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Built for What’s Next: The End of Flat Thinking

Editor's Note: We're excited to introduce a new column by Michael Gleason, director of product development and strategic growth at GreenSource Fabrication. Michael will challenge engineers to think beyond today's design conventions, explore new possibilities in PCB fabrication, and rethink how they approach designing for the future.

Advanced PCB design increasingly brings electrical performance, thermal behavior, mechanical requirements, material selection, and manufacturability into the same conversation. The board sits within a larger physical system, and each decision can influence how that system performs. Looking at those relationships together creates more opportunity to optimize the design as a whole.

The key is understanding where each design constraint comes from. Physics, reliability, and process capability establish some boundaries, while others may carry forward from an earlier design or a manufacturing process that has since evolved. Understanding the reason behind a rule gives designers and fabricators a stronger foundation for determining the best path forward.

We see this with customer-designed stackups. These can come in with overly complex via structures, unbalanced constructions, suboptimal material selections, and copper thicknesses that are inappropriate. Taken at face value, they can be unmanufacturable. Working with the customer to understand the design intent, key attributes, performance expectations, etc., can, more often than not, provide a path forward to deliver a manufacturable stackup that meets the customer’s desired outcome.

Designing the Physical System

That thinking extends across the physical system. Heat generation and heat flow influence component placement, materials, copper distribution, and mechanical design. Embedded components can free surface area and shorten electrical paths while introducing additional fabrication and reliability considerations. Enclosures, airflow, connectors, and mounting points also shape what is practical at the board level. Routing, impedance, stackups, materials, and signal integrity remain fundamental, with each decision contributing to the performance of the complete system.

Manufacturing capability is an important part of that equation. Fabrication rules reflect what a process can produce repeatedly and reliably, while continued advances in processes and materials expand the available design space. A spacing requirement, construction method, or feature size tied to one process may have additional options as capabilities evolve.

One example that comes to mind is annular ring. Due to our exceptional registration capabilities, we can support smaller pads for a given via size, affording the designer greater routing density.

At the edge of established PCB capability, that distinction creates valuable opportunities. A fabricator may be able to address a challenging requirement through a different process, construction, or material approach. Understanding the intent behind the requirement gives both sides more room to identify the solution that best supports performance and manufacturability.

Manufacturing Must Be Part of the Conversation

For complex designs, manufacturability is most valuable when it is part of the process from the beginning. Early collaboration gives designers access to a broader range of materials, fabrication processes, and construction options while the architecture is still taking shape. It also allows performance, reliability, manufacturability, and cost to be considered together.

The number one thing we tell our customers is to bring us in as early as possible on complex designs. We’ve worked on multiple projects where we have recommended an mSAP manufacturing process for a given layer rather than traditional subtractive etch. The immediate advantage is greater routing density through finer features, but the benefits can extend beyond density. When RF performance is the driver, the straighter sidewalls and tighter feature tolerances achieved through mSAP can offer significantly improved performance over subtractively etched features.

Engaging the fabricator early gives the design team an opportunity to identify those options while there is still flexibility in the design, helping avoid costly tear-ups, reroutes, and fabrication respins later in the process.

Advanced fabrication brings together an understanding of what the design is trying to accomplish with the materials, processes, and manufacturing capabilities that can help achieve it. The earlier that conversation happens, the more opportunity there is to optimize performance, manufacturability, and reliability together.

Beyond the Board Boundary

This is also why electrical, mechanical, and thermal engineering come together at the point where the product takes shape. Heat moves through materials and structures. Mechanical stress reaches components and interconnections. Geometry affects electrical behavior. Fabrication choices influence all of them, and the PCB often sits at the intersection. Recognizing when a board-level decision reaches beyond the board creates an opportunity to bring the right expertise into the conversation early and make those disciplines work together.

As designs become more complex, the opportunity lies in looking beyond individual requirements and understanding how each decision connects to the larger system. That means bringing design, engineering, and manufacturing expertise together earlier, asking what the design is ultimately trying to achieve, and using the full range of capabilities available to get there.

The future of advanced PCB design will be shaped by how well we connect those pieces, and how early we start the conversation.

Michael Gleason is director of product development at GreenSource Fabrication.

This column originally appeared in the October 2026 issue of I-Connect007 Magazine.