I don't think so, not from my side. What do you think Tuomas?

No, not from my side as well.

Okay, well please be sure to share as many links as you can you guys, and again - I want to encourage our listeners to look - this is one set of show notes you're going to want to look into - and click through and see really where the future of technology is going. It's very exciting and as I say, we continue to develop our agenda.  You know things like high-speed stack-up, things like that within Altium Designer 19, but in the future we hope to be able to offer the enabling technology in a future release of Altium Designer.

So thank you both for your partnership and working together. It's been a delight and I also invite you again to join us at AltiumLive either in San Diego or Europe. TactoTek will be in both locations and you'll be able to get your hands on it and see and touch this amazing technology it's really going to blow your mind.

So thank you Sini, thank you Tuomas, I really appreciate you - welcome to podcast land.

Thank you Judy, it's very exciting.

It's been a delight to have you and thank you - because I know you guys are - our hours between here and Finland are a little different. So thank you for accommodating our time frame today.

So thank you again for listening to the OnTrack Podcast, we appreciate you so very much. Join us again next time. Until then remember to always stay on track!