Fabrication Processes
This presentation will offer a complete view of place-and-route for dense high-speed and RF circuits. We will cover a wide range of topics, including next-generation materials, the rational for considering HDI for our products, and overall layout flow. We will discuss the technological challenges we face in both the schematic circuit rules capture, design layout and manufacturing process. Students will learn what it takes to satisfy solvability, high-speed concerns, and RF performance issues, while building a board that will be cost-effective as a reliable high-yield product. We will also review how our early integration with the manufacturing team during the design cycle will help us understand the specifics to build a product that is correct-by-construction and performs on revision-1. The focus will be on practical application and implementation using real-world examples.
Engineers are often only peripherally aware of the PCB fabrication and assembly process, and often make design decisions that increase cost and turn-time or decrease reliability. This presentation provides a manufacturer’s perspective of design decisions that result in holds and cost increases using examples from the past 15 years in the industry. By gaining a better understanding of how manufacture and assembly processes work, engineers will be able to design printed circuit boards that cost less and have greater longevity than their current designs.
This presentation will be split into two parts: First, we will briefly cover all phases of the manufacturing process as we follow a board from digital submission to customer delivery. Second, we will look at multiple examples of actual customer submissions and analyze them for design decisions that result in unnecessary cost increases or unnecessary holds. The presentation will conclude with a 15-minute question and answer session that allows engineers to ask questions about their designs.
Millions of dollars’ worth of PWBs are scrapped each year due to tolerance errors in the final product. A good majority of these errors are due to incorrect tolerancing of holes, edges and other board features. This seminar will explain how GD&T can help you avoid high scrap rates and reduce overall cost due to improper dimensional tolerances. It will show how to apply GD&T to printed wiring boards without all the confusion found in complex mechanical objects such as gear trains and castings. The principles discussed follow the ASME Y14.5 standard, as well as IPC-2615, Printed Board Dimensions and Tolerances. Attendees will learn GD&T principles for printed wiring boards, appropriate symbology for drawings, and bilateral vs. geometric dimensioning.
With ever-decreasing geometries and increased density, today’s PCBs are extremely complex. Fabricators are continually under pressure to keep up with the capabilities needed to produce these types of products. This seminar looks at how a PCB is fabricated and the challenges the fabricator faces to achieve the design intent and meet customer and industry standards. We will examine the processes needed to form microvias, image [U]BGAs, plate copper in holes the thickness of a human hair and select surface finishes needed for very tight pitch components. The half-day seminar will be interactive with the audience to ensure all questions related to more in-depth PCB fabrication and processes are answered.
In recent years heterogeneous assembly has grown in interest as a possible replacement for SMT assembly and as a solution for reducing the area needed for complex electronic devices. Heterogeneous devices combine packed devices, unpackaged devices, bare chips, chiplets, deposits, components and intricate substrate materials and designs. In some cases heterogeneous devices are more economical and offer faster time to market and lower product costs than custom and semi-custom integrated circuits.
The successful design, procurement, and manufacturing of a heterogeneous product is exacting, requiring the interaction of multiple vendors, marginally adequate design and testing tools, and often reluctant component vendors. For those designers and product managers willing to understand and endure the road to product completion, the rewards can be great. Missteps can be career-limiting.
This seminar will cover the basic and advanced assembly options, component variations, and common substrate types. It will review the latest changes to the Heterogeneous Integration Roadmap (HIR) developed by the multi-standards organizations.
Flex circuits typically replace the common hard-wire interface between electronic assemblies. Flexible circuits, however, have significant advantages over the hard-wired alternative because they fit only one way, eliminate wire routing errors, and save up to 75% on space and weight. The design guidelines for flexible circuits, although similar to rigid circuits, are somewhat unique. In essence, flex circuits furnish unlimited freedom of packaging geometry, while retaining the precision density and repeatability of printed circuits. Because the flex-circuit conductor patterns can maintain uniform electrical characteristics, they contribute to controlling noise, crosstalk, and impedance. Flex circuits will often be designed to replace complex wire harness assemblies and connectors to further improve product reliability. During the half-day tutorial program, participants will have an opportunity to review and discuss the latest revision of IPC-2222 and IPC-2223, “Sectional Design Standard for Flexible Printed Boards,” that includes base material sets, alternative fabrication methodologies and SMT-on-flex assembly processes. The workshop will also furnish practical flex circuit supplier DfM recommendations for ensuring quality, reliability and manufacturing efficiency. Topics of discussion: 1. Applications and use environment (commercial/consumer, industrial/automotive, medical/aerospace); establishing end-use criteria 2. Designing flexible and rigid-flex circuits (flex circuit outline planning; circuit routing and interconnect methodologies; fold and bend requirements; SMT land pattern reinforcement criteria). 3. Material and SMT components (IPC standards for flex and rigid-flex dielectrics; base material and metallization technologies; selection criteria for SMT components; SMT land pattern development). 4. Assembly processing of flex and rigid-flex circuits (dimensioning and tolerance criteria; palletized layout for inline assembly processing; SMT assembly process variations and methodologies, alternative joining methods for flexible circuits).
With the advent of ICs with multiple power rails at very high currents, the design of the power delivery system in a modern product is often more difficult than routing the PCB to ensure good signal integrity. The power delivery system must deliver power to devices at frequencies from D to hundreds of megahertz. The application notes that accompany most ICs do not contain adequate information to allow a designer to get the PDS correctly designed.
This course is aimed at providing the information needed to get the job done right. It draws on the speaker’s experience designing hundreds of power delivery systems for products ranging from satellites to super computers. It contains a very large number of test PCBs used to determine how well each component will perform when used in a PDS.
This course will cover the entire gamut of flexible and rigid-flex circuits from two of the most recognized names in the flexible circuit industry: Mark Finstad (co-chair of IPC-2223) and Nick Koop (co-chair of IPC-6013). Topics covered will include mechanical design/material selection, cost drivers, bending and forming concerns, testing, and issues unique to rigid-flex. This course also includes a complete virtual plant tour of a flexible circuit manufacturing facility to help attendees understand the manufacturing processes. Throughout the presentation, the instructors will share real-life stories of flexible circuit applications gained over 35+ years in the industry. Some are success stories, others not so much, but all provide excellent lessons learned. The instructors also welcome and encourage questions and enjoy wandering off-course with lively interactive discussions on specific topics from the class.
