Latest Articles

The Relevance of VeCS as an HDI Process Option

Almost 10 years ago, Pete Starkey interviewed Joan Tourné, inventor and CEO of his new company, NextGin Technology. Joan’s resume included many years as a director at Mommers Print Service in the Netherlands, and then as advanced technology and business director with Viasystems Group. He had just secured his IP for a vertical conductive structure (VeCS), a novel means of creating high density vertical interconnections for semiconductors and complex, high layer count PCBs. This month, we re-examine VeCS technology, a method for HDI PCB fabrication with large backplane-type boards developed in partnership with Wus, which uses the technology in its factories.

Follow the Story: The Business of Engineering

Building great products requires great engineering, but building a successful engineering company requires something more. Leaders must make decisions about investments, acquisitions, workforce development, automation, sourcing, strategy, and innovation, all while navigating changing markets and emerging technologies. This collection of articles and columns explores the business side of technical leadership, by gathering perspectives from executives, engineers, entrepreneurs, and industry experts who understand that long-term success depends on more than technical excellence.

All Flex Expands Reach Through Flex Interconnect Technologies Acquisition

A strategic partnership between Minnesota-based All Flex Solutions and Flex Interconnect Technologies (FIT) will provide value-added engineering and quick-turn, prototype flexible PCB manufacturing with All Flex’s high-volume flex fabrication. The new alliance offers customers a more comprehensive flex solution and an opportunity to streamline their flex PCB supply chain. All Flex CEO John Fallon discusses the strategic rationale behind the partnership, the benefits of having a “100-year plan,” and how the combined organization is positioning itself for optimum growth.

The Strategic Importance of Hiring Efficiency

While discussions surrounding workforce shortages often focus on the number of available workers, many manufacturers face a different challenge: securing highly qualified candidates before competing employers do. We’re in a market where experienced PCB designers, process engineers, quality specialists, manufacturing engineers, and reliability professionals are in high demand, so even modest delays in the hiring process can have measurable business consequences.

August I-Connect007 Magazine: The Electronics Ecosystem From Design to Development

This issue of I-Connect007 Magazine examines how collaboration across the electronics ecosystem—from design through fabrication, packaging, AI infrastructure, and flexible circuits—drives innovation and manufacturable products. Our contributors explore co-design from multiple perspectives, using analogies from the forest to the Olympics. We also revisit VeCS for high layer count HDI PCB fabrication, plating challenges for advanced packaging, new applications for flex circuits in robots, and how the U.S. national defense policy could affect PCB sourcing.

IPC Standards Released for Q2 2026

Each quarter, the Global Electronics Association releases a list of standards that are new or have been updated. To view a complete list of newly published standards and standards revisions, translations, proposed standards for ballot, final drafts for industry review, working drafts, and project approvals, visit electronics.org/ipc-standards. These are the latest releases for Q2 2026.

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

Another week has flown by, and it’s time for the must-read articles and news highlights. This week, I’m putting a spotlight on FUJI PCB and FS Quality, through an interview by Dan Beaulieu with President Tianming Liu, and “the rest of the story” from the EIPC Summer Conference technical sessions. I’m also focusing on a new marketing book by Brittany Martin, and there’s rarely a week when we don’t talk about AI, so I also chose Sean Patterson’s most recent practical advice for PCB fabricators. Though the U.S. has placed a “stay” on CMMC Level 2 certification, it’s still coming for you and your business. If you work in the Mil/Aero space in the U.S., check out what Omega EMS has done to accelerate its compliance. Their wisdom may be worth your time.

A Practical Approach to Material Selection for High Power PCBs

With AI server architectures demanding high-power converter solutions to improve power efficiency and affordability, PCB design can challenge engineers who treat material selection as a single-variable problem. Pick a laminate for thermal conductivity, and you may experience a CTE mismatch that cracks vias after 50 thermal cycles. Optimize for dielectric loss, and you might sacrifice the isolation margin your certification depends on. High-power boards require consideration of multiple variables, including electrical, thermal, mechanical, reliability, and manufacturability, which cannot be optimized alone.

