I-Connect007 Editor’s Choice: Five Must-Reads for the Week

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

This week, I was fortunate to attend PCB West in Santa Clara, California, and was reminded of the idyllic weather of that part of California in the early fall. Attendance was high at the weeklong conference and one-day expo, allowing the show to maintain its place as one of the best events for PCB and PCB design. As always, it was great to see old friends and familiar faces. Stay tuned for more PCB West coverage.

In this week’s must-reads, on my mind is packaging and the many manufacturing challenges that go with it. I’m highlighting Brian Buyea’s column and an article by Alex Lindloff of Koh Young on the Meister D+. From there, it’s about ENIG, EEPIG and sustainability, Dymax and the upcoming SMTA Guadalajara show, and Mehul Dave’s column on grey rhinos (yes, you read that correctly.) They’re all interesting reads, so I hope you enjoy this week’s must-reads, and grab yourself a pumpkin spice something while you are at it.

Powering the Future: What Engineers Get Wrong About Designing for Reliability
Published October 1

Remtec’s Brian Buyea never disappoints. In his most recent column, he argues that reliability must be built into a product from the earliest design decisions. Teams that focus first on functionality and expect to strengthen the design during final testing may already have locked in weaknesses through their materials, structures, and thermal paths. More specifically, he highlights thermal expansion mismatch, repeated temperature cycling, vibration, and assembly stress as drivers of failures that can emerge long after deployment. Durable products require deliberate decisions about lifetime performance from the start, and substrate technology plays a central role, with ceramic-based systems offering advantages in some demanding applications, provided their properties match actual operating conditions.

Closing the Gap: Measuring 20-µm Spacing in Advanced SiP Packaging
Published September 29

As system-in-package (SiP) technology brings more functionality into smaller packages, components standing 200–300 µm tall can be separated by gaps of just 20–30 µm. Axel Lindloff of Koh Young Europe explains why inspecting these structures requires more than greater magnification: Narrow gaps create shadows that obscure edges and substrate surfaces, while reflective dies direct angled illumination away from the camera. These dimensions are already a production reality, making accurate, repeatable measurement essential to manufacturing quality. 

3 Key Takeaways: Making ENIG and ENEPIG More Sustainable
Published September 30

Making ENIG and ENEPIG more sustainable begins with controlling gold consumption, according to this article highlighting three key takeaways from a MacDermid Alpha white paper: “Start with gold,” “Better measurement creates room to optimize,” and “Look beyond gold for additional sustainability gains.” Gold accounts for more than 90% of ENIG processing costs, making excess deposition a major opportunity for savings. The key is reliable measurement and tighter process control. In the paper’s production comparison, a more tightly controlled process met the same minimum thickness requirement with 14.47% less average gold thickness, yielding projected annual savings of approximately $668,000 at the modeled volume. That’s nothing to sneeze at! Read the whole paper here.

Dymax Adds New Location, Prepares for SMTA Guadalajara
Published September 29

Having just published the SMT007 Magazine issue focused on Mexico, I want to make sure you don’t miss Nolan Johnson’s interview with Dymax’s Raul Garcia. He discusses their expansion in Queretaro, which offers local technical support and laboratory capabilities, as well as the broad portfolio of chemistry and products for UV cure coatings and adhesives they will be showcasing next week at SMTA Guadalajara. Meeting the demands of today’s electronics technology is not easy, but Dymax is up to the challenge, from coatings that cure in mere seconds to conformal coating that is safe for components that you would normally not cover, to products that change color for easier visual inspection. Check out Nolan’s interview.

The Big Picture: Not One, But Three Grey Rhinos
Published October 1

In “Not One, But Three Grey Rhinos,” Mehul Davé argues that PCB manufacturers face three obvious but often inadequately addressed threats, meaning they often end up running you over, even when you could see them clearly and in advance. Oil-price volatility, structural shortages of copper and laminate materials, and shifting tariffs are the three rhinos at issue. Each requires a different response. Davé’s central message is that manufacturers must understand which pressure they are addressing before making sourcing and pricing decisions. This is a great three-minute read.