The latest form of K.I.S.S. is a media marvel, but not much more (yet).

“You may say that I’m a dreamer But I’m not the only one” – John Lennon

“Hey Joe, where you goin’ with that gun in your hand?” – Jimi Hendrix

Our industry thrives on innovation. Sometimes these great lightning strikes are immediately implemented; sometimes they’re destined for the shelf. “Everything old is new again” is a constant refrain.

One of the most innovative people I include among my friends is Joe Fjelstad. I have always been impressed with his vision and passion. Joe is practical and yet can think way out of the box. You might be familiar with an endeavor a few years back that Joe actively contributed to: Tessera. Joe’s exuberance for life goes beyond technology; he is a citizen of the world in every sense of the word. All in all, Joe is a class act.

Joe’s latest venture is Verdant Electronics, a company whose central idea is known as the Occam Process. The invention is named in honor of 14th century philosopher and logician, William of Ockham, who proclaimed that “entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity” or, in other words, the simplest solution tends to be the right one. Verdant’s solution to the fallibility of soldered interconnections on etched copper circuit boards is an additive process. Succinctly, components are placed on a thin substrate (via adhesive). The assembly is overcoated with an encapsulant. Following curing, the encapsulated substrate is inverted and holes are either etched or, preferably, laser drilled to expose and access the component leads. Interconnections are then formed using photolithography and copper plating processes. Hence, a solderless process. Pretty cool, but somehow simple does not come to mind. While such additive technology has been around for more than 25 years, Verdant believes the time has come to take it off the shelf, dust it off and modernize it.

Verdant also has an impressive advisory board with quite a few industry luminaries. Appropriately, they hail from fabrication, assembly and component specialties. I’ve spoken with a number of them and all are enthusiastic about it, save for one component guru who, credibly, is waiting for the prototype.

Joe and the Verdant endeavor are press darlings. The Occam Process garnered headlines in most of the major magazines, digital and print. What I’ve apparently missed are the probing questions about the process. Those who hung around the SMTAI Speakers Lounge in October heard a lively debate, however. On one side was some of Verdant’s advisory board, who took a Knights of the Round Table-worthy defense to the process. Among the skeptics: Rob Rowland, Dr. Ron Lasky, Jim Hall and yours truly.

Just what are our collective reservations? The first time I heard the details of the process, my initial reaction was, You’re going to put a pick-and-place machine in a fab shop? Yikes! Or an electroplating bath in an assembly shop? Double yikes! (Speaking of electroplating, it’s not what I’d call a “green” process.)

Occam claims to be so straightforward that rework/repair will not be needed. That seems to assume component manufacturers will hold up their end of the stick and provide perfect components. A longshot, to say the least.

How does the process accommodate through-hole components, such as connectors, headers and switches that need to be through-hole due to the service life? Just one of the hard facts of electronics.

Occam claims great inherent reliability. Where are the data to support this? Or, for that matter, a prototype?

Granted the assembly is, potentially, Pb-free, but how does one disassemble the product at end-of-life for recycling? WEEE really want to know.

Additional questions concern matching the relative TCE of the encapsulation material to the substrate, feasibility for high-density assemblies, as well as applicability to high-speed digital circuitry in which extreme control of conductor thickness is paramount to proper impedance and, of course, overall cost. Further, the foundation additive process(es) have been around for more than two decades and have yet to be adopted on the scale that Occam aspires. Is the approach inherently deficient or, perhaps, is it like IBM’s collapsible solder spheres of the mid ’60s and the eventual application to area array packaging – a good idea whose time has finally come?

The media fervor brings to mind other show-stopping, evolutionary-revolutionary, gotta-have, everyone’s-going-to-implement-technologies. Remember tape automated bonding? Lots of press hoo-hah on that, as well as conferences, books (and consultants) proclaiming its widespread adaptability. Multiwire seemed like a really good idea, but never became a household word. Injection-molded circuit boards? Another a cool idea, but alas, very limited application. The list goes on.

Some parties have signed on to initiate Occam. Joe's no Preston Tucker. He is a sincere, honest, forward thinker. He freely admits the Occam Process is not designed to replace everything in electronics overnight. Whether it garners widespread adaptation, or none at all, remains to be seen. But we are grateful for forward thinkers – and skeptics. There’s a place for all of us because we’re all in this together.

Phil Zarrow is president and SMT process consultant with ITM Consulting (itmconsulting.org); itm@itmconsulting.org. He still bears the scars, physical and mental, of reflowing convection/IR ovens. His column appears bimonthly.

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