Catching Up With FUJI PCB and FS Quality’s President, Mr. Tianming Liu

I recently interviewed Mr. Tianming Liu, founder of FUJI PCB and FS Quality. His company is built by blending Japanese manufacturing discipline, Chinese execution speed, and an unwavering commitment to quality and customer service. His story is anything but ordinary. From studying and working in Japan for more than a decade to transforming a struggling PCB factory into a profitable operation before launching FUJI PCB, he has shown vision, determination, and continuous innovation.

Your AI Doesn't Know Your Process (Here's How to Teach It)

Last month, I made the case that you should not buy AI in the hope that it will fix the business. You need to learn it yourself first. If your AI is failing, it’s not because it is lazy or broken. It is failing because it does not know your plant. It does not know your quoting rules, how material gets released to the floor, what your customer expects in an 8D1, or which spec outranks another. It certainly does not know where your team hides the real answer once the formal procedure and reality have drifted apart.

I-Connect007 Welcomes New Columnists from Flexible Circuit Technologies

In an exciting new column for I-Connect007 Magazine, a team of application engineers from Flexible Circuit Technologies will draw on decades of experience designing and manufacturing flex and rigid-flex circuits to offer practical guidance to help PCB designers make better engineering decisions. Mark Finstad, Chris Clark, Terrill Schmidt, Dan Skweres, and Zack Schaner will rotate authoring the new column, called Flex Connections, which begins in the August issue, with Dan drawing on his many years of experience to explain why just because you can do something in PCB design, doesn’t mean you should.

EIPC Summer Conference 2026: Technical Presentations Tell the Rest of the Story

In early June, the EIPC Summer Conference in Vilnius, Lithuania, featured an impressive group of speakers ranging from PCB suppliers and technical experts to startups and robotics OEMs, the latter of which added a “cool factor” to the meeting’s ambiance with a fully operational, interactive humanoid. After some early coverage of the event, I’m now following up with key takeaways from many of the technical presentations. I regret that I could not cover all speakers in detail, but this will give you a good taste of what you missed in Lithuania in June.

Inside Europe’s Push for Electronics Resilience: Five Questions with… Alison James

In the latest installment of Five Questions With…, Alison James, senior director for European Government Relations, discusses how geopolitics, defense demand, data center growth, and EU policy initiatives are reshaping Europe’s electronics industry and creating new opportunities to strengthen regional manufacturing across the value chain.

Advanced Packaging, Materials Characterization, and System Integration: What’s Ahead in the Advanced Electronics Packaging Digest

The August issue of Advanced Electronics Packaging Digest explores how advanced packaging is reshaping semiconductor innovation through better materials characterization, heterogeneous integration (HI), workforce education, and system-level design. Together, these features examine the technologies and engineering decisions driving the next generation of electronic systems.

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

Are you familiar with the “locus of control," which describes how much we believe our actions can change the outcome of our lives? Internal locus of control, for example, is the belief that our actions greatly shape our outcomes; external locus of control holds that external forces have a greater influence than our actions on how our lives play out. How we view our own locus of control can strongly influence how we respond to the world, perhaps even creating a self-fulfilling prophecy situation. The news has taken a more languid pace this week. Not so, however, for our intrepid band of I-Connect007 columnists, who thoughtfully tackle some chunky locus of control topics.

Removing the Bottleneck: ZOT's Transition to Direct Imaging

For many PCB fabricators, solder mask imaging can become one of the biggest constraints on production. Traditional exposure methods often involve lengthy setup times, multiple process steps, and opportunities for registration errors, leading to costly rework. ZOT Engineering Ltd., a UK-based contract electronics manufacturer specializing in PCB fabrication and assembly, recently modernized this part of its process by partnering with Schmoll Maschinen to deploy a maskless direct imaging (MDI) system.

Diversification: Where Do You Grow From Here?

