PCB Chat

Brenda Baney has been addressing product environmental regulations for over 20 years.  She began with General Motors as a materials engineer, where she was at the forefront of the automotive industries material compliance reporting.  Brenda has led internal company projects on elimination of CFCs, lead solder, hexavalent chromium, and a myriad of other substances of concern. She has been a leader within both automotive and electronics industry groups covering topics like ionic cleanliness of printed circuit boards, lead-free solder, End-of-Life Vehicle, RoHS and REACH compliance, and is considered a supply chain expert for material content reporting.

​Baney was the Product Stewardship Manager for Delphi, where she led the reporting of complex material compliance data on hundreds of thousands of parts successfully. She also created an internal Conflict Minerals cross-functional team leading Delphi to be named as the Number One automotive component supplier in the 2015 Assent Conflict Minerals rating.

​In March 2016, Baney founded B Cubed Consulting, where she works with automotive & other durable goods suppliers to keep strategies on course and stay up-to-date on the latest negotiations between industry and global government enforcement bodies.

She speaks about the new latest amendment to California Prop 65, plus REACH, RoHS and other related regulation issues with Mike Buetow.

Verdant Electronics founder and president Joe Fjelstad has more than 40 years of international experience in electronic interconnection and packaging technology in a variety of capacities from chemist to process engineer and from international consultant to CEO. A well-known author and magazine columnist writing on the subject of electronic interconnection technologies, he has more than 180 US patents and another 100-plus international ones to his name. Prior to founding Verdant, Joe co-founded SiliconPipe, a leader in the development of high speed interconnection technologies. He was also formerly with chip-scale package developer Tessera, where he was appointed to the first corporate fellowship for his innovations. Joe speaks with Mike Buetow about the Occam Prize, a new award for design innovation.

Z-Zero is the newest entrant in the EDA field. The company this year rolled out its first products: software tools for PCB stackup planning and material selection. Z-Zero founder and director of everything Bill Hargin speaks with Mike Buetow about the company and new tools.

Among major fabricators, Shenzhen Kinwong is perhaps the industry’s best kept secret in North America. According to Dr. Hayao Nakahara’s annual NTI 100, it’s among the 35 largest fabricators in the world, and the fourth largest Chinese maker. Kinwong field application engineering manager Mike Tucker talks about the company and its plans for the North American market with host Mike Buetow.

NCAB Group, the world’s largest bare board distributor, went public on June 5. CEO Hans Stahl joins Mike Buetow to offer background on the public offering and outline plans for the new funds, including acquisition targets and future expansion.

Can the electronics industry influence global trade pacts with China? And should it? The word from many major trade groups appears to be “yes” and “maybe not.” PCB Chat Mike Buetow explains.

Keynoters for industry conferences tend to fall in one of two categories: The rah-rah types or the futurists. Why will the keynote at PCB West this fall be different?

"Content is the most important aspect of the design world right now," says Manny Marcano, president of EMA Design Automation. Over the past nearly three decades, he has grown EMA into the leading Cadence Channel Partner as the exclusive distributor of OrCAD in North America. EMA has also developed a series of its own software products for library management, component supply chain data, and conducts training. He talks about the role of automation and whether designers are keeping up with their profession with PCB Chat host Mike Buetow.

Bill Cardoso came to electronics in a nontraditional way: by way of Fermilab, where he studied the origins of the universe. Now president of Creative Electron, a designer and manufacturers of x-ray inspection systems for the electronics industry, he discusses his background, his love of product teardowns, and why he builds all his machines in the US with PCB Chat host Mike Buetow.

John Mitchell is president and CEO of IPC, and Chris Mitchell is IPC vice president of global government relations. They discuss the trade organization's key government programs and initiatives, its annual member lobbying event coming up in May, and the importance of lobbying by member companies with PCB Chat host Mike Buetow.