Old fabrication equipment never dies. It keeps getting reengineered for the future.

How far can you push the envelope? I have asked myself that question for years as I watch the advancement of technology and the fabricated PCBs that anchor that technology. And just when it appears a new and insurmountable challenge has come along, our industry devises a creative solution that catapults us even further ahead.

So, I continue to wonder. I have seen processes and equipment developed when 12/12 spacing was cutting-edge honed and dialed in to reliably produce 2/2 spacing. Drilling equipment that once could drill no smaller than 12 mil holes now regularly forms holes half that diameter. “High aspect” was once defined as 5:1. Now 10:1 is low aspect. All this on old equipment. Install the latest generation of equipment and capabilities exponentially improve.

The flow of migrants from south of the border is choking supply-chain routes.

As we enter the middle of 2019, it appears to be shaping up as a good year for many in EMS. Anecdotally, I’m hearing the best reports in years on firm backlog from the providers I regularly talk with. I think this is part function of a good economy, but also due to the material constraints the market has experienced for several years. OEMs recognize that having orders in place can be critical to parts availability. Hopefully, this is actual demand and not the double-booking phenomenon seen in previous constrained markets.

The materials market appears to have good news as well. While a few commodities are showing longer lead-times or allocation, the bulk of component lead-times and prices appears to be stabilizing. A few have even decreased lead-times. This is good news for EMS because component availability has impacted companies’ ability to grow. This is a good time to check customer forecasts, since if orders have been inflated, stabilizing material availability may translate to a pushout
in demand.

It’s time for an industry program to train board buyers.

A printed circuit board is unique to every different application or customer, has over one hundred separate required manufacturing processes, and may come from down the street or halfway around the world. In other words, PCB purchasing is a complicated business. The traditional way of board buying can lead to costly mistakes and may expose companies to financial liability.

I am on a mission to fix that.

PCB buying has changed a lot since I started as a salesman in this industry more than 25 years ago. Back then, purchasing departments were larger. Buying was broken down into specific commodities, with buyers assigned to manage only one or, at most, a few of them. Buyers had the time and available resources to be well-versed in their assigned commodities. Many buying teams resided in the very facilities that designed the boards’ products and used the parts.

When it comes to components, the devil’s in the details.

The interdependency of all elements of stencil printing to achieve a high-yield result can be overwhelming. When you consider just the things we’ve addressed in this column – from tooling to warped boards to stencil tension to solder paste types and everything in between – it’s clear controlling the printing process is a balancing act that takes a fair level of expertise (or at least a robust self-learning system!). Nothing underscored this reality more than a recent experience with a customer.

When printing a relatively high-mix board that contained a range of components from 01005s to large QFNs, the customer was experiencing different results from the front and rear print strokes. One direction printed relatively well. But the reverse direction left smearing on the stencil and, according to SPI results, non-optimal paste transfer efficiency. The assembler tried troubleshooting the issue, but nothing seemed to work, other than applying different print pressures on the front and rear strokes in order to get the same output from the process. This, of course, is not normal for solder paste printing.