Our industry has long operated on a relatively straightforward formula:  invest in equipment, build a solid production team, develop reliable manufacturing processes, and compete for business based on quality, delivery, and price. If a shop maintained strong relationships with customers and consistently delivered dependable work, there was every reason to believe the business would continue growing steadily for years. In many ways, this model built the modern PCB industry. But the environment surrounding electronics manufacturing has changed dramatically, and I am concerned that many U.S. domestic fabricators have not fully adjusted to these changes.

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

When I first came to the electronics industry, I was coming from the outside. Over time, I learned that this is not an industry that can be understood from just one angle. What happens in design affects manufacturing. Material choices affect reliability. Supply chain decisions influence business strategy, and advances in technology create new challenges and opportunities throughout the entire ecosystem. That complexity is one of the things I appreciate most about covering this industry. Each week, I’m reminded that there is always another layer to explore.

Summit Interconnect Celebrates 10 Years

Ten years ago, Shane Whiteside had a vision for the dwindling North American PCB industry: to develop a company at scale that would put North American PCB manufacturing back on the map. The result was the combination of six PCB organizations and complementary businesses to create Summit Interconnect, now the second-largest PCB manufacturer in North America. In this interview, Summit CEO Shane Whiteside and Vice President of Technology Gerry Partida reflect on Summit's 10th anniversary, the pride they take in what they've built, and the enthusiasm they still bring to the business as they celebrate this milestone.

Beyond PDFs: The Next Generation of Electronics Compliance

Why should electronics manufacturers care about the new IPC Supplier Declaration Standards? Because compliance with global government regulations means manufacturers are expected to collect, verify, and exchange unprecedented amounts of supply chain data, often across hundreds of suppliers and thousands of components. Even more, it must be managed and exchanged efficiently, accurately, and at scale. Yet many engineers, supply chain professionals, compliance managers, and purchasing teams still rely on spreadsheets, PDFs, and manual processes that were never designed to operate at today's scale.

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

In this week’s top five must-reads, I chose articles that go from big business questions (to diversify or not), to important technical issues such as DFM errors made in creating HDI designs using ELIC and design for test, to a discussion around some of the power and thermal considerations in advanced packaging, and the fact that they are now, firmly, performance enablers, not after-the-fact elements to be managed in fabrication.

Circularity for a Resilient Supply Chain, PFAS, and More

As governments around the world take a closer look at PFAS and other sustainability issues, electronics manufacturers face an increasingly complex regulatory landscape. In part 2 of this interview, Dr. Diana Radovan, sustainability policy director at the Global Electronics Association, shares insights on emerging PFAS policies, circularity efforts, and the global conversations shaping the industry's future.

Beyond Recycling: A Circularity Approach for a Truly Resilient Electronics Supply Chain

Dr. Diana Radovan, director of sustainability policy and sustainability advocacy lead at the Global Electronics Association, has been at the center of some of the electronics industry's most consequential policy discussions, from the European Parliament in Brussels to sustainability summits in Germany and circularity conferences across Europe. With the European Union's landmark Circular Economy Act moving closer to reality and updates to PFAS regulations, she has been ensuring that the voice of the electronics industry is heard. In this interview, she discusses what's coming, why it matters, why true circularity extends far beyond recycling, and what policymakers still need to do to enable it.

From Prototype to Product: Why E-Textile Standards Matter

Imagine a neonatal monitoring wrap used in a hospital to track an infant’s vital signs during transport between units. It looks and feels like a soft textile. But embedded within it are conductive pathways, sensors, interconnections and electronics that must perform in a critical moment. If the product fails, the issue is not simply a garment defect or an electronics defect. It could affect clinical decision-making. That is what makes e-textiles so promising and so challenging.

Beyond the Board: Diversification as Strategy

Are the days of simply building boards and shipping them out the door coming to an end? For PCB fabricators and electronics manufacturers alike, diversification is moving from a growth strategy to one of survival. Supply chain disruptions, geopolitical uncertainty, tariff fluctuations, and accelerating technology cycles are forcing companies to rethink how they create value for customers. At Flexible Circuit Technologies (FCT), that has meant expanding beyond world-class flex circuit manufacturing into assembly, vertical integration, and a growing global footprint.
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