First I would say this discourse is great. Did Gregory start this thing? It's interesting how many board shop folks have offered opinion after seeming so quiet for so long. If this is what it takes to bring them out, great for us all.

All comments are very true, to the extent everything in board design and fabrication is a great set of compromises, and very eloquently stated. However, it's simply a fact there is too little concurrence, meaning two way dialogue, concerning such a vital part of the electronics equation.


I have contracted with over one hundred electronics companies over the last twenty years. Some were board shops. Some were OEM's. Some independent design botiques. Others were assembly operations. In all that time, and in all those companies (most in Silicon Valley where the number 100 gets lost in the 3000 + electronics related companies therein), I saw, and continue seeing very little concurrent engineering on any level. The big exception is larger companies like the Intel's, etc., and what happens after product is built and concurrence is "established" on forums like this.

In my last two contracts alone, I have seen black gold pads, traces too close to pads rendering solder mask ineffective, wrong MLB constructions and materials, wrong locations, break out, and on it goes. No communication was apparent "up front" to prevent this defect - while working with some of industry's "big fabricators" - while often asked by those maybe less knowledgeable though these companies had "expert" board people working there. Besides, requirements were clearly called out on the master drawings and in clearly written specifications. Granted, some of this stuff could not have been foreseen up front, but all definitely should have been discussed. It was hard just getting an engineer on the phone to return calls as they were much too busy.


Tradition has established a rough road, though changing much over time, with designers as those not following the "rules" and board fabricators not doing enough to promote those rules adequately. As far a profitibility goes, I'm all for it. However, as I also said, some are in it to excess and to the exclusion of doing it "right." They simply don't get involved enough and wait for it to happen saying, again, I'll do anything for the right price while knowing or caring little about the customer in terms of helping in the design process.

The IPC has done more to promote concurrent engineering, and the DFM requirements to make it happen, than anyone. But then, the IPC is us and I know what goes on in these forums as good but mostly reactionary. Also, tremendous good comes from all IPC members at regularly scheduled meetings and through many committee activities and more, but this all takes time.

I'm a board guy from the word go and love the job - when all responsible parties act responsibly and work together. I started in this busines having to design boards and then having to fab them next door in the lab. I saw first hand how rules, as well as compromises, make a board good or bad. That lesson has never left me and many times I've seen the good we all do. More often, I see what we all see - sometimes too late until we do over again what should have been done right the first time.

I've designed boards, built them, engineered processes (ruined some), and owned a shop. In all this time, I am still amazed at what can be done. I only wish it could, and it could, be done eaiser and better through more concurrence promoting more real DFM instead of too much sales rhetoric.

This forum provides one mechanism, but I'm amazed that it has turned so assembly oriented, as few board people (designers and fabricators) seem to be left answering vital questions so often posed. Nothing has to turn ugly unless someone expects and makes it so but it still is interesting how this question has brought so much attention and so many people to such a level of vitality. That's my two bits and I shoot craps for four if we had more dialogue as this - progressing without turning completely ugly,

Again, I think PCB's are the greatest thing on earth, except for some other things unmentionable. I love this stuff and I really enjoy all you folks. Still, it amazes me we had to have this dialogue to bring out the best in people and to hear from some of the shops I've never even heard of - let alone heard from before. 

Best wishes to all and let's all prosper and profit. I just suggest that we could do it better and that applies to most everything, doesn't it.

Earl Moon