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PCB Design East 2007 Review
October 26, 2007 |Estimated reading time: 3 minutes
PCB Design Conference East returned to the Marriott Civic Center this week, and the looming rain storms held off.
Until Wednesday, anyway.
The conference began Sunday with classes on PCB design basics, high-speed design, lead-free and HDI. This year marked Lee Ritchey's return to the Design Conferences after a four-year absence.
Tuesday morning, technologist Joe Fjelstad kicked off the exhibition with a keynote speech describing the Occam Process, a solderless assembly concept that could eliminate traditional PCB fabrication. Fjelstad's new company, Verdant Electronics, published the Occam white paper this summer, and he's accustomed to fielding questions from skeptics. But at PCB East he faced a friendly audience, primarily PCB designers and design engineers.
"I view you as the people who are really leading the parade," Fjelstad said. He also joked that pioneers are often the ones "with arrows in their backs."
With Occam, components would be placed in their final positions and encapsulated before the interconnection step. The components' terminations could be accessed by mechanical abrasion or laser ablation, and then metallized with copper build-up technology. Fjelstad said the absence of solder would mean more routable real estate for designers to work with, as well as the potential to squeeze components closer together and use fewer layers. He believes costs could be reduced by 33%, and testing and RoHS worries eliminated.
Fjelstad said proof of concept exists, and the military is already interested in Occam. But he admitted that the final process might be much different than what he described. It's up to the industry to figure it out, and he called on EDA software companies to get behind the idea.
Despite opposition, Fjelstad says Occam or something like it is on the way. "It's just change," he told me in the hallway following his keynote.
On the show floor, PCB East featured 31 booths and 31 tabletop exhibits. Tabletops - primarily board shops - were open Tuesday only. It was a small show, but the floor was busy early Tuesday afternoon and during the Wine and Cheese reception that evening. Wednesday was slow, though some exhibitors said they made enough contacts Tuesday to make up for Wednesday. UP Media Group hasn't posted attendance figures yet.
Most exhibitors I spoke with said they'd had good years and great third quarters. Norm Filer, marketing manager at Innovative Circuits, said the company is going strong, tripling its revenue since 2004. The shop specializes in flex and rigid-flex for military and commercial customers.
Charlie Capers, president of Trilogy Circuits, said Trilogy recently moved into a custom-built facility in Richardson, TX, that is three times larger than the old one. Trilogy has now grown to 20 employees, Capers said, with two PCB designers and two assembly lines.
SIPAD Systems Inc. will now offer stencils, thanks to a new $265,000 T8 SPS laser. "I may do inspection templates too," said owner Matt Kehoe. "Who knows?"
Shenzhen Fastprint Circuit Tech is going gangbusters, according to David Izett, manager of North American business development. "I call it the Chinese water torture. It's 25%, 25%, 25%," joked Izett, referring to the benefit his customers gain, courtesy of China's pegged currency.
Speaking of China, a group of designers I spoke with claimed that China's recent troubles with lead-painted toys will herald a turning point in offshoring. According to this school of thought, the weak dollar already makes China less attractive than in previous years, and the recalls by Mattel and Fisher-Price are the icing on the bad PR cake. Time will tell.
In 2008 there won't be a PCB Design Conference in Durham. PCB East will be held in Chicago in May, with PCB West moving to September. UPMG wanted to take PCB West, held in Silicon Valley, out of the spring "show season," when it competed with other shows in the Golden State, such as DesignCon and APEX/IPC Expo.
As Fjelstad said, it's just change.