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The Essential Guide to Surface Finishes
We go back to basics this month with a recount of a little history, and look forward to addressing the many challenges that high density, high frequency, adhesion, SI, and corrosion concerns for harsh environments bring to the fore. We compare and contrast surface finishes by type and application, take a hard look at the many iterations of gold plating, and address palladium as a surface finish.
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In this month’s issue of PCB007 Magazine we reimagine the possibilities featuring stories all about IPC APEX EXPO 2025—covering what to look forward to, and what you don’t want to miss.
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John W. Mitchell: Fire Your Hiring Habits
March 23, 2023 | Pete Starkey, I-Connect007Estimated reading time: 1 minute

On the Wednesday of IPC APEX EXPO week, IPC President and CEO Dr. John W. Mitchell stylishly delivered his keynote address, “Fire Your Hiring Habits!” to a packed ballroom full of round tables all immaculately laid for a sit-down lunch.
Announced by IPC Hall-of-Famer Joe O’Neil with a Rolling Stones track in the background, Mitchell’s presentation, subtitled “Finding and keeping the best talent is fundamental to building electronics better,” offered relevant and valuable guidance on understanding human nature and how this knowledge can help you find and keep the right individuals for your organisation. Mitchell discussed how to give candidates the confidence to come and join your organisation, how to train them, and how to keep them happy and productive, while simultaneously facing the challenges of record low unemployment, skills gaps, and an education system that has been unsuccessful in motivating students to get jobs.
“Quality electronics,” Mitchell said, “starts with quality training,” and IPC demonstrated its commitment to this key message by offering certain online training packages to member companies, free of charge.
Several recent surveys have asked questions like, “What is top talent looking for? What do employees want?” Inevitably, those surveys come back with different answers and orders of priority. One clear finding, however, was that different generations think differently, particularly on the “live-to-work” vs. “work-to-live” paradigm. In addition to age-related demographic differences in the answers to those questions, gender-related differences also came up, with predictable arguments over whether women were better than men.
To read this entire review, which appeared in the 2023 edition of Show & Tell Magazine, click here.
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05/08/2025 | Linda Stepanich, IPCWhen residents in sleepy English villages needed a top-tier detective to solve a murder, they called on Belgian super-sleuth Hercule Poirot, author Agatha Christie’s fictional detective famous for using his “little grey cells” to solve crimes. In the same way, IPC standards development committees, when creating a standard to detect defects in circuit boards using Automated Optical Inspection (AOI), call on IPC A-Team, Hercule.
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The Government Circuit: Trump’s Trade War Disrupts the Electronics Ecosystem
05/06/2025 | Chris Mitchell -- Column: The Government CircuitThere is certainly no shortage of work to be done in the IPC Government Relations department, as the U.S. waged a tariff campaign on practically every industrial country in the world and several countries embarked on high-tech initiatives with a mix of approaches to the crucial foundations of electronics manufacturing. Indeed, the breadth and speed of U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff campaign continues to be a serious challenge for our industry.