PCB Chat

Fred Schenkelberg is an international authority on reliability engineering. He is the reliability expert at FMS Reliability, a reliability engineering and management consulting firm he founded in 2004. Fred left Hewlett Packard’s Reliability Team where he helped create a culture of reliability across HP to assist other organizations. His passion is working with teams to improve product reliability, customer satisfaction, and efficiencies in product development; and to reduce product risk and warranty costs. Fred has bachelor's of science in physics from the United States Military Academy and a master's of science in statistics from Stanford.

Simon Fried is president, chief business office and cofounder of Nano Dimension, a leader in additive manufacturing systems. He speaks about creating buried capacitance and Nano Dimension's new process for mounting components to the sides of printed circuit boards with PCB Chat's Mike Buetow.

An interview with US Ambassadors of FLITE (Female Leaders in Tech Everywhere), Michelle Ogihara and Sherry Stepp on the subject of women in electronics and FLITE's mission to build a platform based on real-life experiences to help raise the visibility of females in technology.

In the last half of the 20th century, cleaning of circuit assemblies was a standard assembly practice. The abolishment of popular CFC-based cleaning solvents ushered the introduction of "no-clean" assembly processes. For much of the electronic assembly industry, cleaning became nonexistent.

Due to assembly and component miniaturization and the explosion of both IOT and automotive electronics, which places many circuit assemblies into harsh environments, the practice of removing harmful ionic contamination from circuit assemblies has once again become a mainstream practice. Today, the majority of electronic assemblies are cleaned. And, for many assemblers, cleaning is a new process.

This podcast presents modern best-practice cleaning techniques including:

- An historical look back at cleaning

- The reason for cleaning

- Reasons for cleaning no-clean flux residues

- Conventional cleaning technologies

- Estimating throughput capabilities on batch and inline cleaning systems

- Do's and don'ts of cleaning circuit assemblies

- How to choose a cleaning chemical (if needed)

- How to determine the assemblies are clean during the cleaning process

- How to determine the assemblies are clean after the cleaning process

- New IPC Cleanliness assessment standards

- Environmental mitigation techniques

- Calculating the per-assembly cost of cleaning

- Keeping your cleaning machine in top-working order

Brad Griffin speaks from CDNLive to PCB Chat host Mike Buetow on the new electromagnetic (EM) simulation tool from Cadence. Brad describes how the Clarity software reads design data from all standard chip, IC package and PCB platforms, integrates with Cadence's platforms, and has won plaudits from key customers for its speed and accuracy.

X-ray has come a long way since its discovery in 1895. Originally used in the medial field, X-ray technology has been integrated into many industrial sectors including the electronic assembly industry. Dr. David Bernard is an expert in x-ray technology within the electronics industry. Dr. Bernard discusses the modern use of x-ray technology, applications within the electronic assembly industry and the skills required to interpret the images produced with Reliability Matters host Mike Konrad.

Leah Slaughter is vice president, supply chain and artificial intelligence programs, at Varitron, a multinational EMS company. She has been in the industry for more than 20 years with Future Electronics, SMTC, BreconRidge, Sanmina, Celestica, Jabil, and most recently SigmaPoint.

She explains how artificial intelligence is being used today to improve electronics supply chain management, how to adopt and implement AI, and the software provider she prefers best with PCB Chat host Mike Buetow.

Mike Bixenman is one of the founders of Kyzen and serves as its chief technology officer. He is well-known within the electronics assembly industry and is a featured speaker at industry conferences and symposiums around the world. He is chair of the IPC Cleaning and Coating Conference held every other year in Chicago and is the technical chair for SMTA Europe’s Electronics in Harsh Environments Conference held annually in Amsterdam. He also received the IPC President’s Award and has chaired the IPC Cleaning Handbook Task Group.

"Bix" talks with host Mike Konrad about cleaning for reliability, challenging components and fluxes, methods to determine how clean is clean enough, and how and why he cofounded Kyzen Corp.

PCB Chat host Mike Buetow catches up on the weekly news in electronics manufacturing. This week: New electronic material discoveries, expansions in Southeast Asia, company earnings reports.